Woody Allen is not a personal favourite director of mine and he is admittedly not everybody's cup of tea. While his filmography is not consistent(are there any directors that have) the best of his work is truly exceptional, as seen with Annie Hall, Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanours and Husbands and Wives(just a few examples). Hannah and Her Sisters joins those exceptional films, along with Crimes and Misdemeanours it is one of his best films from the 80s. What is especially good is the acting and the screenplay. Michael Caine is just wonderful and thoroughly deserved his Oscar, Woody Allen himself has rarely been funnier and Max Von Sydow in perhaps a nod to Ingmar Bergman gives a poignant performance too. Barbara Herschey and Mia Farrow also do a great job, Farrow as one of Hannah and Her Sisters' most relatable characters. Likewise with Carrie Fisher and Sam Waterson. But special mention has to go to Dianne Wiest, whose performance is among the best of any Woody Allen film, a list that includes Martin Landau in Crimes and Misdemeanours for example. The script is one of the best, tightest and most multi-layered of any Woody Allen film(his best is still Annie Hall in my view, one of the best and most quotable screenplays of all time),it is very funny especially with Allen, has sharp observations told with forcefulness and truth in distinctive Allen style and is touching too. The story is not the tightest structurally, but it is still perhaps the most heartfelt and relatable of his films and is one of Allen's most successful efforts combining comedy and drama(Crimes and Misdemeanours and Annie Hall also). Hannah and Her Sisters is beautifully filmed, one of his most visually striking pictures along with Manhattan, and Allen directs faultlessly as he mostly did. In conclusion, Allen's second best film of the 80s and also one of his best films, exceptional on all counts. 10/10 Bethany Cox
Hannah and Her Sisters
1986
Action / Comedy / Drama
Hannah and Her Sisters
1986
Action / Comedy / Drama
Plot summary
Hannah, Holly, and Lee are adult sisters from a show business family, their boozy actress mother who still believes she's an ingénue that can attract any man she wants, despite still being married to the girls' father, Evan. Hannah, on her second marriage to a man named Elliot, a financial advisor, is the success of the family, taking a break from her acting career to raise her children. Everyone turns to her for advice, while she never talks to others about what she needs or feels. Her first husband, Mickey, is a comedy show writer and hypochondriac, who is going through a crisis as he mistakenly believes he will die soon without a clear belief, as a non-practicing Jew, of what will happen to him in the afterlife. Single Holly is the insecure flaky sister, a struggling and thus continually unemployed actress, who has just started a catering business with her actress friend April, in order to do something constructive with her life. In her own security, Hannah even set up Holly and Mickey together following her own break-up with Mickey, Holly and Mickey's sole date which arguably was the worst night in both their lives. Holly turns to Hannah for everything in her life, including money, despite feeling Hannah overly judgmental about her failures. It's during a catering job that Holly and April meet David, an architect, who seems interested in both of them. Holly's insecurities may threaten her potential relationship with David and friendship with April. Lee, who collects unemployment, is metaphorically the family's piece of clay waiting for the right artist to mold her. She has long lived with artist Frederick, who has contempt for everyone except her, and as such relies on her for whatever his connection to the outside world. This already complex collective becomes even more complex when Elliot contemplates telling Lee that he has fallen in love with her. His attraction to her is as much feeling unneeded by Hannah, who he does not want to hurt regardless of what he decides to do with respect to Lee.
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Second only to Crimes and Misdemeanours as among the best of Woody Allen's 80s work, also one of his best
The Pessimistic Characters
As much as one might like Woody Allen's schlep characters he has created on the big screen most of his films have an extremely pessimistic view of life. Hannah And Her Sisters is one of the most pessimistic films I've ever viewed. It has the message that nothing in life lasts forever especially relationships.
The title character is the then Mrs. Woody Allen Mia Farrow. She is one of three sisters the other two being Barbara Hershey and Dianne Weist. All three of them have man trouble and some with the same men. They get that from their show business parents Lloyd Nolan and Maureen O'Sullivan who have stayed together and tolerated their mutual infidelities because they're both used to each other and for that time old cliché for the sake of the children. This was Nolan's farewell performance.
The men and some of them aren't any great shakes and some of them they have in common are worse than the women. Michael Caine who won his first Best Supporting Actor Oscar moves from woman to woman always with complete rationalization. Kind of like an intellectual Alfie. Woody Allen is his usual schlep character probably worse than usual, a man who definitely thinks way too much.
It's a credit to Woody Allen that he was able to write a film for which he got an Oscar for an Original Screenplay and this is original that had women as the primary characters and the stronger ones. Even Dianne Weist who is the weakest of the sisters is better than the men around her and she won a Best Supporting Actress Award.
Life does imitate art, truly it does. Woody Allen got himself involved with his adopted stepdaughter Soon-Yi Previn and her mother got shed of Woody with the speed of one of the characters in this film. Allen always went deep into analyzing his characters, maybe in Hannah And Her Sisters he went a little too deep.
Hannah And Her Sisters is unusual and good, but not probably to everyone's taste.
one of Woody's best
Hannah (Mia Farrow)'s husband Elliot (Michael Caine) is secretly infatuated with her sister Lee (Barbara Hershey). Lee is living with old artist Frederick (Max von Sydow). Her other sister Holly (Dianne Wiest) asks her for $2000 to start a catering business. Holly is a former cocaine addict and an actress. She starts the business with her friend April (Carrie Fisher) but they end up competing for a role and architect (Sam Waterston). There's also sketch-TV producer and Hannah's ex-husband Mickey (Woody Allen). The beauty of this movie is that every character is fascinating. Every story is compelling. There isn't a bad section. Woody is neurotically funny. Everybody is doing great work. It is one of Woody's best.