Hannah and Her Sisters

Woody Allen, USA, 1986, 106 minutes

Allen, making fun of himself in a way which only people with really big egos can, plays a hypochondriac, neurotic television producer whose life is transformed by a visit to the doctor which really gives him something to worry about - a brain tumour. Contemplating his own mortality, he goes in a frantic search for a God as if he is visiting a religion supermarket, comparing the products on offer. In another Allen film this could well have been the core of the movie. For all his cleverness, bittersweet observations and biting one-liners he can be a bit superficial, endlessly and self-indulgently covering the same territory geographically and intellectually. A modern auteur. However, in Hannah and Her Sisters this is only one clement in a complex, multi-layered film. The subtlety and breadth of it is reminiscent of Manhattan.

This work deals with universal themes - love, death, religion, adultery, childbirth and sex. It is a major achievement because it keeps eight three-dimensional characters in focus simultaneously. (Often Allen's films seem to have only one character - a short, balding, bespectacled New York Jew). Mia Farrow, Barbara Hershey and Dianne Wiest play the three sisters. Wiest is almost as neurotic as Woody Allen - rushing about borrowing money for her next project. Farrow acts as an actress, the oldest and apparently the most stable of the sisters. However her husband (Michael Caine) is thinking about adultery... with her youngest sister, played by Hershey. Hershey is thinking about responding because, dominated and constricted by her older husband, her marriage isn't exactly perfect.

There is a lot in this film, but it glides along effortlessly, remaining witty and optimistic. A film which received a great deal of praise. And rightly so.

Review by Michael Morrison
Taken from EUFS Programme 1992-93