I saw Annie Hall & Manhattan in the cinema when they first came out. I loved them both but Annie Hall was my favourite and remained so for several years.
Rewatching both recently after a long gap I find I don't particularly like Annie Hall but still love Manhattan. I suspect the cinema photography and Gershwin play a major part in that but perhaps it's also that Manhattan seems less frantic. Funny how tastes change.
Interestingly I have to some degree gone the other way. Manhattan used to be my all time favourite movie but lately I find Annie Hall more interesting and rewatchable. I find more new things in it, more reasons that it's a great movie. I still love both, and Manhattan certainly still looks and sounds amazing, but I would now probably say Crimes and Misdemeanors is my favourite Allen movie.
These are the only words I have, I'm stuck with them, stuck in themshare
I watched both back to back last night and I'd say they're pretty equal.
shareAnnie Hall maybe has more going on when you're watching both films for the first time, but for me Manhattan is infinitely the better of the two on repeat viewings. Think the talking heads and fantasy sequences in Annie Hall lose their appeal after they've been seen once and just seem kinda dated now.
By contrast, rather than appearing dated, the way it's shot in black-and-white makes Manhattan seem timeless. As the OP says the all-Gershwin instrumentals soundtrack helps too.
I just think there are so many good one-liners or reactions from Woody in Manhattan.
I also prefer it despite or perhaps because basically nothing happens. SPOILER ALERT the only change by the end is that Yale has officially left his wife to be with Diane Keaton's character. So they're back together and Issac and Tracey seem to have reconciled at the end too, so there's just a beautiful irony that they've gone through everything we see in the movie only to end up back where they were at the start. OK, Issac quits being a writer on the show to write the novel and consequently has to move to a smaller apartment, but that happens very early on.
A film about nothin', over a decade before the ultimate show about nothin' started, set in the same city too.
I like Manhattan a bit better. Aside from being in black and white, it doesn't appear to be trying too hard to be clever in the way it's constructed. Woody is at his best when he just lets the story tell itself.
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