Woody Allen's best movie? It has my vote. I found it much more touching and immediate than Annie Hall, and it is certainly the most visually beautiful film he has ever made. His performance is among the best he has delivered, and I don't normally like him. Diane Keaton is frantic, annoying, perfect. It's the story of people desperate to find affection, wherever they can. His characters find it in the supporting character who appears in all of Allen's films: the borough of Manhattan.

Woody Allen plays his usual character, this time named Isaac: an upper-class Jewish neurotic in love with women too beautiful and young for him. In this case, he takes it to its honest extremes: his girlfriend is a seventeen year old girl named Tracey played by Mariel Hemingway, who looks impossibly young and innocent and makes Allen's character the most cruel but honest portrayal of that mid-life crisis attempt to regain youth by immersing oneself in another's. (Allen's current relationship to his ex-wife's adopted daughter, some thirty years younger than him, is made all the more painfully funny by this film.) Not that Tracey is childish; in many ways, she is more mature than he is. We first meet them when they are out on a double date with Allen's friend Yale (Michael Murphy) and his wife Emily (Anne Byrn). Yale is secretly seeing another woman, and has fallen in love. He is conflicted over whether to leave his wife for her.

We meet this wonderful girlfriend when Isaac and Tracey run into Yale and Mary (Diane Keaton) at an art museum. In a hilarious exchange, Mary drives Isaac to the point of violence by summarily tearing apart every writer, filmmaker, and artist he holds dear. But she compliments the stupid sitcom he writes, so of course he's in love, although his feelings for her are a mix of disgust, fear, and desire.

To cut the summary short, this is a story about new relationships that come too quick on the heels of old ones. Mary and Isaac feel what looks like love, but there is always a vein of wondering what might have been. The stunning and heartbreaking final scene, which I would call one of the best dramatic scenes in a Woody Allen film, is a symphony of missed chances.

The visuals... I could weep with joy at how beautiful this movie is. The observatory sequence... Gordon Willis's images made me sigh wistfully, the way you react to one of Sven Nykvist's shots in a Bergman film. He also shot Coppola's Godfather trilogy. Based on these three films, he has to be in the top five cinematographers of all time. If I worked for a lifetime and produced even a handful of shots as great as the ones that make up this film, I would die happy.

A lot of people call this film Allen's love letter to Manhattan. I can see that. Look how lovingly the film shows the skyline, the busy streets, the elegant lobbies of classy hotels, the beautiful interaction of the city with Central Park. His opening monologue, played over a montage of images of his city, tells it better than I can. It's a testament of adoration, tempered with exasperation. Since he made this film, a lot has happened to Allen's favorite city. Specifically, the "H" in the movie poster and trailer for the film is gone. The twin towers of the World Trade Center are now a gap in the sky. But life goes on in the city. In a way, I think that's also what this movie is about.