Manhattan

How this film uses it

Gordon Willis shoots Manhattan in black-and-white Panavision, the format that makes New York look like its own legend. The choice shows the film's love for the city. It also raises the question of whether beauty can make up for moral failure.

Where to see it

The opening Gershwin montage. Manhattan's landmarks are shot in Willis's deep-shadow black-and-white. The city is so beautiful that Isaac's voiceover, where he keeps correcting himself, seems beside the point at first. Then it seems like exactly the point.

How this film uses it

Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue' and his other compositions are the film's entire emotional soundtrack. The grand, romantic music backs up Isaac's idealized view of the city and gently mocks it too. The film's central irony is the gap between the Gershwin and the messy lives underneath it.

Where to see it

The Planetarium sequence. Isaac and Mary are under the stars with the Gershwin on the soundtrack. The black-and-white photography makes the setting look like an idealized dream, and the film will shortly test it.

How this film uses it

Willis shoots in 2.35:1 anamorphic scope, a very wide frame that is unusual for a talky comedy. It makes Manhattan look as big as a David Lean epic. Meanwhile, the characters have the kind of neurotic conversations that call for a cramped close-up. As a matter of fact, that mismatch between format and subject is the joke the film is built on.

Where to see it

Isaac and Mary on the bench at dawn. The wide frame holds both the tiny couple and the vast Queensboro Bridge behind them. The scale tells you what the city means to Isaac, and the film will go on to complicate that.

How this film uses it

The film opens with Isaac writing and rewriting the first line of the novel. His voiceover tries out different versions of the city's legend and drops them. All that self-revision tells you the narrator is unreliable about himself before a single scene of action has happened.

Where to see it

The opening voiceover variations. 'He was too romantic about Manhattan, as he was about everything else' is one of several false starts. He keeps revising until he lands on 'He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved.' The self-criticism is built into the way he celebrates himself.