Manhattan is a profoundly and multifariously dishonest picture. It can be read in both directions, as if it were written simultaneously in English and Hebrew. As Manhattan, it is the story of a decent little fellow who shakes off TV commercialism, moves into a more modest apartment, and tries to authenticate his life as an artist….

Read backward, however—and the continuous flip humor demands that it be read thus—Nattahnam is all tongue-in-cheek cynicism. Isaac is a bit of a shnook, redeemed only partially by his wisecracks; Mary, though dazzling, is also a fool and a sickie; Tracy has previously had three affairs with boys and is, for all her extolled precocious perspicacity, also childishly uncomprehending—as when she comments about aging TV performers with face-lifts, "Why can't they just age naturally?" Jill and Connie are clever, cold women, obviously created during a milk-of-human-kindness strike; Emily is a cipher—of the kind, incidentally, that no true artist would allow in his film….

Look at that closing speech of Tracy's, in response to Isaac's fear that she will lose her innocence and her love for him: "Six months isn't so long." Very sensible. "Everybody gets corrupted." Is that to be taken at face value—truth from an angel: Tracy's kind of corruption would be merely a civilizing old-world polish on her honesty and wisdom? Or as wry irony: even the cherub looks forward to the world, the flesh, and the devil? In which case, her "You must have a little faith in people" (this to Isaac, who has always had too much faith in people) is the final sardonic twist. Or is it?…

Art, to be sure, does not have to provide answers; indeed, the greatest art is probably always ultimately ambiguous, leaving us finally with a question mark. But it also leaves us with insights, epiphanies, a climate of elation in which it is easier to breathe in the perennial problems, more possible to live with them according to our individual lights. Manhattan, however, is two-faced rather than ambiguous: both a self-serving exaltation of Allen and his values, and, if one were to challenge them, a perfect set-up for Allen and his collaborator, Marshall Brickman, to snap back: "You simpleton! Don't you see that it's all satire, all a put-on?"

But is it? When Yale and Mary play a cocktail-party intellectuals' game of smirkingly nominating members for "the Academy of the Overrated" …, we are clearly to side with Isaac, who makes fun of this nonsense. But later, when Isaac himself dictates to his tape recorder the things that make life worth living …, we are patently invited to take this absurd hodgepodge seriously….

Or is Isaac-Allen also a figure of fun? We are, for instance, constantly told about his successes with women, his good looks, his great amatory technique. This is meant partly in jest, but partly also, I am sure, as truth….

But if the film and its hero are a joke, why all this self-adulation and Manhattan-boosting? And if the film is a "serious" comedy, why must Isaac, even at the height of his jealous grief and rage, wisecrack with Yale ("You think you're God!" "I've got to model myself after someone!")? Why must even semi-virginal Tracy accept universal corruption? Why must there be ludicrous dung in the enchanted lagoon? Because Allen is insecure, as no true artist is, but as a fellow who wants to be both Groucho Marx (or Woody Allen) and Bergman (or Mozart, or Cézanne's apples and pears) will be. Having it both ways is not having it at all. (p. 819)

I am not ambivalent. Manhattan and Nattahnam are bad movies both. (p. 820)