10 Groundbreaking Films That Are Actually Terrible

Woody Allen practically invented the wry, not-quite-funny, romantic comedy with this, his wry, not-quite-funny ode to New York and the mid-life crisis, soaked in Gershwin and angsty whimsy. Manhattan is a beautiful looking movie, a beautiful sounding movie. The problem with Manhattan? It’s Woody Allen.

Regardless of your opinion of the more serious allegations against him, it’s a matter of record that Woody Allen has always been predatory towards teenage girls. According to journalists who’ve read Allen’s private papers collected at Princeton University, the auteur’s predilections are heavily, creepily documented. He’s literally spent decades writing obsessively about older men obsessing over teenage girls.

For all its surface beauty, Manhattan is just another example. In fact it may be the worst, given that one of those teenage girls Allen obsessed over was Mariel Hemingway, the actor who he cast, at 16 years old, to play Tracy, the 17-year-old girlfriend of his 42-year-old character Isaac in the movie.

‘Tracy’ was reportedly a composite version of at least two of Allen’s past teenage girlfriends, and Hemingway found herself nearly becoming one herself when, after the film’s release, he invited her to Paris with the aim of seducing her. The kiss they share in the film was Hemingway’s actual first kiss ever: he insisted upon it, and she begged not to have to do it again.

Nothing about this is okay, and it’s sickening to see people raving about a movie in which a middle-aged man dramatises his real-life sexual relationships with teenagers, starring a 16-year-old he wanted to sleep with.