Fish n Film Friday

Image via WikipediaMy film night friend turned up again on Friday evening. It was not entirely unannounced but I had been out most of the day and forgotten to check my messages. At any rate I had already provided my own fish and chips by the time the doorbell rang and I had decided to watch a film, so he was very welcome and able to help me make the decision.

The film we chose in the end was another of the Woody Allen canon from the middle years: Hannah and her Sisters (1986).

This is a fairly low key drama with plenty of time to examine characters and is in my opinion Woody playing to his strengths. True it does include the director himself in a typical Allen role as an angst-ridden hypochondriac but at the time I had probably not yet begun to see his appearance as unnecessary or even undesirable as in some of his later films.

The rest of the cast is excellent and includes at least one surprise in that Michael Caine plays one of the leads. Not perhaps the first choice for a New York family relationship drama one might be forgiven for thinking. The choice worked though and he was ably supported by some more familiar players from the Allen repertory company: Diane Wiest, Mia Farrow and Julie Kavner (now, famously the voice of Marge Simpson) for example.

The cast also includes Max von Sydow, Carrie Fisher, Maureen O'Sullivan playing the mother of her real life daughter (Mia Farrow), Barbara Hershey as the third sister and an early appearance by John Turturro now better known for his wonderful Coen brothers' characters. It is a stunning cast and Woody adds another as was often the case in his best films: New York. At one point in the film we even get a tour of some of the more striking buildings and at another we pay a visit to what I would imagine is a real and much-loved bookshop.

The drama plays around the sibling rivalry of the three sisters, struggling to assert their own identities and realise their own dreams. Against this and the strong women characters, the men are in the throes of uncertainty and mid-life crisis. The unity of time (one year between two Thanksgivings) and place, New York, together with the simple plot structure, allows Allen to concentrate on the frustrations and desires of the characters in what is one of Allen's strongest and most confident works.

Good to see it again and makes me want to revisit some more from the Mia Farrow years which I haven't seen for a long time, for example The Purple Rose of Cairo or Alice.