| Hannah and Her Sisters | | Cast : | Woody Allen, Barbara Hershey, Michael Caine, Mia Farrow, Dianne Wiest | | Director : | Woody Allen | | Studio : | Mgm/Ua Studios | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | February 07, 1986 | | DVD Released Date : | September 07, 2004 | | Language : | Spanish (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 02, 2005 | | Summary | Is This Supposed To Be A Comedy Or Drama? Please Advise!!! | Content
 | In this movie we have the usual motley crew of New Yorkers and of course Woody Allen who plays his usual nuerotic, needy self.I have no idea why so many women find this guy to be attractive to them. Perhaps they like whiney, self obsessed nerds. This movie has the usual Themes of Lust, Infidelity, An Unhappy Marriage and Drug Addiction.To give you an idea of just how messed up these people are one woman has sex with her sister's husband then wants to know if she is better in bed than his wife!!!If you think these characters are all in need of some Heavy Duty Medication and Therapy you are right. The convoluted plot and dilemas faced by these losers is all resolved in the last 2 minutes of the movie which makes one wonder if Woody ran out of money for film. As an added bonus you get a very 'sanitized" view of New York without Homeless People or spent syringes lying in the Alley.I give this movie 5 stars because I do like Diane Weist. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 08, 2005 | | Summary | A Fantastic Woody Allen Film | Content
| This is my fourth favorite Woody film. It is very dramatic and funny. I recommend it to anyone who likes romantic comedies or Woody Allen. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 04, 2005 | | Summary | Among the top five Allen films. Buy it! | Content
| `Hannah and Her Sisters' by writer/director Woody Allen is certainly among the top five of Allen's best films, along with `Annie Hall', `Crimes and Misdemeanors', `Manhattan', and `Take the Money and Run'. It is certainly one of my favorites, although I think it is just a bit less tight than the later `Crimes and Misdemeanors' with which it shares a lot of themes and a similarly enormous cast of familiar faces.
One of the most important similarities between the two movies is that there are two parallel, but connected plots and Allen's character is central to the lesser of the two plots, given as much to provide comic relief as to move the story onward. Also in both movies, Allen plays an only modestly successful entertainment business creative player who is not incompetent, but who is not doing well. Both `Hannah...' and `Crimes...' give Allen's character a major love interest and I am very pleased with the fact that `Hannah...' ends with a happy resolution to all the movie's issues. One can be certain that new crises will arise for these characters the day after the final scene, but at least for us, they are all in a good place. That sentence has unwittingly shown an important fact about this movie. We care for these characters. We may not be too concerned about the fate of Carrie Fisher, Max Von Sydow, Tony Roberts, Daniel Stern, Maureen O'Sullivan, Lloyd Nolan, or John Turturro who appear on the screen for just a few minutes. But, we really develop a strong interest in the fates of the characters played by Allen, Michael Caine, Mia Farrow, Barbara Hershey and Dianne Wiest. While Allen is simply playing his usual nebbish, I cannot for the life of me see how the Academy Awards singled out Wiest from the performances of Caine and Farrow, which I think are equally strong.
Like all of Allen's movies since `Manhattan', the jokes are much better integrated into the story and they are much less predictable than the sight gag of Allen's pistol carved from a bar of soap turning into a handful of suds in the rain in `Take the Money and Run'. This makes them both more fun and droller, as when the very serious Max Von Sydow says he does not sell his paintings by the yard. Allen also continues to use wordless visual gags as when he empties a sack of Catholic religious items, finishing up with a loaf of Wonder bread and Hellman's mayonnaise.
New York City plays almost as big a part in this movie as it does in `Manhattan', with the gimmick of an architect's showing off his favorite buildings as a way of giving us a tour of some of Manhattan's more attractive sights. Even the gritty Greenwich Village streets give up some of their charm as Caine chases down Barbara Hershey in order to bump into her with a rationale for her to show him to a nearby used book shop.
We can also add this to the list of the many Allen movies where one or more characters, especially Allen's character, end up in a theatre watching a classic film. In this case, it's the Marx brothers in `Duck Soup', arguably one of their funniest.
If you are not a rabid Woody Allen fan, I would recommend this movie above almost all others for purchase. Like all his films, there are virtually no special features, but the movie is longer than average and has one of his very best stories and very best collection of characters.
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| Rating | | | Date | May 04, 2005 | | Summary | Woody's Chekhovian Film Expertly Melds Multiple Characters | Content
| 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. |
| Rating | | | Date | March 19, 2005 | | Summary | Great Woody | Content
| This is Woody Allen's multi-layered, multi-dimmensional masterpiece. Each sister in the movie has her own story to tell, as well as Allen himself, who is an anxiety-ridden schnook afraid he's going to die without learning the secret of life (to be happy). The picture has so much going on with regard to storyline and character that a synopsis would not do it justice. It's rare that Allen ever tackles so much in one movie, and it all works marvelously. Although all the actors/actresses are terrific here, Michael Caine is especially noteworthy as Hannah's husband who's having an affair with sister Lee (Barbara Hershey). This is a major movie achievement. |
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