Customer Reviews

Hannah and Her Sisters

5 star:		(66)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters" is the finest of the neurotic writer-director-actor's pictures. His prowess in weaving together complete characters and compelling storylines is as intricate as Altman, as artful as Renoir. Yes, those are "big movie terms," but are warranted in describing this bitersweet marvel.

Allen's command of the medium results in some terrific photographic shots, including the classic "camera-revolving-around-the-table" sequence featuring Hannah (Mia Farrow) and her sisters (Barbara Hershey and dynamite Oscar-winner Dianne Wiest), whose lives all seem to be going through very adult mid-life crises with their husbands, ex-husbands, boyfriends, and families. Michael Caine's work in this film also shines, and Allen himself is in his prime. The ensemble cast in this film creates an atmosphere that has you really believing you're watching friends and family, and not simply actors acting, reciting lines, a problem even the better "ensemble films" often face.

All of the elements in this picture --- cinematography, classic jazz tunes, nearly-musical dialogue --- are on ample display in a film rich with human warmth and big laughs. Although Allen's films are not for all tastes, this is a film that should very easily be enjoyed by nonfans and especially film students who can get a chance to see a virtuoso talent at the top of his form, not conforming by traditional storytelling and filmic norms.

HANNAH AND HER SISTERS was recommended VERY, VERY highly by a fine arts teacher when it was first released in '86. He couldn't say enough good things about how wonderful the casting, the story and the humor made the movie a real treat. 15 years and at least a couple dozen viewings later, I couldn't agree more.

This movie is like comfort food. I have connected with the characters, Holly in particular (played wonderfully by Dianne Wiest, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for this role)so many times that they are literally like old friends. The themes are common to everyday life and family, which doesn't make them a cliche, but more meaningful every time I watch.

There are moments in the film you can replay in your memory time and again: my favorite is the taxi scene when Holly is ruminating over her awful "date" with her friend April (another great performance by Carrie Fisher) and the architect, David.

I think this is one of the most well-cast films made by anyone, American or foreign directors included. Michael Caine, Mia Farrow, Barbara Hershey and Max von Sydow form a perfectly blended ensemble.

The DVD transfer is of average quality. The picture is crisp enough, but it doesn't look enhanced in the DVD format. It would be nice if the studio had included more than a skimpy essay on the film's production that is included as a two-page liner/note on the inside cover.

HANNAH AND HER SISTERS will make a great holiday gift for everyone, friends and family included this season!

Without a doubt, this is my most favorite of Allen's works. This film is an American classic, and it needs to be on the list of the 100 greatest American films. I, too, lament that it is no longer available--but thanks to the glorious Amazon.com, I was able, last month, to purchase this in an online auction. I now own this marvelous film whose themes range from love (what else? it's Woody Allen), to general despair and the search for God in an ostensibly godless and hostile universe, to infidelity (why not?), and infertility giving way to miraculous pregnancies (the last line of the film is, after all, uttered by Weis's character: "I'm pregnant" she tells a confused and then moved Allen); and, of course, there is that famous question students of Allen's must ask: "Do we have the right to think we deserve more or that we deserve to be happy?" I'll let the film answer that for you.

A brilliantly comedic performance is given by Diane Weist who plays Holly, the most boisterous and fame-driven of Hannah's sisters, and who fights so comically with Carrie Fisher's April over architect David played keenly by Allen fixture Sam Waterston (see Waterston and Weis in Allen's "September"; they're breathtaking together). Mia Farrow is adequate as Hannah--mother, stage actress, and Thanksgiving hostess--and Barbara Hershey leaves us cold as the much sought-after Lee. Bergman icon and Allen hero Max von Sydow gives an obvious performance as the angst-ridden artist in the 20th century (this was the 80s...) Allen also gives a brilliant but by now familiar comedic performance as hypochondriac and god-searcher Mickey Sacks. And Michael Cain is superb as Hannah's wandering husband, Eliot.

The film revolves liturgically around the seasons and around the most Protestant of holidays, Thanksgiving--the scenes were filmed in Farrow's real-life New York apartment (she talks about it in "What Falls Away," available from Amazon.com). Sophisticated jazz tunes fill the house from Hannah's father, played by Lloyd Nolan, and Farrow's real mother, Maureen O'Sullivan (remember her swim with Tarzan?) plays the reminiscent and libidinous mother--"just a boozy old flirt with a filthy mouth." These Thanksgiving scenes are designed splendidly--around the other seasons of the year--to show us each character's progression (or lack thereof).

The soundtrack (which I also own on tape, not CD, unfortunately) is what makes this film so splendid. Melodies swell up from the true American composers and musicians--Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Count Basie. The film is haunted by two melodies serving as themes: "Isn't It Romantic?" and "Bewitched." These songs are woven seemlessly into scene after scene in moody and melancholy ways. This soundtrack is perfect for a rainy day.

If you ever find a copy of this film, snatch it up and treasure it forever!

There is a scene near the end of this film where Hannah (Mia Farrow) and her sisters Holly (Dianne Wiest) n"Lee(Barbara Hershey) meet over lunch and the camera slowly circles them as they engage in a heated emotionally charged conversation that is one of the most poignant moments I have ever seen on a screen. All 3 of these actresses are just outstanding in this movie. Mia Farrow has some scenes where her emotions are so vivdly expressed in her words and her facial expression that it is in my opinion one of the finest performances ever.
The secondary story line features Woody Allen as Hannah's ex-husband who is completely neurotic and obsessed with iiness and death. However Allen is able to twist this to great comic effect. The story weaves back and forth between the emotional upheaval in the lives of Hannah, her husband(Michael Caine) and her sisters to Allen and his character's search for spiritual fullfillment. All of the characters are fully realized people , none perfect, and yet basically well meaning. (with the possible exception of Caine's character).
I believe this is one of Woody Allen's finest films and have viewed it repeatedly over the years. The only weakness is the ending which is a bit contrived but that is easily forgivable in a film that is entertaining, thought provoking and funny at the same time.

I am a self-proclaimed Woody Allen fan but even for those of you who do not take to his exaggeratedly stammering, quivering, uber-NY personality ...this is a must see-movie. There is much lesser of the typical Woody you are used to -- the neurotic vocal tics, the dry white whine -- and a lot more of story in this movie than others I have seen of him. This is also NOT your archetypic semi-comic semi-profound study of contemporary relationships (e.g., Manhattan, Crimes & misdemeanors etc) in terms of stylistic treatment, which is quite refreshing.

I hesitate to regurgitate the script as other reviews have done so already, but I can bet you'll leave with several enduring scenes from the movie, including one where Micky (Woody's character) ends up in a movie house watching the Marx Brothers and realising the value of life, or the depiction of his hypochondria (a trait not uncommon among most urban city denizens, esp. New Yorkers). Other brilliant moments emerge when Mickey vows to convert to a religion that provides him the answers to life's big questions such as "what am I doing here?". So he wavers through a wide range of options from catholicism (much to the chagrin of Jewish parents and his interludes with his father are hilarious) to Hare Krishas dancing in parks and airports (which he decides to give up for fears of handing out flowers with a shaved head).

The acting all-round is superlative and as others would confirm this is one flick where you'll get to see a Michael Caine behind the cold British veneer that he is typically associated with otherwise. His promiscuity between two women is outstandingly potrayed.

Most people familiar with Woody Allen would still rate Annie Hall as the pinnacle of Woody, or Manhattan as his most iconoclastic, but this is a charming, funny, deep and entertaining film and a close second/third to Annie. Highly recommended.

(And contrary to some reviewers, I absolutely love the ending. Why should every story have a feel-goody ending?)

At the end of "Hannah and Her Sisters" the Woody Allen character summarizes the film. The delightful irony is that he is right, but not in the way you thought for most of the film. Of course, given the twists of fate that awaited Allen and Mia Farrow in the years following this film there are degrees of irony in viewing this film now, albeit not as profound as watching "Manhattan." What makes "Hannah and Her Sisters" Allen's best film is indeed the way things come together at the end in a surprising way. The truly sentimental conclusion is what puts it at the top of my personal Woody Allen list: you have to admit, you are stunned to find yourself weeping at the end of one of his movies.

There are dramatic moments in this film-dramatic in terms of the consequences for the characters-that are the finest Allen has crafted. They are definitely superior to the forced effort in Allen's one "dramatic" effort, "Interiors." Being able to play in both ballparks, comedy and drama, has become something of a post-modern ideal, springing forth from television programs in the "dramedy" genre like "All in the Family" and "M*A*S*H." The non-Allen characters have more depth here than you usually find in his films, which is probably due as much to the consummate acting as the writing (since Allen often gives great improvisational leeway). Favorite small moments in this film: Allen's shopping bag of religious items and Max Von Sydow's riposte on the Nazis, not to mention the request for sperm and a special appearance by the Marx Brothers.

On a personal note, there are scenes in this film that continue to stick out in my memory and the ending always brings a tear to my eyes, and I can not say similar things about "Platoon," which beat out this film for the Best Picture Oscar. I say this knowing full well that Allen was not going to win having already had success with "Annie Hall," but that was a period in time when the films I thought were deserving of the Oscar were getting beat by what I considered to be lesser works.

Woody Allen has never made a movie appreciably better than 'Hannah.' It may not be his single best (an honor I reserve for 'Manhattan'), but it's on the shortest of short lists.

My favorite moment in the movie, and maybe Allen's most insightful ever, is when neurotic Mickey (played by Allen) bursts out of the hospital, having just learned that he is cancer-free. He leaps and bounds down the street, joy overflowing, until, suddenly, he stops, paralyzed with a newly imagined anxiety. Yes, Mickey was delivered from cancer, but he wasn't delivered from himself. You could look long and hard and never discover another ten seconds of filmmaking that better capture what it means to be human. Life's vicissitudes alternately beat us down and lift us up, but in the end, we always revert to ourselves.

When Woody Allen is at his best, you can't help but feel he's writing about *your* life, or something very close to it. Who hasn't experienced Holly's rejection in romance, Frederick's anguish and regret over squandering a relationship, Elliot's clumsy giddiness as he falls in love, Mickey's obsessive anxiety about death? There's a recognizable moment from my experience in almost every scene.

'Hannah and Her Sisters' also boasts Allen's single-best-ever soundtrack. I dare you to watch this movie and not tap your foot. The soundtrack is not available on CD, so that's one more reason to crack open the DVD for the dozenth time.

If you haven't seen 'Hannah and Her Sisters,' now's the time. If you have, it can't hurt to revisit a bona-fide classic.

When Woody Allen has a comic moment of religion-fueled panic with a hair-trigger rifle, I was thinking of the famous Chekhov dictum: "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off." In fact, Allen's emotionally robust, multi-dimensional 1986 film has a pervasive Chekhovian sense that I'm sure is quite intentional, though the plot doesn't remotely resemble that of "The Three Sisters", nor does it repeat the Bergmanesque gloom of Allen's own "Interiors" (also about three sisters). Rather, this film covers two years in the lives of a large cast of characters focused primarily on three sisters, all part of the New Yorker intelligentsia, whether real or aspiring, who live in the trendier Manhattan neighborhoods. Family Thanksgiving dinners frame the story effectively, and a dinner in the middle of the film acts as a turning point for several lives. It's a predictable structure but beautifully executed.

The sisters, of course, are completely different in character and temperament. Family gatekeeper Hannah is married to Elliot, a business manager in the entertainment industry. Tiring of her self-reliance, he falls in love with her sister Lee, the free-spirited beauty living in an expansive SoHo loft with Frederick, a bitter and emotionally co-dependent artist. Hannah herself used to be married to Mickey, a successful comedy TV producer and a hypochondriac who goes through a crisis in faith once he frees himself of a fictitious, self-diagnosed brain tumor. But through a chance second meeting long after a very bad first date, Mickey gets reacquainted with Holly, the third sister, an insecure, self-conscious actress-turned-caterer-turned writer and a recovering cocaine addict. Add to this unwieldy mix the sisters' parents, a pair of ham-fisted show business veterans dealing with years of alcoholism, adultery and verbal abuse. How these seemingly disparate characters interact yields the true beauty of this film, thanks to Allen's unmistakable technique as a New York-loving filmmaker and his sharply drawn script, which alternates easily between funny and poignant. Seeing this film nearly twenty years later lends even more interesting insight, as one can see how Allen must have viewed Mia Farrow at the time as Hannah, the nurturer of an extended brood, the "perfect" wife and mother, always there to comfort those in her orbit, even though her insistent good will could be a source of resentment for those she helps. Allen explored these alienating traits to even more virulent results in his final film with Farrow, 1992's "Husbands and Wives".

Never that intriguing an actress otherwise (though Allen seems to bring out her depth), Farrow makes Hannah credible not only in her inherited role as the family's Rock of Gibraltar but also in her dawning self-awareness. Michael Caine is terrific as Elliott, a comical manipulator masquerading as a romantic, and Barbara Hershey effortlessly portrays Lee as the conflicted earth mother/sex symbol figure her character demands her to be. Allen plays Mickey as, of course, Allen, but with an increasing romanticism as he becomes drawn to Holly. With such keen competition, the cast standout is Dianne Wiest as Holly in an adventuresome performance as a character you hate one minute and like the next all in line with her barely tolerable erratic nature. Smaller roles are filled expertly by Max Von Sydow perfectly convincing with his stentorian righteousness as Frederick; Carrie Fisher as Holly's insidiously competitive girlfriend; Sam Waterson as an available, self-important architect; and as the parents, Lloyd Nolan and a rather over-the-top Maureen O'Sullivan (Farrow's real mother). You can even see Farrow's adopted daughter and Allen's future wife, Soon-Yi Previn, briefly as one of the children at Thanksgiving.

It's a true family affair and an emotionally satisfying one with layers of complexity presented in subtle episodes that feel truthful. The best example is the lunch table roundelay with the camera circling mercilessly around a self-absorbed Holly, an ignorantly defensive Hannah and a guilt-stricken Lee, as their sisterly bonding seem to disconnect and deconstruct before our very eyes. It's a masterful scene. Even Holly's veiled attempts to connect with Mickey toward the end feel authentic and sweetly romantic, especially as one gets the sense that these two oddballs have inadvertently found their soul-mates. While it is not as romantically intimate as "Annie Hall" or as viscerally incisive as "Manhattan", "Hannah and Her Sisters" is Allen's most accomplished film, especially in the breadth of characters experiencing their own dramatic, intersecting arcs, and it is sadly the last Allen film I have enjoyed without condition.

After reading other reviews of this wonderful film I doubt I could add much to what has already been stated. Given that I still enjoy this film so much that I'll shall add my "two cents" anyway!

For me this is by far and away Woody Allen's best film. Every autumn I make a point of renting this classic and inviting over some unsuspecting friends to watch it for the first time. I can honestly say not one has ever come away disappointed! But how could you? Somehow Woody has taken the autumn months, the holiday celebrations and his wonderful choice of jazz standards and effortlessly weaved them into one magical film. While at the times being sentimental, comedic and yet also incredibly heartwrenching in our search for true happiness in our small lives Woody has reached the small understanding that to find that illusive "happiness" one just needs to look around . It's right in front of you.

The cast is of course first-rate...the stand-outs being Michael Caine as Hannah's beleagered husband, Mia Farrow as Hannah herself and of course Woody, simply being himself and adding the comedic touch to his own film. For that matter everyone in this film is wonderful and for the most part all are given a chance to shine...and they do so admirably!Special kudos to Max Von Sydow as a judgemental, overly-critical boyfriend to Barbara Hershey who in the end is the only one who is unable to find any real happiness.

Overall, a film that manages to intertwine all of Woody's impracticalties together and even bring a ultimately "happy ending" to the proceedings! And while I don't make a point of buying movies I suspect this will be my first DVD purchase. Along with "Manhattan" and "Annie Hall" the trifecta of Woody's films. ENJOY!!

My guy friends tend to give me grief that I include "Hannah and Her Sisters" in my top three "all-time best films ever" list-- and I'm not sure exactly what it is about this movie that keeps me watching it over and over.
Maybe its the wholesome sexiness of Lee (Barbara Hershey) and her dark-eyed brooding. Or it could be the Oscar-winning performance of one of my favorite actors: Michael Caine, who pulls off his career performance by delivering the travesty of adultery as a warm sweater that I slip into on a cold New York afternoon. As a general worshiper of women of all descriptions, I also can't deny that indulging in the intimate relationships of Hannah and her uniquely beautiful sisters is a pure pleasure.
The musical score serves as the most introspective character of this piece, Woody's typically perfect collection of classic melancholia-- Hannah's father plays a piano version of "You Are Too Beautiful" that makes me catch my breath.
I could go on and on. All of these elements are but a glimpse of a gestalt of sublime screenwriting, acting, and direction that brings me back to this film on a regular basis in order to fuel my emotional well-being.
For those building a library, this is the first film you should own by Woody Allen, as it will introduce his genius to you on a rich and familiar level that will only leave you wanting to see, hear, and feel more (Manhattan).