I tend to like Woody Allen's movies, but not when he's in them. There's something about him that just annoys me (I realize that is what he's going for in a lot of his movies, but it works too well). The Gods of Film will strike me dead for this, but I didn't think Annie Hall was all that great, mainly because of Allen's presence. So, I approached Hannah and Her Sisters with a little bit of trepidation.

I was happily surprised to find that the film concentrated on actors who I can stand and generally like, with Allen playing a kind of Falstaff-like comedy relief. In the small doses offered by this film, he was actually somewhat charming.

The film follows a year in the life of, well, Hannah and her sisters. Hannah (Mia Farrow) is married to a successful art dealer named Elliot, expertly played by Michael Caine in his first Oscar-winning performance. Elliot is secretly in love with Hannah's sister Lee (Barbara Hershey), who is somewhat delicate. Although the film really didn't get into what happened, I gather that she had some kind of breakdown in the recent past, and was getting her life back together. She's dating Frederick (Max Von Sydow), an insufferable painter who plays the Svengali to her, alternating between domineering and caring in an effort to "teach" her about life. Lee and Elliot haltingly start an affair. Meanwhile, there is Holly, the ditzy sister (played by Diane Weist in an Oscar-winning performance). She's a bit of a failure—she's a coke addict, constantly fails in various ventures, and constantly wants to borrow money from her sisters. She and Hannah have problems because Hannah doesn't approve of her lifestyle, and she doesn't like Hannah's nosiness. Meanwhile (and there are a lot of meanwhiles in this rambling but enjoyable movie), Hannah's ex-husband Mickey (Woody Allen), a hypochondriac, has an epiphany when he finds out that he might have cancer.

The film has a somewhat meandering and unhurried pace, but it is a showcase of great acting. Caine, Hershey, and Weist are all wonderful, and both Caine and Weist deserved their Oscars. Caine's part was basically a leading role, but I suppose that, in the ensemble cast, there were no true leads. The film also won Best Original Screenplay, an award that Woody Allen refused to accept, since he considers the Oscars "meaningless."