Allen co-stars as a twice-divorced 42-year-old comedy writer who dates a 17-year-old girl (Mariel Hemingway) but falls in love with his best friend's (Michael Murphy) mistress (Diane Keaton).

[4] Upon its release in April 1979 by United Artists, Manhattan received critical acclaim and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Hemingway and Best Original Screenplay for Allen and Brickman.

Mary's ex-husband and former teacher, Jeremiah, also appears, and Isaac's ex-wife Jill is writing a confessional book about their marriage.

Isaac runs into her again at an Equal Rights Amendment fund-raising event at the Museum of Modern Art hosted by Bella Abzug and escorts her home.

The two couples enjoy a day out and upon walking down a street Isaac spots Jill's new book, Marriage, Divorce, and Selfhood.

Publicly humiliated, Isaac confronts Jill, who responds nonchalantly and mentions a film rights deal she has acquired.

In the dénouement, Isaac lies on his sofa, musing into a tape recorder about the things that make "life worth living".

When Allen and Marshall Brickman wrote the movie, "we called the character Mariel Hemingway played 'Tracy' instead of 'Stacey' in a burst of creative inspiration.

Forty years later, Christina "Babi" Engelhardt claimed that the film was partially based on her unconfirmed relationship with Allen, which allegedly began when she was 17 after they met at a restaurant in New York in 1976.

[20] It grossed $39.9 million in its entire run in the United States and Canada,[3] making the film the 17th highest-grossing picture of the year.

Adjusted for ticket price inflation (as of 2017), Manhattan grossed $141,484,800, making it Allen's second biggest box-office hit, following 1977's Annie Hall.

The website's consensus reads: "One of Woody Allen's early classics, Manhattan combines modern, bittersweet humor and timeless romanticism with unerring grace.

[24] Gary Arnold, in The Washington Post, wrote: "Manhattan has comic integrity in part because Allen is now making jokes at the expense of his own parochialism.

"[30] Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film "extraordinarily fine and funny" with "superb" performances from Keaton and Hemingway.

[31] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called it "harder, harsher, crueler, deeper-going, more assertive but in the end no less life-affirming than Annie Hall", and declared Manhattan "even better" than that film.

[33] Alexander Walker of the London Evening Standard wrote: "So precisely nuanced is the speech, so subtle the behaviour of a group of friends, lovers, mistresses and cuckolds who keep splitting up and pairing off like unstable molecules".

[34] In 2007, J. Hoberman wrote in The Village Voice: "The New York City that Woody so tediously defended in Annie Hall was in crisis.

More than that, he cast this shining city in the form of those movies that he might have seen as a child in Coney Island—freeing the visions that he sensed to be locked up in the silver screen.

[38] The film was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress (Mariel Hemingway) and Best Original Screenplay (Allen and Marshall Brickman).

In 2001, the United States Library of Congress deemed it "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

[47] The cast included [48][49] Stephen Merchant as Isaac Davis, Olivia Munn as Mary Wilkie, Shailene Woodley as Tracy, Michael Murphy reprising his role as Yale Pollack, Mae Whitman as Emily Pollack, Erika Christensen as Jill Davis, and Jason Mantzoukas as Dennis.

In keeping with the project's focus on impermanence and spontaneity, there were no rehearsals, shows were announced only days prior, and the names of some cast members were withheld entirely; performances were not recorded.

[50] Manhattan's portrayal of a middle-aged man dating a teenager, which drew little criticism at the time of its release,[51] attracted more scrutiny in the late 2010s as Allen's reputation came into question in the wake of renewed sexual abuse allegations by his daughter Dylan Farrow.