Manhattan is ice cold—on the rocks rather than straight up. It is a movie about cruelty and betrayal among contemporary urban intellectuals, but I've yet to meet a c.u.i. who has flinched at any of it. And it is a movie that is flinchable or nothing; Woody Allen is incapable of the sculptural precision and timing which justify emotional distance in Dreyer or Bresson or even Lubitsch. Allen means to confront us with unpleasant truths—but there is no confrontation, only exposition.

Other recent c.u.i. films have succeeded where Allen fails. There were moments so raw and real in Mazursky's Blume in Love and Bergman's Scenes From a Marriage that friends of mine had to escape to the lobby for a few minutes. Yet watching Manhattan, not once are we moved to look away from the screen. To take one example: Has anyone...