Hannah und ihre Schwestern

Very funny comedy has one of Woody's all time best casts. Dianne Wiest is the best; glowing, neurotic, irritating and vulnerable, within minutes. Michael Caine is the most touching, Mia Farrow, as always, close to heartbreaking. I think it's her voice that does it. Nice scenes with her and her real-life mother, Maureen O'Sullivan.

Like Manhattan, this picture looks beautiful; NY in all its many breath- taking colors. The relationships of everyone on the screen are perfectly woven, and Woody has the best sight gag of the film when he takes a bible and a crucifix out of a paper bag (to find religion), and follows them up with some Wonder Bread and mayonaisse. Hilarious!

Deserving of its writing and supporting actor Oscars, it's too bad everyone in the movie couldn't have won. They're all believable and enjoyable to watch. My favorite: Max Von Sydow as the very cynical, older Frederick. He should have had more moments. Imagine him at one of the Thanksgiving dinners...

Arguably Woody Allen's best production with the exception of "Annie Hall". The film follows three sisters (Mia Farrow, Barbara Hershey and Oscar-winner Dianne Wiest) through their careers and their relationships. Farrow is the backbone that keeps everything together. However, husband Michael Caine (Oscar-winning) has his eye of Hershey and something might come of his crush. Max Von Sydow is seeing Hershey, but he may not be enough to curve her lust. Wiest seems to be the odd one out as she struggles with everything, thinking of herself as second-rate to sister Farrow. You know she might fit in well with Farrow's ex-husband (the priceless Allen). A wild film of vivid characters that entertains to the paramount. Allen received an Oscar for his screenplay and was nominated yet again for his dead-on direction. Not a perfect film, but Allen's amazing story-telling and his superb creation of memorable characters and sequences make "Hannah and Her Sisters" one of the better films of the 1980s. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

I 'd say it was because it's one of the most joyous, life-affirming films I've ever seen. It just makes me feel so good.

All the characters are engaging and funny. Woody is hilarious as the neurotic hypochondriac television producer who gets the idea he's got a brain tumor, and is almost as upset when he finds out he doesn't have one as he'd be if he did (have a brain tumor, that is.) He realizes that even if he is not going to die in the near future, he is going to die sometime, as are we all. He becomes obsessed with this idea, that death waits for us all, and if there's no God, no afterlife, what's the point of it all? So he embarks upon a quest to find Religion, a religion, any religion, that will satisfy him that there's something beyond human mortality.

Of course there's no answer to this, but Woody's desperate odyssey to find some meaning to a life that inevitably ends in death, some kind of certainty, is both something we can all relate to (maybe without the desperation) and extremely funny.

We don't find out till nearly the end of the movie how he resolves this. But there's no magic answer, no guru telling him some cosmic secret. Woody's epiphany is much more simple than that; it's that he discovers that life is sweet, and even if we only go around once and it all comes to an end, let's savor it while we're here. There's so much to savor. I can't express this the way Woody's character does in the film, it's best if you just watch the movie and vicariously experience his joy in this revelation.

There are lots of other delights in this film to enjoy along the way. All the actors are first-rate. Max von Sydow is especially moving as the rejected lover of Lee, one of the three sisters the movie follows over a period of two years. Lee is charmingly played by Barbara Hershey, while Mia Farrow as the "settled" sister, captures the two sides of Hannah, as someone who's both almost annoyingly perfect (at least as perceived by others) yet is actually as needy and vulnerable as everyone else.

But the most engaging character in Hannah and Her Sisters has got to be Holly, the quirky "off-beat" slightly edgy sister. Dianne Wiest won a well-deserved Oscar for this role. She makes Holly funny, touching, and sympathetic.

Woody Allen makes movies that will sometimes be partial duds with great lines and characters, and then he'll make an all around great movie like Manhattan, Sleeper or Deconstructing Harry. In the 80's, he had a period where most of his films were generally great (Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy might be the exception). But this is one of the gems in that period, a comedy with great acting matched with a finely tuned screenplay.

Though not without an ending that leaves everything a little too neat (however upon pressure from the studio, not Allen's original intentions of course), this is another relationship-centric picture, with the side-bar of Woody's character being chronically afraid of death and what comes after it. Deservedly his last big award winner, it's a possibility for my favorite Woody 80s movie (even if the experience in the theater sucked- the downside to seeing an Allen movie is the large amount of old people, and the occasional old man who sits very close with a constantly shifting candy wrapper, smacking lips, and a penchant for a horrible sinus conditon...just think who the fans of Woody movies will be then they croak).

"Hannah and Her Sisters" is a very good movie that, unfortunately, falls short of greatness. Alternately entertaining (as a comedy) and penetrating (as a drama), this film has many wonderful moments, and is filled with superb dialogue. All the actors deliver first-rate performances; Michael Cain in genuinely touching when he is trying to decide his next moves in his life, Hershey is warm and radiant and Allen himself is delightful in his role. The script is perceptive throughout (look for the scenes when Caine shares his thoughts and plans with us) and the main characters do have depth.

The only flaw here (and, I think, a crucial one) is the too-tidy ending. I wouldn't have preferred a thoroughly depressing conclusion, but the way everything gets "settled" in the end was just too neat. Still, I read somewhere that the "upbeat" tone of the ending was "required" partly by the studio who made the film, so I guess this flaw is forgivable. Nevertheless, it doesn't allow this movie to become a masterpiece.