Hannah and Her Sisters is a slow-paced, low-key film that begins and ends with the family coming together for Thanksgiving dinner. The film garnered three Oscars; they went to Woody Allen for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, Dianne Wiest, Best Actress in a Supporting Role and Michael Caine, Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

A Woody Allen Manhattan mosaic, Hannah and Her Sisters concerns the lives, loves, and infidelities among a tightly-knit artistic clan.

The eldest daughter of show-biz parents, Hannah (Mia Farrow) is a devoted wife, loving mother and successful actress. A loyal supporter of her two aimless sisters Lee (Barbara Hershey) and Holly (Dianne Wiest), she’s also the emotional backbone of a family that seems to resent her stability almost as much as they depend on it. 

Hannah (Mia Farrow) regularly meets with her sisters Holly (Dianne Wiest) and Lee (Barbara Hershey) to discuss the week’s events. It’s what they don’t always tell each other that forms the film’s various subplots.

Hannah is married to accountant and financial planner Elliot (Michael Caine).

Elliot carries a torch for Hannah’s sister, Lee, who in turn lives with pompous Soho artist Frederick (Max Von Sydow).

 Elliot and Lee bump into each other in New York City one day, and decide to browse in a book shop. Elliot buys Lee a book of E.E. Cummings’ poetry. When they come out, Lee hails a cab to go home. As she gets into the cab and says good-bye to Elliot, he tells her that one of the poems in the book reminds him of her, and tells her the page number of the poem that he would like her to read called, Somewhere I Have Never Travelled, Gladly Beyond, by E.E. Cummings.

Hannah and Her Sisters

Somewhere I Have Never Travelled, Gladly Beyond
 by E.E. Cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.

Meanwhile, Holly, a neurotic actress and eternal loser in love, dates TV producer Mickey (Woody Allen), who used to be married to Hannah and spends most of the film convinced that he’s about to die.

Appearing in supporting parts are Lloyd Nolan and Maureen O’Sullivan (Farrow’s real mom), as the eternally bickering husband-and-wife acting team who are the parents of Hannah and her sisters.

The film begins and ends during the family’s traditional Thanksgiving dinner, filmed in Farrow’s actual New York apartment. Hannah and Her Sisters collected Oscars for Michael Caine, Dianne Wiest, and Woody Allen’s screenplay.

Edward Estlin Cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, October 14, 1894. He began writing poems as early as 1904 and studied Latin and Greek at the Cambridge Latin High School. He received his B.A. in 1915 and his M.A. in 1916, both from Harvard. His studies there introduced him to avant garde writers, such as Gertrude Steinand Ezra Pound

In 1917, Cummings’ first published poems appeared in the anthology Eight Harvard Poets. The same year, Cummings left the United States for France as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I. Five months after his assignment, however, he and a friend were interned in a prison camp by the French authorities on suspicion of espionage (an experience recounted in his novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions.

After the war, he settled into a life divided between houses in rural Connecticut and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. He also traveled throughout Europe, meeting poets and artists, including Pablo Picasso, whose work he particularly admired.

In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his work towards further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex.

During his lifetime, Cummings received a number of honors, including an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1958, and a Ford Foundation grant.

At the time of his death, September 3, 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.

There’s an accepted wisdom that says that you either like Woody Allen and his films or you don’t. I’d like to break that wisdom and say that I like Woody Allen films where he’s only a minor character, because he’s clearly a gifted director and writer (at times), but I personally find him an annoyingly whiny little runt ( I also think he’s a jerk because he married his step-daughter. You remember? the one he adopted with Mia Farrow). This is, of course, only my personal opinion and I totally respect the right of anyone else to think he’s a cinema god in everything he does, including acting. You are entitled to that opinion. If, like me, you would generally avoid Woody Allen films because listening to the ratchet-jawed meanderings of rich, neurotic people for 100 minutes sounds like the living definition of hell on toast, then this may be the perfect opportunity to test your assumptions. Hannah and Her Sisters is probably the warmest and least annoying of Woody’s films to date, and the poetry in this film was beautiful.

And now back to Sans Souci who is our poetess hostess with the mostess.

17 CommentsChronological   Reverse   Threaded

delete reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Feb 12, ’08 Woody Allen is a genius! With all his quirks and neuroses, he does a great job–don’t want to get into movie reviews here but Match point was one of the best movies I have ever seen. The acting is superb! It’s a riot to revisit the movie and see it with Portuguese subtitles. An excellent scene for Valentine’s Day. The Cummings poem is so beautiful, so deep, love filled and pure, it’s a pleasure to linger over the painting of words,

delete reply stormie123 wrote on Feb 12, ’08 I love the poem, beautiful..have never seen the movie..

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Feb 12, ’08 The poem reminds me of some of the poetry of Pablo Neruda that I have posted recently. Very beautiful.

delete reply shankarg wrote on Feb 13, ’08 That was a wonderful way of participation into poetry Wednesday  thank you http://shankarg.multiply.com/journal/item/40/2008-m036-_poetry_wednesday_-_the_art_of_wooing_-_13_Feb_09_45_hrs_Chennai_India ShankarG♥2♥

delete reply bostonsdandd wrote on Feb 13, ’08 I remember loving this film. My mother and I saw it together, just one of those where you have to watch with your closest friend and she has always been mine. I love all three actresses in this film and Michael Caine was superb :o). Thanks for the reminder :oD. The Cummings poem. There are two lines which really speak to me. “in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near” How many times do we push people away because they get too close to a sore spot in our souls? That’s the question I think he asked himself to come up with this line. I can so understand that. And he’s telling the subject she’s everything to him. So beautiful. “(i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)” I LOVE how he used voice of your eyes! Who would have thought to say it that way? To me, it just jumps off the page and grabs you by the heart. Wonderful choice, Lauritasita! Thanks so much for sharing this with us.

delete reply starfishred wrote on Feb 13, ’08 Wonderful poem and movie.I do feel the same way about Woody Allen that you do.Thanks for the nice review.

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Feb 13, ’08 I also love the lines where he says, “I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens…” There’s something about it that moved me.

delete reply sweetpotatoqueen wrote on Feb 13, ’08 “i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses” What a romantic composition of thoughts about the mystery of another this is! EE cummings is a great writer of such thing~ he wrote with such passion in many of his poems. Lovely posting for this time of the year…..I always enjoy your infomative compositions! Thank you!

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Feb 13, ’08 This is really the only poem I have ever read by EE Cummings. Maybe I’ll find some more interesting ones like this one.

delete reply asolotraveler wrote on Feb 13, ’08 i detest the overuse of the word ‘love’ in blog comments but… i truly do LOVE e e cummings and this movie too!  thanks for the post… check out his poems: “anyone lived in a pretty how town’ or ‘my etcetera”… class stuff and so much FUN

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Feb 13, ’08 Thanks asolo, I appreciate your comment. Yes, I will check out his other work.

delete reply sandpearl wrote on Feb 13, ’08 The poem is very touching. Any woman in her situation to whom it would be dedicated would certainly be left pondering. I have really enjoyed my visit here. If I remember well, I had loved that movie, but it was long ago that I have seen it last. Maybe I can find it at the local library and rent it to watch again. Great blog Laurita.

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Feb 13, ’08 sandpearl, try to rent it. I love the way this poem was used in the film. Thanks for your comment.

delete reply zafreud wrote on Feb 14, ’08 ” in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near” “the snow carefully everywhere descending;” “the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses” Although the whole poem is superb, these phrases are overwhelming!!! Thank you, Laurita!!! 🙂

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Feb 14, ’08 I also love ths line, “Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.”

delete reply philsgal7759 wrote on Feb 14, ’08 I love cummings poetry Thanks

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Feb 14, ’08 You’re very welcome. Maybe I’ll do another blog on him without a movie, LOL!!!