Manhattan (15) <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Woody Allen's greatest film? Hard to argue with its superlatively funny screenplay (by Allen and Marshall Brickman), Gordon Willis's lustrous monochrome photography, the spiffy George Gershwin score and stand-out performances.

Allen excels as the insecure TV writer who wants to be a novelist, and he coaxes fantastic performances from Diane Keaton as his intellectual soul-mate and Mariel Hemingway as his young adorer. Here, as never before, he turned sadness into something romantic and despair into something witty. "You have to have a little faith in people," Hemingway tells him at the end. If only we could have faith in Allen today.