Allen found a nice balance in Hannah and Her Sisters by concentrating on the drama of the main story and only using his neurotic-writer-gets-sick sidestory as commercial grease. Even then, he found a way to subdue Mickey Saxe's antics down to a more human scale. Every dialogue line does not have a give-myself-the-good-material feeling. My favorite moment in the show is a simple shot of Woody turning away from a holographic Jesus in a religious bookstore, with just the right 'oh, brother' look on his face.

Through an honest sympathy for his characters, something Allen wasn't always good at before, the little romantic dramas of Hannah and Her Sisters take on a genuine warmth. Allen's style concentrates on little confrontations and crises, but often ellipses huge gaps in relationships that other scenarists would keep front and center. For instance, Max Von Sydow's killjoy artist just disappears from the show after only half of a breakup scene. We know Barbara Hershey is heading for the relationship exit and there's no need to restate the situation. Hershey and especially Michael Caine play the adulterous couple, In many movies Savant finds he has no patience for characters who make others suffer to indulge their selfish romantic whims, but Allen's touch is so gentle that we refrain from judging. Yep, Caine is a fairly distinct jerk, but he's also a fairly innocent one. Michael Caine has a particularly deft control of the performance and our reactions to this guy; he's such a marvellous performer.

It's also nice to see Maureen O'Sullivan (always delightful but never before playing a pain in the neck) and Lloyd Nolan (never even likeable until now) having such a fun go as two scrapping ex-performers whose professional immaturities never went away. These people all live in nice NYC apartments, and are fairly well-to-do, but Savant's usual proletarian defenses never kicked in to dismiss their problems, because their affluence is beside the point. In the center of it all is Hannah, who never has any informed participation in the episodes boiling around her, yet pushes through with her senses and dignity and her great Thanksgiving dinners. Allen & Co. made the drama seem real and the characters' ways of handling their problems credible. Finally, there's an added interest to seeing Farrow and Hershey interact, as they were both original Hollywood flower children in the '60s, and seem to have mellowed into such interesting women.

Savant really enjoys Allen's sentimentality when he does it well as this. Dianne Wiest's Holly is something of a (very adorable) misfit, and her eventual linking up with Allen's Mickey is deeply affecting. Allen even makes the cliché of the klutz turning out to be an ace writer, a welcome twist. She does it basically by attending Community College, a positive prescription for many a lost soul. The understatement of the conclusion between her and Woody has an unequivocated feel-goodness about it that is irresistable.

MGM's DVD of Hannah and Her Sisters is extras-lite (trailer only) but presents the feature in an unblemished and clear 16:9 transfer that makes you feel like you're walking the New York streets with Woody's actors. He's quoted in the nicely chosen (for once!) liner notes on the disc insert, that the secret to making New York look luscious and vibrant on film is to shoot only on overcast days, which accounts for the darkness and frequent raininess of scenes. But with the life that's injected into the story, none of this ever looks gloomy.

Perhaps not the flashiest disc on the rack, but one I'll be pulling out frequently.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
Hannah and her Sisters rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: Trailer
Packaging: Amaray case
Reviewed: October 22, 2001