Some sounds are immediately comforting. Gulls, trains, a kettle. The opening chords of I Happen to Like New York, which, despite Bobby Short’s vocals escalating in volume and emphasis ALARMINGLY FAST, signal the start of one of Woody Allen’s loveliest little pictures.
This 1993 comedy is like an unaffected Annie Hall – an impromptu reunion for Allen and Diane Keaton, playing essentially more functioning versions of those characters, 15 odd years on. Impromptu because although the first seeds of the idea came from an early draft of that 1977 film, the fairly elaborate plot was only properly written years later as a vehicle for Mia Farrow. She and Allen’s split during the end of the shoot on their previous film, 1992’s Husbands and Wives, kiboshed that plan.
I say kiboshed – in fact, Farrow still wanted to star in Manhattan Murder Mystery, and turned up for costume fittings shortly after accusing Allen of sexually assaulting their adopted daughter. Indeed, those still committed to the notion of Allen’s guilt, despite the two lengthy investigations that dismissed any charges being brought, may find further reading on the production backstory illuminating.
Anyway, Keaton came on board, which proved helpful in all sorts of ways. Their co-star Anjelica Huston credited the actor with the set feeling “oddly free of anxiety, introspection and pain” – quite something in the mobbed circumstances. And it transformed the central dynamic, too. Keaton is funnier than Farrow and so makes Allen the straight man – a mode in which I, at any rate, can find him more amenable than when going full-antic.
Larry and Carol, a couple with a son at college (Zach Braff, making his debut), he in publishing, she thinking of starting a restaurant, are happy and affectionate but locked in a state of permanent bicker. The director Paul King, prepping the first Paddington film, made his stars, Hugh Bonneville and Sally Hawkins, watch Manhattan Murder Mystery on repeat, the better to ape this particular friction.
(For Paddington 2, he took the homage one step further, lifting a whole plot device, in which a villain is duped by a phone call to someone they think they know which is actually just half a dozen bumbling good guys with various dictaphones of covertly-taped audio. This is fine, because Paddington 2 is also delightful, and because Manhattan Murder Mystery’s climax pays similar homage – if a bit more explicitly – to The Lady from Shanghai.)
The story starts when the Liptons’ next door neighbour, Lillian (Lynn Cohen), a fit woman in her late 60s, drops dead unexpectedly of a heart attack. Carol suspects something fishy after her husband, Paul (Jerry Adler, genially evil), seems surprisingly chipper afterwards – plus there’s an inconsistency over the whereabouts of her remains. The scene in which Carol filches the key to Paul and Lillian’s apartment to search the joint, only for Paul to return home unexpectedly, is a lo-fi masterpiece. Soundtracked by Bob Crosby & The Bob Cats’ 1938 drum and bass (and whistling) classic Big Noise From Winnetka, it manages to be kinetic (the whole film is shot on hand-held cameras), amusing and breathlessly tense.
In the face of Larry’s lack of enthusiasm for her sleuthing – “It was a coronary, folks! It was a coronary!” he protests in a borderline fourth wall break – Carol finds a much more willing wingman in their newly divorced friend, Ted, played by Alan Alda, in a miles more charming spin on his unctuous parallel role in 1989’s Crimes and Misdemeanours, when he nicked Farrow from Allen. The scene in which Ted confesses his – entirely obvious – feelings for Carol at an afternoon wine tasting is romantic, weirdly real, beautifully played by both and then, abruptly, very exciting, as Carol suddenly spots the dead woman riding the midtown bus.
Huston, meanwhile, plays Marcia, a devastatingly attractive author who may or may not have her sights on Larry, and is considerably better used by Allen than as the hysteric mistress in Crimes and Misdemeanours. Their lunch at the Café des Artistes, in which she instructs him in the finer points of poker is another breezy treat in a film full of highlights.
Manhattan Murder Mystery is gripping and satisfying and emotionally astute enough to not be throwaway. But it is at heart a loose-limbed trifle: warm, nimble, smart, really endearing and properly funny. I can’t think of the sequence in which Carol and an ever more panicky Larry pretend to be detectives at a seedy hotel without laughing; the scene in which they’re then trapped in an elevator and a corpse falls through the ceiling hatch (“claustrophobia and a dead body – this is the neurotic’s jackpot”) is especially great.
It’s also a film that offers an appealing view of late middle age as a time for fun and adventure. Rather than slumping into something comfortable, the couple are spurred into spontaneity by the modestly horrible events. Something to emulate when the time comes, I always thought; to look forward to on the approach to dotage. Then I looked up how old Keaton was when they shot it: 46. Suddenly it feels a little less good.
Manhattan Murder Mystery is available to rent digitally in the US and UK
