Hannah and Her Sisters

Despite the all-star cast, the true star of this film is -- as in so many Woody Allen films -- Manhattan itself, in a sequence of evocative locations that survey the particular charms of the Big Apple and the theatrical village within, where all the characters reside -- with parks and galleries, bookstores and restaurants, opera and jazz, show tunes and show people, all vying for attention and appreciation. This then is another sort of home movie, with Michael Caine as Woody’s stand-in as Mia Farrow’s husband, unable to resist the charms of her sister, Barbara Hershey (keeping it in the family, so to speak). Woody himself plays the ex-husband who winds up with Mia/Hannah’s other sister, Diane Wiest. Nearly every face that appears on screen is familiar now, even if they weren’t then (like John Turturro and Julia Louis Dreyfus in bit parts), while others are memorably gone (like Max von Sydow and Mia’s mom, Maureen O’Sullivan.) The locales are similarly familiar, and offer a time capsule of New York two decades ago. So there are manifold pleasures in the film, a reminder of Woody Allen at his peak, if not a timeless classic. (1986, TCM/T, r.) *7*