81Manhattan (1979)

“Few cities – Fellini’s Rome? – have ever belonged to a filmmaker as fully as New York has to Allen,” Peter Biskind wrote in Vanity Fair. Shot in black and white, Manhattan was both a love letter to a city and a companion piece of sorts to Annie Hall, pairing Allen not just with Diane Keaton again but with co-screenwriter Marshall Brickman. “Is Marshall Brickman Woody Allen’s alter ego?” The Washington Post asked in 1983. “That’s the handle I was known by,” Brickman told the paper. The two met in 1963 at The Bitter End nightclub, where Allen was doing standup and Brickman was playing the banjo in a musical group. From there Brickman began writing jokes for Allen, collaborating with him years later on Sleeper, and sharing Best Original Screenplay Oscars on both Annie Hall and Manhattan.