Annie Hall (1977), from director-actor-co-writer Woody Allen, is a quintessential masterpiece of priceless, witty and quotable one-liners within a matured, focused and thoughtful film. It is a bittersweet romantic comedy of modern contemporary love and urban relationships (a great successor to classic Hollywood films such as The Awful Truth (1937) and The Philadelphia Story (1940)), that explores the interaction of past and present, and the rise and fall of Allen's own challenging, ambivalent New York romance with his opposite - an equally-insecure, shy, flighty Midwestern WASP female (who blossoms out in a Pygmalion-like story).

Annie Hall clearly has semi-autobiographical elements - it is the free-wheeling, stream-of-consciousness story of an inept, angst-ridden, pessimistic, Brooklyn-born and Jewish stand-up comedian - much like Allen himself (who started out as a joke writer for The Tonight Show) - who experiences crises related to his relationships and family. His unstable love affair with aspiring singer Annie Hall begins to disintegrate when she moves to Los Angeles and discovers herself - and a new life.

[A real-life relationship and breakup did occur in early 1970 between Allen and co-star Keaton. Keaton's birth name was Diane Hall, her nickname was Annie, and she did have a Grammy Hall. And Woody Allen played a similar role as mentor to Diane Keaton (about New York life, politics, philosophy, and books), as did best friend Tony Roberts to Allen.]

This breakthrough film came after Allen's five earlier light-hearted comedies (from 1969-1975) that were take-offs of various film genres or books, often similar to episodic Marx Brothers' films:

Allen's Previous Films Genre/Work Satirized

Take the Money and Run (1969)Crime/Prison or Gangster Films

Bananas (1971)War or 'South of the Border' Films

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * (* But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972)

Self-Help Books

Sleeper (1973) Science-Fiction Films

Love and Death (1975)Classic Russian Literature, Culture, and History, the Napoleonic Wars

Allen's previous films might be characterized as a series of irreverent comic sketches with frequent instances of absurdist humor and slapstick. In contrast, this urban dramatic comedy, his best-loved work, marked a major transition. It was his most successful, deepest, self-reflexive, most elaborate and unified work to that time. However, the film could have been a disaster if it hadn't been edited down from its initial length of well over two hours to about 95 minutes by editor Ralph Rosenblum. Many scenes that were shot were eliminated, and others were severely truncated. And the film was originally a murder mystery, and might have been titled Anhedonia (a state of acute melancholia with an inability to experience pleasure and enjoy oneself), A Roller Coaster Named Desire, or even It Had to Be Jew if one of its alternative titles had been chosen. [Allen later directed murder mysteries to satisfy that impulse: Shadows and Fog (1992), and Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993).] In addition to Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), this was one of his most commercially-successful films (at a budget of $4 million, it brought in a box-office of $40 million).

Annie Hall capitalized on many of the ingredients that had been the content of his earlier films - the subjects of anti-Semitism, life, romantic angst, drugs and death, his obsessive love of New York, his dislike of California (mostly L.A.) fads and intellectual pomposity, his introspective neuroses and pessimism, his requisite jokes and psychosexual frustration about sex, numerous put-downs of his own appearance and personality, and distorted memories of his childhood. The film's more sensitive and realistic (still-comical) yet serious-minded tone about an intimate and emotional relationship appealed to all film-goers, not just Woody Allen cultists.

With five nominations, the film was a four-time Academy Award winner: Best Actress (Diane Keaton with her sole Oscar win), Best Picture (Charles H. Joffe, producer), Best Director (Woody Allen), and Best Original Screenplay (Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman). It defeated the science-fiction blockbuster Star Wars (1977) for Best Picture. It was the first comedy since Tom Jones (1963) to take the Best Picture Oscar. A fifth nomination was for Woody Allen for Best Actor, who lost to Richard Dreyfuss for The Goodbye Girl (1977) - in another NY-based light romantic comedy. It was quite a feat that Allen was nominated for directing, writing, and acting for the same film - and won two of the three awards. [It was

only the second time in Academy history, up to that time, that one person was simultaneously nominated for three Oscars, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay - Orson Welles had received a previous similar honor for Citizen Kane (1941).]

The film influenced fashion designers (with the masculine, androgynous "Annie Hall" look) and made Diane Keaton a new leading lady. [The "look" was a mis-matched, eclectic conglomeration of men's costuming: 30's style baggy light brown chino pants, an oversized man's white shirt, a dark grey, wide necktie with shiny polka-dot spots, a black waistcoat vest, and a floppy bowler hat. Despite the film's influence on fashion in New York and elsewhere (Ruth Morley worked with Ralph Lauren, who designed Annie's outfit), there was no Best Costume Design nomination.]

And there are quick cameo glimpses of future stars (Shelley Hack, Beverly D'Angelo, John Glover, Sigourney Weaver, Christopher Walken, and Jeff Goldblum) and current celebrities (Dick Cavett, Truman Capote, Paul Simon, and Marshall McLuhan). Two later romantic comedies, director Rob Reiner's When Harry Met Sally...(1989) and Billy Crystal's Forget Paris (1995), paid homage to this film with a similar theme. Allen's own black comedy Deconstructing Harry (1997) twenty years later has been considered the 'dark' side of this film. Keaton's next film in the same year, Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), was a radical departure from this film, in which she took on the role of a promiscuous Catholic girl who ended up murdered - the victim of the singles bar scene.

The major theme of the film is that there are severe limitations in life (death and loss are the two most prevalent), but that art forms (such as the printed word, films, and plays) have the power to reshape reality and provide some measure of control, thereby compensating for life's limitations.

There are a variety of innovative strategies and narrative techniques in the kaleidoscopic film that support the contention that Woody Allen is functioning as a self-conscious artist who evaluates his entire life (including romances) and uses the film medium to achieve greater control over reality. The stylistic strategies and cinematic techniques that support the fragmented nature of the film include:

Cinematic Technique Comment

direct addresses to the cameraReminiscent of Ingmar Bergman films, and films such as Strange Interlude (1932), or Alfie (1966) with Michael Caine

memory-flashbacks and other flashbacks Influenced, in part, by Citizen Kane (1941)

adult time-travel back to childhoodReminiscent of Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957)

interjections into the scene (unseen by others) Reminiscent of Bergman's Persona (1960)

vignettes

the sudden production of a real-life character ( "Boy, if life were only like this")

Author Marshall McLuhan appears, to conveniently settle an argument

split screens, and conversations across the two screens

The dual psychiatrist scene, and the conversation between the two families

transformationsAlvy becomes a bearded Hasidic Jew while visiting Annie's anti-Semitic family

double-exposed action Annie's ghost scene

subtitles that contradict the action The famous balcony scene

voice-over commentary and asides to the camera or to complete strangers about the events of the film

 

dialogue between two introspective voice-overs  

animation The Snow White cartoon

fantasy  

After the silent opening credits (influenced by director Martin Ritt's film The Front (1976), starring Woody Allen), the opening scene has the main character (indistinguishable from Woody Allen himself, dressed in a tweed jacket, red plaid shirt, and his black-framed spectacles) speaking intimately and directly to the audience viewer in a full, stark closeup. He tells two key Jewish jokes in a stand-up, vaudeville-style monologue. In his first joke, he satirizes his own feelings about life and its miserable shortcomings:

Two elderly women are at a Catskill Mountain resort. And one of 'em says: 'Boy, the food in this place is really terrible.' The other one says: 'Yeah, I know. And such small portions.' Well, that's essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.

His second joke pays tribute to key individuals in his life - Groucho Marx and Sigmund Freud. From Groucho Marx, the comedian learned comedy. From Freud's writings on wit and jokes, the 'pleasure mechanism', neuroses, dreams, and psychopathology [the content of the film, in fact!], he delved into his unconscious:

The other important joke for me is one that's usually attributed to Groucho Marx but I think it appears originally in Freud's Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious - and it goes like this. I'm paraphrasing. I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member. That's the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women.

The malcontented comic, later identified as Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) [the name bears some resemblance to the hedonistic, Cockney title character in Alfie (1966) - a similar film about the lead character's love life and his problems with commitment], has just turned forty (and already experienced two failures in his previous marriages to intellectual Jewish women) and is in the middle of a mid-life crisis, with aging bringing on signs of slight balding: "I think I'm gonna get better as I get older." He hopes to become the "balding virile type, you know, as opposed to, say, the distinguished gray, unless I'm neither of those two. Unless I'm one of those guys with saliva dribbling out of his mouth who wanders into a cafeteria with a shopping bag screaming about socialism."

The film, not a standard chronological narrative, presents the free-association memories of a one-year long romance with Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) that is already over. Devastated, the comedian switches from the chatter of his comedy act to melancholy. He also switches from the clearly delineated Woody Allen character to the fictional character of the film. The film searches for his answer to the question - Why did they break up? (and by implication, why does contemporary love die?) He confesses in a crest-fallen manner:

Annie and I broke up. And I still can't get my mind around that. You know, I keep sifting the pieces of the relationship through my mind, and examining my life and trying to figure out where did the screwup come, you know. A year ago, we were in love, you know.

As a successful, but neurotic Jewish New York comedian, he doesn't consider himself a "morose type." "I'm not a depressive character. I-I, uh, you know, I was a reasonably happy kid, I guess," he assures the audience and himself.

Fixated on his past as one possible answer to his question, Alvy looks back to his childhood, mixing a quasi-Freudian analysis with Groucho Marx-ian humor. He was raised in Brooklyn during World War II and his first childhood memories are of depression. His over-protective, over-achieving, and panicked Jewish mother (Joan Newman) has brought her young and insecure, but precocious, bespectacled 9 year old son Alvy Singer (Jonathan Munk) to a doctor. The boy, exhibiting the latent characteristics of his future adult personality, is pre-occupied with contemplating Death - he metaphysically despairs at the impending expansion of the universe and humankind's doom to the condescending and patronizing physician:

Alvy's mother: He's been depressed. All of a sudden, he can't do anything. Doctor: Why are you depressed, Alvy?Alvy's mother: Tell Dr. Flicker. (To the doctor) It's something he read.Doctor: Something he read, huh?Alvy: The universe is expanding...Well, the universe is everything, and if it's expanding, some day it will break apart and that will be the end of everything.Alvy's mother: What is that your business? (To the doctor) He stopped doing his homework.

Alvy: What's the point?Alvy's mother: What has the universe got to do with it? You're here in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is not expanding.Doctor: It won't be expanding for billions of years, yet Alvy. And we've got to try to enjoy ourselves while we're here, huh, huh? Ha, ha, ha. (He gives an artificial laugh before taking another drag on his cigarette)

According to the voice-over account by an adult Alvy, he is trying to discover the reasons for his adult confusion by subjecting himself to Freudian analysis - and realizing that he has exaggerated his childhood memories. Flashbacks show his early childhood and grade schooling experience. His neurotic, nervous personality may be due to having been brought up in a trembling house underneath the roller coaster in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. In the Singer home, the house was subjected to vicious shaking each time a roller-coaster car rode by that was filled with amusement park thrill-seekers. At the dinner table, Alvy suffers - struggling to ladle a quivering spoon-full of reddish tomato soup into his mouth. [Note: The roller-coaster was popularized with a cameo in the film. The real rollercoaster -- dubbed the Thunderbolt -- opened in 1925. The house in which young Alvy supposedly "lived" was the actual home of the ride's owners, the Moran family, who were interviewed in PBS's American Experience documentary Coney Island: A Documentary Film (2000). It was the first roller-coaster to use a steel frame. It lay abandoned for many years and was demolished in mid-November, 2000.]

With a "hyperactive imagination," he also experiences problems distinguishing between "fantasy and reality." His working-class father ran the bumper-car concession at Coney Island where he would compensate for feelings of aggression by taking it out on fellow bumper car drivers: "I used to get my aggression out through those cars all the time." The camera pans from left to right past three of Alvy's childhood teachers. On the blackboard behind the first teacher, the words "TUESDAY - DEC. 1 - " (1942) are written [Woody Allen's own birthday is Sunday, December 1, 1935]. The teachers at his school are mocked and castigated for their ignorance in the profession: "Those who can't do teach. And those who can't teach teach GYM. And, of course, those who couldn't do anything, I think, were assigned to our school." Alvy's classmates are called "idiots" and "jerks."

In the next scene, an adult Alvy no longer provides voice-over narration or an objective perspective - he physically interjects himself into the past - he visits his classroom and sits with the younger kids, clarifying his childhood actions to both his teacher and a classmate. [The scene was filmed on location at St. Bernard's School in the West Village area of New York.] As a sexually-confused adult - with little differentiation between fantasy and reality, he talks back to his teacher, defending himself over impulsively kissing one of the little girls:

Alvy (young): What did I do?Teacher: You should be ashamed of yourself.Alvy (adult): Why, I was just expressing a healthy sexual curiosity.Teacher: Six year old boys don't have girls on their minds.Alvy (adult): I did.Girl: For god's sakes, Alvy, even Freud speaks of a latency period.Alvy (adult): Well I never had a latency period. I can't help it.Teacher: Why couldn't you have been more like Donald? Now there was a model boy.

Projections are made of what a few of his other classmates will be doing many years later - each of them stands up to prophetically foretell his/her future profession. In a scene which implies denial of free will, some of them admit their adult life's failures:

- "I run a profitable dress company." - "I'm president of the Pinkus Plumbing Company." - An orthodox boy: "I sell tallises." - A normal-looking kid: "I used to be a heroin addict. Now I'm a methadone addict." - A mousey-looking girl: "I'm into leather." - Alvy grows up and becomes "a comedian."

A grainy, discolored TV clip shows comedian/writer 'Alvy' (and Allen himself) as a guest on the Dick Cavett talk show telling another self-deprecating joke:

They did not take me in the Army. I was, uhm, interestingly enough, I was 4-P. Yes. In the event of war, I'm a hostage.

Directly to the camera as she peels carrots, Alvy's mother chastises her neurotic, adult son: "You always only saw the worst in people. You never could get along with anyone in school. You were always out of step with the world. Even when you got famous, you still mistrusted the world."

The story flashes back about a year earlier to a time when Alvy was involved in a dating relationship with Annie. A stationary camera shoots down a quiet, urban sidewalk - way in the distance, two people approach closer and closer, engrossed in conversation. Their voices are heard off-screen. Insecure, sensitive and paranoid of ethnic and anti-Semitic remarks, an agitated Alvy explains to his calm friend Rob (Tony Roberts), that he thinks an acquaintance has made an anti-Semitic remark in a Jew-baiting incident:

You know, I was having lunch with some guys from NBC, so I said, 'Did you eat yet or what?' And Tom Christie said, 'No, JEW?' Not 'Did you?'...JEW eat? JEW? You get it? JEW eat?

Rob thinks that Alvy (often called 'Max' by Rob - and vice versa) "sees conspiracies in everything." [To avoid being recognized when booking hotel or restaurant reservations, Woody Allen would call himself 'Max'.]

For Alvy, life is relentlessly fearful and filled with paranoia - he must vigilantly combat all real (and imagined) fears with his intelligence and rationality. Rob suggests that Alvy move from crazy New York City to sunny Los Angeles where all of show business is located, and where he can escape such prejudices. Alvy clearly prefers Manhattan to living in Los Angeles:

I don't want to live in a city where the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light.

The next amusing sequence stereotypes interaction with a pushy, intrusive fan. While waiting outside the Beekman Theatre on Second Avenue to meet Annie (they are midway into their relationship), Alvy is recognized by an obnoxious male pedestrian (the gag speculates the guy is from the 'cast of The Godfather' (1972) - a film also featuring Diane Keaton!):

Pedestrian: Are you on television?Alvy: No. (After a long pause, Alvy admits) Yeah, once in a while...Pedestrian: What's your name?Alvy: You wouldn't know. It doesn't matter. What's the difference?Pedestrian: You're on, uh, the, uh, the Johnny Carson, right?Alvy: Once in a while, you know...Pedestrian: What's your name?Alvy: I-m - I'm uh, I'm Robert Redford.Pedestrian: Come on.Alvy (extends his hand for a shake): Alvy Singer. It was nice. Thanks very much for everything.Pedestrian: Hey (loudly beckoning a friend)! Dis is Alvy Singah! Alvy (exasperated): Fellas, you know...Pedestrian: Dis guy's on television!!! Alvy Singer. Right? Am I right?Alvy: Gimme a break...Pedestrian: Dis guy's on television!!!Alvy: I need the large polo mallet.2nd man: Who's on television?Pedestrian: Dis guy - on the Johnny Carson Show.Alvy: Fellas, what is this? A meeting of the Teamsters?2nd man: What program?Pedestrian: Kineye 'ave your ortograph?Alvy: You don't want my autograph?Pedestrian: No, I do. It's for my girlfriend. Make it out to Ralph.Alvy: (after a double-take) Your girlfriend's name is Ralph?Pedestrian: It's for my bruddah. (He is handed to autograph) ALVY SINGER!! HEY! THIS IS ALVY SINGER!!

In a brilliant introductory shot, Annie pulls up in a taxicab at the curb - and she is not apologetic but irritable:

Alvy: Jesus, what did ya do? Come by way of the Panama Canal?Annie: I'm in a bad mood, OK?Alvy: Bad mood? I'm standing with the cast of The Godfather. [A reference to a film in which Diane Keaton played the role of Michael Corleone's (Al Pacino) wife.]Annie: You're gonna have to learn to deal with it.Alvy: I'm dealin' with two guys named Cheech.

Annie Hall (1977)Rating: 4 Stars (out of 4)

La-de-da, La-de-da

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Annie Hall on DVD.

If Manhattan is Woody Allen's best movie, with its gorgeous black-and-white, widescreen imagery, then Annie Hall has to be his best screenplay.

The movie starts with Woody in front of a plain background, talking to the camera, and the routine from Groucho Marx about how he wouldn't want to belong to any club which would have him as a member. This setup breaks down ordinary movie barriers, tells us that just about anything in the movie is possible, and Allen takes full advantage of that. The screenplay goes all over the place, taking characters back in time -- standing in the room with their past counterparts, and people on the street comment on the story so far. Woody even turns into a cartoon character at one point. A brilliant split-screen scene shows Woody and Diane Keaton at their respective shrinks ("how often do you have sex?" he: "hardly ever -- maybe three times a week", she: "Constantly! I'd say three times a week!").

But Allen also uses his no-holds-barred formula for dramatic scenes as well. Early in the movie, he and Diane Keaton chase live lobsters around their kitchen, trying to put them in a pot of boiling water for dinner. Woody cracks jokes, and both of them are giggling and having a wonderful time. Later, Woody tries the same date with another girl, and she just stands there; "what's the big deal?". The look on Woody's face is heartbreaking.

The movie is also one of the most scathing looks at Hollywood. At a party, a young Jeff Goldblum is on the phone with his psychic; "I forgot my mantra.". Paul Simon (one of the nicest guys in the world?) plays a sleazy Hollywood producer-type, who has dinner with "Jack and Anjelica", and tries to seduce Diane Keaton away from Allen with the promise of stardom. (Allen devotes an entire scene to a song sung by Keaton.)

Annie Hall is refreshing because it showed an astonishing leap in creativity, exploration, and cinematic curiosity from Allen's previous film, the very funny but flat Love and Death. He would continue to grow throughout the 80's and 90's, experimenting with styles, structures, and characters. Unfortunately, Annie Hall was also the last movie before Allen began to experiment with young women characters, which would become an uncomfortable obsession both in his movies and in real life. The comfort that most fans experienced going to Allen films would slowly fade, as he started to become a dirty old man. But Annie Hall is still vital, refreshing, and, above all, funny.

Allen won Oscars for Best Director and Best Screenplay, and was nominated for Best Actor. He's not an actor of great range, but he is a very funny, accomplished comedy actor. Annie Hall may be his best performance. (Picture the look on his face driving the car in the L.A. scenes.) Keaton also won for Best Actress, and the movie won for Best Picture (not a normal kind of movie for an Oscar winner. One would have expected Fred Zinnemann's Julia to be the big winner--it was more "serious" and "respectable". But who watches Julia today?)

Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Carol Kane, Paul Simon, Shelley Duvall, Sigourney WeaverWritten by: Woody Allen, Marshall BrickmanDirected by: Woody AllenMPAA Rating: PGRunning Time: 94 minutesDate: July 31, 1998

See also: Anything Else, Celebrity, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Deconstructing Harry, Everyone Says I Love You, Manhattan, Hollywood Ending, Husbands and Wives, Small Time Crooks, Sweet and Lowdown, The Woody Allen Collection 3

Annie Hall (1977).

Academy Awards -1978:  Best Picture - Charles H. Joffe

Best Director - Woody Allen Best Actress - Diane Keaton

Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen - Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman

    "Life is full of loneliness, misery, suffering, and unhappiness - and it's all over much too quickly," says Woody Allen at the beginning of Annie Hall. This could be a statement of the ongoing theme of Allen's movies over a career that spans forty years and continues apace.    It is also the kind of line we expect from Allen - funny and observant, with that special New York twist. New Yorkers use irony more than other Americans. When New Yorkers make a statement, there are generally no fewer than two meanings contained at once and the listener is assumed to pick up on the multiple meanings. (Southerners, on the other hand, tend to say what they think you want to hear and hope you will not know what they are really thinking. Out here in sunny California, most people deal only in one meaning at a time, if there is meaning to start with.)     CV is not trying to mimic Woody Allen; that would be more presumptuous than even CV dares to be. But those lines, while they can be accused of oversimplification and stereotyping, have just enough truth in them, and just enough New York attitude to offer some fun and some insight as well. Annie Hall, Allen's only film to win the Academy award for best picture, starts out funny and never lets up, picking up on the subjects that Allen has pursued repeatedly over his extraordinary career:  sexual dysfunction and the ups and downs of  relationships with women, the insecurity/neurosis/psychotherapy of the New York intellectual, aging, guilt, paranoia.     If Annie Hall is the best of this genre, it is because it is one of Allen's happier films. The suffering is kept light, the laughter is not heavily tainted with bitterness. The relationship of the hero, intellectual Jewish comedian Alvy Singer, with gentile, white bread, "neat" Annie Hall (Diane Keaton - very young and fresh and deliciously daffy here) allows for the amusement that arises out of the conflict of their cultures and the delight of the real romance they find in each other's differences.     Allen cleverly uses a variety of film techniques, enhancing his consistently witty dialogue as he makes his points. He steps out of character to share a thought directly with the audience. He takes us on a visit to his childhood home, where the contemporary figures dialogue with the historical ones. He uses split screens to allow interaction between characters who would not be interacting in a realistic treatment, but whose verbal interplay provides still another method to explore meaning by playing off of differences. It is a tour de force that only the most skilled writer/filmmaker/comedian could pull off. There may be others who can do it, but none with the viewpoint, the wit, and the insight that Allen brings to it with seeming effortlessness, and, surely in the case of Annie Hall, great joy.