Michael Caine won his first Oscar for Woody Allen’s Hannah And Her Sisters. Any good? We’ve been looking back…
Michael Caine showed no sign of slowing down as he entered his third decade as a leading man. The 1980s would see him win his first Academy Award (Hannah And Her Sisters), tackle new genres such as horror (The Hand) and shark-based revenge movie (Jaws: The Revenge) whilst continuing to work with interesting new auteurs like Brian De Palma (Dressed To Kill) as well as old friends from classic Hollywood such as John Huston (Escape To Victory).
Film by film, I’ll be taking a look at Caine’s 1980s filmography to see what hidden gems I can unearth alongside the more familiar classics…
Spoilers for Hannah And Her Sisters lay ahead…
Directed by: Woody Allen (Annie Hall, Manhattan, Crimes And Misdemeanours, Blue Jasmine)
Tagline: No tagline for this one! Feel free to make up your own.
Other Featured Geezers: Woody Allen as Mickey, Mia Farrow as Hannah, Barbara Hershey as Lee, Dianne Wiest as Holly, Max Von Sydow as Frederick, Maureen O’Sullivan as Norma, Lloyd Nolan as Evan, Carrie Fisher as April, Daniel Stern as Dusty
What’s it all about, Alfie?: Caine plays Elliot, the insipid financial advisor second husband of Hannah (Mia Farrow). Unsurprisingly, given the title, Hannah has a couple of sisters. These are the flighty Holly (Dianne Wiest), an aspiring actress and former cocaine addict, and the directionless Lee (Barbara Hershey) who has been living with an overbearing artist, many years her senior, for the past five years.
Hannah is dependable and successful, the rock that holds the family together. Unfortunately, that is not enough for Elliot who has fallen madly in love with Lee and, against his better judgement, decides to act on this. Initially reluctant, Lee eventually returns his advances after the power of E. E. Cumming’s poetry about rain breaks down her reserve.
On the periphery of their lives is Mickey (Woody Allen), Hannah’s ex-husband, a hypochondriac comedy writer who is forced to come to terms with his own mortality after facing what could be a terrible medical diagnosis.
And it’s an Allen film so, of course, it’s all set in New York.
Caine-ness: This was the performance that won Caine his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor at the 1987 Academy Awards but, after re-watching it, I’m not entirely sure why. It’s often the case that actors win their Oscar a few films after the performance that is widely considered their most deserving. For me, that’s certainly the case here.
As discussed in my piece on Educating Rita (1983), that film from three years prior contains one of my favourite performances from Caine. Significantly more layered and compelling, funnier and yet more tragic, than what I viewed as a fairly one-dimensional and unremarkable role in Hannah and Her Sisters. Admittedly he was Oscar-nominated, and did win a BAFTA and a Golden Globe, for Educating Rita and so at least some award voters had taste.
The other films that Caine was previously Oscar nominated for were Alfie (1966) and Sleuth (1972), although those were for Best Actor rather than Best Supporting. These, Alfie especially, are also more deserving than what he actually ended up winning for.
Caine was up for Best Supporting Actor against Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe in that year’s best picture winner Platoon and it’s been argued that Caine won because the vote was split between these two performances. The other nominees were Denholm Elliott in A Room With A View and Dennis Hopper in Hoosiers. It’s interesting that Hopper was nominated for Hoosiers and not that year’s also eligible Blue Velvet in which, as the psychopathic Frank Booth, he plays, inarguably, one of cinemas most memorable supporting characters.
Caine wasn’t able to accept the award in person as he was in the Bahamas filming Jaws: The Revenge (1987). Therefore, the win itself was anticlimactic with the absent Caine being represented by a not particularly flattering still image in which he’s basically just a massive pair of black spectacles and the presenter, Sigourney Weaver, briskly accepted it on his behalf.
As Elliot, Caine is wearing glasses and using his usual accent. His recognisable voice is actually the first thing that we hear in the film; “God, she’s beautiful. She’s got the prettiest eyes” as we see a medium close up of Lee (Barbara Hershey) looking into the camera. “She looks so sexy in that sweater. I just want to be alone with her and hold her and kiss her.” Elliot may appreciate sexy knitwear but his own taste in jumpers is sadly lacking.
Instantly, yet again, in his middle age Caine is cornering the market on pervy men lusting after younger women. Previously, and most notably, in Blame It On Rio (1984) and in a few movies time in Surrender (1987).
Although I don’t think it’s award worthy, Caine is still good in this role. He brings an awkward innocence to Elliot’s flirtations that prevent him from becoming too unlikable a character, such as his embarrassment over hearing Lee discuss a nude portrait that her boyfriend has done of her, his tongue-tied recommendation of E. E. Cummings poetry, or his attempt at casual small talk; “I have to get my teeth cleaned this week” Lee mentions; “Oh, that’s nice” Elliot responds sincerely.
There’s a Gollum/Smeagol element to Elliot’s lust, sadly without Caine eating a raw fish though, with his purer inner monologue sternly arguing with himself before his weaker side ultimately takes over: “Stop it you idiot, she’s your wife’s sister! I can’t help it, I’m consumed by her!”.
However, we also see a more calculating side to Elliot but, given Allen as a man, I’m not sure how much of this we are actually meant to condemn. There’s Elliot coordinating an “accidental” bumping into of Lee on the street. Then the moment where he lunges at Lee out of the blue and kisses her, telling her that he’s in love with her, whilst her boyfriend is in the next room. He also gaslights her, when Lee declines his advances for the very reasonable reason that he is her brother-in-law, by saying; “Your guilt is because you feel the same”.
One scene in which Caine’s performance is admittedly great is after Lee decisively breaks things off with Elliot. A clearly fragile and vulnerable Hannah, cornering a distracted Elliot in the bathroom, wants to know why he has seemingly been talking to her sisters about their relationship and he responds in a realistically snippy and spiteful manner. This is also the film at its most fly on the wall. The way the shot is framed, with a door ajar, feels like we are peeping in on a private moment between a real couple.
Although the film then quickly lost me with Elliot’s justification of why he has been driven into another woman’s arms which is all pseudo intellectual Woody Allen psychobabble; “It’s hard to be around someone who gives so much and needs so little in return.”
Overall, in spite of Caine’s inherent charm and warmth as an actor, I found myself not enjoying spending time with Elliot as a character. The writing is too all over the place, neither funny enough nor realistic enough to either work as a fully comedic character or as a realistic portrayal of an emotionally conflicted man. Sometimes Elliot acts like a goofy stock comic character and at other times Allen is clearly trying to write him with more depth but, for me, this fails to connect.
Caine had a great time working with Allen, who was already a friend of his (he introduced Allen to Farrow, for which she said she forgave him!), but there was one part of filming that he wasn’t too comfortable with, as explained in his first autobiography, What’s it all About; “When I first read the script I was surprised to find that Barbara and I had a rather explicit love-making scene to do…It was a sort of stand-up screw with all our clothes on – something we used to call a ‘knee-trembler’ when I was young. I never actually participated in one as I had weak ankles…We shot it, to the great embarrassment of both Barbara and myself, because although you couldn’t actually see anything, the movements had to be realistic.”
This scene, to their relief, was then cut from the final film and as far as I am aware we have never since had an on-screen “knee-trembler” from Caine. Although I’ve not yet seen Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012) so watch this space.
Caine-nections*: Caine played Doctor Robert Elliott in Dressed To Kill (1980) and would also play a character called Elliott in his very next film Sweet Liberty (1986). Here he plays an Elliot with one “t” to mix things up a little.
Max Von Sydow played a more likable and chilled out character alongside Caine in Escape To Victory (1981). This is somewhat surprising considering he was playing a Nazi in that one.
*I’m only counting from Caine’s first starring role in Zulu onwards.
Best Non-Caine Actor: The cast is credited alphabetically on the opening titles. Hmm, I wonder why Allen, whose name happens to start with A, likes this particular system of billing.
Like many Allen films, the cast is stacked with recognisable faces. There is an uncredited Sam Waterston as an opera loving architect, Carrie Fisher as Holly’s fickle actor friend, a “young” Richard Jenkins as a doctor, Daniel Stern as a dopey potential art buyer, John Turturro, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Julie Kavner as Mickey’s comedy show coworkers and Max Von Sydow as Lee’s pretentious artist boyfriend who likes to stay cooped up in his apartment critiquing documentaries on Auschwitz (he’s a laugh riot!).
The performances by the actors playing the sisters mirror their characters. At the heart of the film is a naturalistic and understated turn from Farrow as Hannah, which anchors the film in a domestic believability, but it is overshadowed by the more colourful and unpredictable Dianne Wiest as Holly.
Although I question Caine’s Academy Award win, I have less issue with Wiest’s, who won for Best Supporting Actress. She breathes fun and a vitality into all of her scenes, and really stands out amongst the talented cast. Deservedly this was the film that boosted her career to the next level.
Then, much like her character Lee, Barbara Hershey doesn’t get much to do other than hang around and look beautiful.
Then of course, there’s Allen himself. I often find Allen grating as a screen presence, and share similar feelings to Ned Flanders; “I like his films, except for that nervous fella’s always in ‘em” but, to my surprise, his storyline was the most relatable. It has the best arc and a genuinely emotional payoff. It also helped that he gave himself the best laughs including his search for spiritual meaning that leads him from Judaism to Catholicism, which to him means buying the holy trinity of a framed photo of Jesus, a crucifix, Wonder Bread and mayonnaise.
My favourite comic sequence of his when he tells the story of how he bought a gun. If his tumour was terminal, he would have shot himself. The only thing that stopped him was his parents, they would have been devasted. So, he would have had to have shot them first. Then he had an aunt and an uncle….it would have been a bloodbath.
There’s also the intentionally amusing visual incongruity of seeing Allen uncomfortably watching a punk performance on a date with Holly, and then the unintentionally comic image of seeing Allen get tested using, what now looks antiquated, medical equipment which reminded me of the doctors examining Linda Blair in The Exorcist. Pazuzu and Woody Allen, both monsters from the 1970s who should have been kept well away from the daughters of actresses (allegedly…it might have been another demon pretending to be Pazuzu).
My Bleedin’ Thoughts: Putting aside the elephant in the room of the allegations against Allen, and his technically legal but still highly questionable relationship history, I’ve never been a fan of Allen, regardless of his dubious extra-curricular activities.
Admittedly there are still a few (noticeably without Allen as an actor) that I’ve enjoyed, such as The Purple Rose Of Cairo (1985) and Blue Jasmine (2013), but I often find his films smug and elitist, his characters and their relationships alienating and unrealistic, and his general style of jokes hacky and tired. I appreciated Annie Hall (1977) more for its important place in the history of Hollywood romcoms than actually enjoyed it. I understand why he was lauded and well-loved as a filmmaker, but his schtick never did it for me.
Although I usually can separate the art from the artist, this particular film makes it trickier. “I just took the essence and blew it up into drama” Holly defensively says to Hannah after she is confronted by her sister as to why she has written a play inspired by private details of Hannah’s marriage. It seems here that Allen was pre-emptively writing his own defence into the script, as Hannah was heavily inspired by his then partner Farrow, with Elliot seemingly something of an avatar of Allen.
Farrow’s mother is played by her real-life mother, Maureen O’Sullivan, and her actual children feature in the film including Soon-Yi Previn (who, erm, Allen would go on to marry. Eek.). Hannah’s apartment was even Farrow’s real home where she was currently living. In What’s it all About, Caine wrote; “When we got to the bedroom scenes, which were shot in Mia’s real bedroom (although for propriety’s sake I think we had a different bed), things became even more cosy until one day I wound up doing a love scene in bed with Mia in her own bedroom, and being directed by her lover! This was nerve-racking enough but got even worse when I looked up during rehearsal to find her ex-husband, Andre Previn watching us from the other side of the bedroom. He had come to visit the children and found us all there. It took all my concentration to get through that scene!”
Tellingly Caine also wrote the following; “I have a row with Mia and have to say the line “I hate the country and I don’t particularly like kids”. The first time I said this line in rehearsals Mia made a funny face and it occurred to me that I was saying as the character a lot of the lines that Woody might have wanted to say to Mia personally.”
This blurring between fact and fiction, coupled with the knowledge of how Farrow and Allen’s relationship would end, makes this not always the most comfortable of watches.
To end on positives, even though his general style may not be to my tastes, it is undeniable that Allen has skill as a filmmaker. He handles exposition efficiently and with a delicate touch. From the very first party scene we get an immediate sense of who all these people are, their shared history and hopes and dreams. He also casts exceedingly well. The sisters feel like real sisters, their overlapping dialogue is warm and relatable. And, as has been said many times, he certainly knows how to shoot New York City.
My Award for Best Supporting Appearance by a Bee Gee goes to….
Trivia (courtesy of IMDB): Allen says that he was inspired to make this film when he came up with the title; “I thought I’d like to make a film called Hannah And Her Sisters”, he said, saying this prompted him to give Hannah two sisters. A fascinating insight into the creative process there.
This is the only Allen movie to have been spoofed by Mad Magazine. Their parody was called “Henna and Her Sickos”.
In the kitchen scene, there are two bottles of Coke on the counter. This is “New Coke”, released in 1985, the year of filming. It never caught on and the original formula was released as “Coca-Cola Classic”, which eventually replaced “New” Coke altogether as (unqualified) Coca-Cola.
Overall Thoughts:
I can see why this film is liked, but it’s just not for me, however hard I try to enjoy it. However, going wildly against my preconceptions, I enjoyed the Woody Allen parts and found the Michael Caine sections dull. Caine’s performance, and this film as a whole, clearly worked and continues to work for many people but sadly left me cold. Sorry for banging on about it, but it’s certainly no Educating Rita.
Rating: 2.5/5 Sisters
Where You Can Watch This: This is currently available to rent or buy from most streaming services or to purchase on DVD or Blu-ray.
Up Next: Uh-uh, it’s another forgotten comedy, and it’s directed by Alan Alda. Wish me luck as I discuss Sweet Liberty. At least Bob Hoskins and Michelle Pfeiffer are in it, if that’s any consolation.
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