by Dennis Polifroni
(USA 1977 93m) DVD/Blu Ray
p. Jack Rollins, Charles H. Joffe d. Woody Allen w. Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman ed. Ralph Rosenblum ph. Gordon Willis art. Mel Bourne cos. Ruth Morley
Woody Allen (Alvie Singer), Diane Keaton (Annie Hall), Tony Robert (Rob), Paul Simon (Tony Lacey), Carol Kane (Allison Portchnick), Janet Margolin (Robin), Colleen Dewhurst (Mrs. Hall), Christopher Walken (Duane), John Glover (Annie’s Ex), Shelley Duvall (Pam), Marshall McLuhan (himself), Truman Capote (himself)
April 27, 1977
This was it. The date that would change the world in their perception of a comedian and film-maker named Woody Allen.
There is a moment, almost half way through ANNIE HALL, where the main character, one Alvie Singer, is sitting at a dinner table with his girlfriend and, for the first time, her family. Jewish, nervous, a bit of an intellectual and brought up on the streets of Brooklyn, Alvie sits quietly, observing the camaraderie of a very tight-knit, white-bread, WASP family. The family speaks of swap meets and familiar, local drunks that amuse them while they shopped in town. They praise Annie’s Grandmother on a wonderful dinner (“it’s a great sauce!”), but the old lady doesn’t respond. Grandma just keeps chewing and, regularly, eyes her grand-daughters new beau with looks of bewilderment and disdain.
It’s a seemingly ordinary moment with a family that resembles, as Alvie would comment on earlier in the film, a Norman Rockwell painting from the cover of an issue of THE SATURDAY EVENING POST.
BUT…
While most of ANNIE HALL honestly recounts the very real moments of a great romance gone sour through the neurosis and whining of a massive contrarian and worry-wart, this inordinately ordinary moment suddenly turns surreal.
Annie’s mother states that “it’s a wonderful ham”. Annie chimes in, smiling, with “Grammy always does such a great job” and her brother, Duane, grins as he jams yet another forkful of pork into his mouth and nods in agreement.
Not wanting to be left out and desperately trying to fit in, Alvie washes down a mouthful of the taboo meat with a big gulp of white wine, gives the thumbs up sign and blurts out: “It’s dynamite ham!”
It’s right here, in the middle of something so ordinary, traditional, that a moment of very real concern for the central character flips on a dime. It’s here and now that, suddenly, Alvie, being eyed up by the old lady sitting next to him, a woman he commented on, calling her “a classic Jew hater”, turns into a Rabbi (complete with flowing locks, black hat and a beard and passing out Matzo to everyone at the table) all the while cutting back to the old lady, still staring him over and rolling her eyes.
It’s a tiny moment that you’d miss if you blinked. However, in the midst of so much truth and reality, it’s the kind of audacious and over-the-top detail that rockets ANNIE HALL into the stratosphere and adds to the details of the films claim as one of the true masterpieces of the comedy form on film and one of the directors most innovative and imaginative movies. It’s a moment that, though I have seen it hundreds of times, leaves me suffocating from aching laughter.
For me and many others seeing ANNIE HALL for the first time (I was 14 when I saw it, at a revival showing in 1981), it was a revelation and a sign-post stating that the path of comedy was taking a turn. ANNIE HALL was, at this point in his career, like no other film Woody Allen had ever made. Since his first directing effort, TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN (1969), Allen had been, so we thought, content in making spoofs (SLEEPER, LOVE AND DEATH) and farcical comedies that stab at, then, current problems that were plaguing the world (TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN dealt with rising petty crime, BANANAS dealt with communism and the revolutionary unrest in depraved foreign lands). All of his prior films were laugh riots and poked fun in bigger-than-life ways (robbing a pet shop and being chased away by a gorilla in TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN and ordering 3000 grilled-cheese sandwiches from a local take out joint to feed his starving troops in BANANAS are favorite gags of mine), and all of these films were reviewed as triumphs of the absurd. But, something must have been gnawing at Allen, for ANNIE HALL is as realistic as life and love ever get in film, yet never allows the hostage that is the absurd to wrestle itself away from him.
ANNIE HALL starts up on the simple premise that what we are seeing is a dissection of the events that see a great romance sputter and crash into a breakup. Alvie Singer, played by Allen, is a forty-year-old comedian living on ManhattanIsland in New York City. Twice married and divorced, Alvie is a neurotic worrier, 15 years on a psychiatric couch, and going through life looking for nothing. He likes movies, hanging out with his best friend, Rob, who he calls “Max” (played by a very dry and funny Tony Roberts), and just wandering through the city, playing his gigs, making the odd television appearance and avoiding stress. Simple stuff, real, or so it would seem. One would think, reading the premise of the film in a newspaper capsule review, that the introduction of the love interest that would eventually become his greatest romantic loss would be as simple as Alvie’s life on screen.
The opening shot dispels the myth that realism will take the entire film by the throat. Framed against a burnt orange background, Allen’s character pops onto the screen the moment the title credits dissolve and immediately lashes into a direct monologue to the audience. Like all good comedians, no monologue can open without a joke, and we definitely laugh at Alvies comparison of life to those little old Jewish ladies complaining about the portions of bad food at a restaurant they don’t like in the Catskill Mountains. But, something more serious in tone takes place with the severity of Allen talking directly to us. Here, in a flash, he informs the viewer that what we are about to see is a serious investigation of the faults of his lost relationship. Here, he informs us that he cannot understand “where the screw up came.”
The “screw up”, even in those few minutes of monologue, is immediately identified by the audience as Alvie himself. The monologue that opens the film is a stroke of brilliance by Allen as it illustrates the cause of the problem (Alvie and his neurosis) in a heart beat and because it allows us to settle into the story, and every off-shoot of it, without worrying about whether or not we can identify the problem at all. What Allen is doing is relieving the audience of a chore and causing us to set our sites on the character constructions and everything else that surrounds it. In ANNIE HALL, reality, something that had never been represented in his films prior, is the subject of investigation. Like his heroes (comics like W. C. Fields, Groucho and Bob Hope) had done before, it’s the commentary on real life that makes for the funniest moments in his art.
In explaining his side of the story, where he really sees no problems in himself as a human being, the film cuts almost immediately to a flashback sequence of Alvy’s life as a child growing up in Brooklyn during the onslaught of WWII. In what is one of the greatest moments of all film from the 1970’s, Allen jumps from the monologue and flashes the screen with quick, humorous moments of his life in the past. Here, we are further treated to conflicting representations of what Allen is actually saying. “I was a reasonably happy kid” is joined with a vision of Alvy as a 7 year-old (those enormous black rimmed glasses, perched on the nose of a little red-headed boy, give us the first giant laugh of the film), sitting slack on a sofa in the waiting room of a doctors office. Mother screaming, he’s berated by his old lady for being depressed.
MOTHER: “All of a sudden he can’t do anything.”
DR. FLICKER: “Why are you depressed, Alvy?”
MOTHER: “Tell Dr. Flicker. It’s something he read.”
DR. FLICKER: “Oh, uh huh, something he read?”
ALVY: “The universe is expanding.”
DR. FLICKER: “The universe is expanding?”
ALVY: “Well, the universe is EVERYTHING and, if it’s expanding, then one day it will break apart and that’ll be the end of everything!”
MOTHER: “What is that your business??!! He stopped doing his homework!!”
ALVY: “What’s the point?”
MOTHER: “What has the universe got to do with it? You’re here in Brooklyn! Brooklyn is NOT expanding!!!”
DR. FLICKER: “It won’t be expanding for BILLIONS of years yet, Alvy. And, we’ve got to enjoy ourselves while we’re here, huh? Huh? Hahahahahahahaha!!!!”
It’s a wild moment and surely not what audiences were expecting from a romantic comedy film. Fast and furious, Allen and editor Ralph Rosenblum (who SHOULD have won the Oscar in 1977) cram the screen with one flashback joke after another and continuously fuel the commentary on Alvy’s actual nature as a contradiction to truth. Alvy speaks of getting his aggressions out through the bumper cars that his father ran in a concession on Coney Island where, really, we only see the poor kid getting smashed into again and again buy sailors on shore leave, laughing and groping their dates. Alvy lives in a house under the boardwalk rollercoaster and accounts that it was this environment that made him SLIGHTLY nervous. In fact, the slight nervous condition he speaks of is abnormally pronounced and, for the better part of the running time of the film, we hear and see Alvy consistently worrying about things that nobody in all of history would EVER worry about.
Kubrick might have had more of an influence on Allen than Allen would even admit. Like the enormous jump cut that Kubrick makes from the past to the present in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, so Allen does the same from his childhood memories to the present/past that represents the mid-section of his romance with the title character. This jump, though weirdly jarring, is absolutely necessary to the fractured flow of ANNIE HALL’s broken linear narrative structure (one that would inspire and influence film-makers to this day in varied forms. Quentin Tarantino’s PULP FICTION owes much of it’s brilliance in narrative to ANNIE HALL and the jumping Marc Webb does from one day in the present to another, that could be past or future, in the wonderful 500 DAYS OF SUMMER is a direct homage). We find ourselves and Alvy on a street in midtown Manhattan where Alvy is waiting for his lover in front of a movie theatre. He is almost immediately accosted by a group of thugs (“What is this, fellas, a meeting of the Teamsters?”) that recognize him from his appearances on The Tonight Show, and nervously bemoans the fact that he only has a few moments to get into the movie house before the film starts. Once arrived (“Whatcha do, come by way of the Panama Canal?”), Alvy immediately launches into attack mode settled on Annie. For all intensive purposes, Annie is a model of relaxed, subtle tact. Trying to convince him that the movie really hasn’t started because the title sequence is only running and they’re in Swedish (the film, ironically, is Bergman’s FACE TO FACE, and, for most of the scene, Allen and Keaton position themselves the same way the actors on the poster behind them are postioned: face to face?), Keaton portrays Annie in this moment as the straight thinker and the voice of reason (“aw, c’mon, I’m not in the mood to sit through a four hour documentary on Nazis”), but, and it’s hidden very well, its because of the giant jump from past to present that disguises Annie as she really is. Annie is quite the opposite of her first moments in the film.
What helps fuse the chemistry between Alvy and Annie is the way Allen has written the characters and the thoughtfulness of the performances of Keaton and himself. Keaton, no stranger to playing against strong personalities (she was Kay to Al Pacino’s Micheal in THE GODFATHER and THE GODFATHER PART II), has a field day with her turn as Annie. As described in the advertising for the film, ANNIE HALL was subtitled a “Nervous” romance and Keaton is just about as neurotic as Alvy in almost every scene she’s in. White bread fed, probably from a protestant family, Annie is a sub-plant from upper middle class values and parenting that hide their neurosis rather than announce them like the Jewish family Alvy springs from. Annie is a deeply scarred woman whose insecurities found firmament in parents more interested in after dinner cocktails, picture frames bought in town and a brother who has suicidal tendencies whilst speeding through red lights in a sports car at night (one of the funniest moments of the film has a young Christopher Walken, as Annie’s brother, Duane, admitting his psychosis to Alvy in a room that looks like Carrie White’s). Keaton plays the character as a constant, babbling talker, her thoughts not taking shape before she belts them out verbally, and a shy flirt desperate to find someone that will, finally, listen to her. I’m convinced that, the moment that Alvy finds himself sharing a bottle of wine with Annie on his first meeting with her, Keatons epic monologue about her Aunts friend, George, dying while waiting to pick up his free turkey at a local VFW hall, was the lynch pin that secured her the top line of the envelope when the Oscars winners were announced in 1978 (Keaton was voted BEST LEAD ACTRESS for her performance in this film). Keatons turn is a whirlwind of contradictions, breathless hyperactivity and shy fear of the unknown. To watch Keaton closely in ANNIE HALL is to allow yourself to be blown away by the hurricane she’s riding. Annie Hall IS Alvy, to a lesser extent, in female attire (although, this has always raised an interesting question regarding the costuming of Diane Keaton as intentional or accidental. In most of the film, she’s seen sporting mens ties, vests, pleated pants and hats. Would this, on a subconscious level, signify that Alvy is in love with a female version of himself?)
Simplicity is what starts the notion of ANNIE HALL, and it’s seen and felt in every conversation between the leads. The film does jump from the past and present, often at a breathless pace but, for the most part, the analysis of the relationship is kept truthful and familiar for anyone ever involved in a deep relationship with the wrong person. Sketched out on one of Allen’s famous yellow legal pads, the nucleus of the film is a simple outline of the rise and fall of a great romance. Boy meets girl, they find themselves deeply interested and attracted to one another, time wears their affections thin and, as all good things must come to an end, a break-up ensues. Pretty standard fare for a romance film.
However, what differentiates ANNIE HALL from all the other rom-com’s of its time, and before, is Allen hungry for change. Taking many of the comedic elements that had dotted films like TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN, BANANAS, LOVE AND DEATH, EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX and SLEEPER, Allen unleashed a kind of “everything, including the kitchen sink” approach and ANNIE HALL is ripe with visual ingenuity. What starts off as, seemingly, simple, slowly but surely spins itself into a film filled with special effects shots, split screen presentations, moments with subtitles that tell us EXACTLY what a character is really thinking, animation and the main character breaking the fourth wall to talk directly to the audience. That ANNIE HALL is a brutally honest account of a couple realizing they are completely, neurotically alike and, therefore, totally mis-matched raises the bar for a film that is so chock full of slapstick comic devices.
The seeds for ANNIE HALL showed themselves to Allen as early as 1973. He had been dating his co-star, Diane Keaton, and his affair with the actress came to a hault after only a few short months. While remaining life-long friends with Keaton even after the break-up, Allen had thought the details of their romance and co-habitation were interesting enough to form a screenplay. However, this was only one part of the script. Allen had seen ANNIE HALL (then titled ANHEDONIA-meaning the “inability to feel pleasure”) being a romantic comedy fused with a murder mystery ala THE THIN MAN and was hoping to parallel the break-up of the protagonists with the solving of a crime. Ambitious, the film was originally slated to run for three and a half hours (the average Allen film barely breaks the hour and forty-five minute mark) and involve a large cast of characters and side stories. What kept the film from being realized the way Allen had originally intended was its massive scope and season tickets for the New York Knicks. Allen may be many things. He is a deep intellectual, a brilliantly skilled writer, an obsessed musician but, most of all, a creature of schedules and day-to-day habits. The size of his original concept for ANNIE HALL was, straight to the point, too big for him to juggle while maintaining any level of normalcy in his life.
So, what to do????
Keeping in mind that his days needed to end by late afternoon/early evening (after all, they WERE court-side seats for the basketball games), the editing down of ANNIE HALL’s script became inevitable and the murder/mystery sub-plot was chucked (only to resurface as MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY in 1993 and feature the much applauded return of Diane Keaton after years of absence from Allen’s work). With this down-sizing, Allen was now free to concentrate solely on the romance and, in turn, found himself peppering the script with the wild visual gags that he had put behind him after folding production on LOVE AND DEATH (his last, true slapstick comedy).
As is, ANNIE HALL is a juggernaut of a comedy film. One gag ends only to find another, wilder one take its place and the whole film becomes breathless to the audience first seeing it because nowhere in its plot description does anything hint at the invention and disregard to the set standards most had come to expect from romantic comedies. Frankly, the critics and audiences first viewing ANNIE HALL upon its release in 1977 must have been stunned, for no other film that year (well, maybe STAR WARS) was as daring and as visually jaw-dropping as this. ANNIE HALL is, without argument, the film that changed the trajectory of the auteur and the perception most serious students of the art form had of him up till this time. It ushered in, almost overnight, a whole different perspective of the comedy scribe as film-maker and swung open the door for a master of boundless creativity to plant his feet firmly in the ground with the likes of Chaplin, Keaton, Sturges and Lubitsch.
ANNIE HALL was one of only a few comedies to victor at the Academy Awards (the last time a “comedy” took the top prize was Billy Wilder’s THE APARTMENT in 1960 and no other comedy has gone to the top award since). However, knowing they had something special on their hands, the voters saw it fit to award the film with 4 of the top accolades. It took BEST SCREENPLAY in a heart beat (for Allen and his old pal, Marshall Brickman), BEST LEAD ACTRESS (for Keaton) and BEST PICTURE (beating out the predicted, epic STAR WARS). However, most interestingly, it also took the prize for Woody Allen as BEST DIRECTOR. While the prizes in each category, looking back at it, were absolutely justified, the award to Allen for his direction is telling and inspired. It’s telling that so many saw a massive change in the way comedies could present themselves, with realistic believability but without loosing the elements of slapstick and grand farce. It’s inspiring in that the major voices were validating Allen’s choices, as radical and free-wheeling as they might have seemed, and making it known that they wanted more. Since that fateful day in 1977, when ANNIE HALL first premiered, Allen has been seen as the cutting edge of the comic form. ANNIE HALL might not be considered everyone’s favorite Woody Allen film (actually, my favorite, and my vote for his best film, is the often neglected, but brilliantly probing, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS), and some say it has been usurped, over the years as his best. However, no one paying attention to film will EVER say that it’s not the ground-shaker or the major game-changer of its respected genre. ANNIE HALL is, inarguably, the moment that cinefiles, deep thinkers, true lovers of film and fans of the form knew that the tides had changed and THE major voice in film comedy, to this day, had made his mark.
In my humble opinion, Woody Allen’s ANNIE HALL is the comedy by which all film comedies since 1977 measure themselves by.
And remember, Alvie’s Grandmother never gave him gifts like Annie’s did. She was “too busy getting raped by Cossacks!”
Cracks me up every time.
How Annie Hall made the Top 100:
An excellent review of my very favorite comedy, and Woody Allen’s most important film (even though MANHATTAN may be a greater movie). The thing that most astonishes me about it is the depth of feeling that’s kept going throughout the laughs. There’s that wonderful lobster scene with Annie and Alvy, and then there’s Alvy, trying to recreate it with another woman, who’s having no fun at all. That says it all. It’s also great how neither person here is the villain; they’re both mature enough to admit that they are different people who were caught up in a tailspin romance. And, even in the end, I think they were glad to know each other. Plus, the movie is just so inventive, constantly, with its tricks and gadgets (split-screen, a “ghost” scene, an animated sequence, a musical number, a subtitled scene, weird flashbacks where the present and the past collide, lots of people talking to the camera, a fabulously over-exposed L.A. sequence–ahh, I just love it. I could go on and on about it. Thanks for the review, Dennis.
DEAN…
That’s the thing, though, with ANNIE HALL. It’s really a very emotional and real portrait of a tailspin relationship, withg all the stupid things we say and do. Pretty much the standard fare for romantic comedies at the time (another very good one, though not as good as good as this, was also released the same year. Neil Simon’s THE GOODBYE GIRL also honestly looked at romance and the stupidity and emotions of it, yet never achieves the master status of ANNIE HALL because Martin Ritt is an uninspired director content on just replicating the success of the stage play). What puts ANNIE HALL over the top of the excellence line is the imagination and inventiveness of Allen as a comedian, as an artist, and as one of THE great screenwriters in American cinema. He presents all the details leading up to the destruction of a whirlwind romance, but fuses the film, effortlessly, with asides that inform us that the absurd is always lurking around the corner.
Personally, the film speaks to me in two ways. First off, I related to it just like everyone else that ever experienced a romance with a person they thought was “the one”, only to see it not work out. The truth in Allens scenarios and dialogue is devastatingly brilliant in natural emmergence and listening to what these PEOPLE are saying on screen is like hearing a recording of ourselves from a time when we were trying to impress in the beginning or just hold on for dear life in the end.
Secondly, the film speaks to me from a purely visual standpoint. As an artist myself, I am always drawn to a film where the director takes the extra step to present the typical in a way nobody has seen before. It’s this, with Allen never shying away from taking visual risks (ex. split screens, subtitles, animation etc.), that send the film into the heavens and towers over much of the most excellent work in the genre up to and beyond the moment of the films release. Frankly, nothing about what we know of ANNIE HALL prior to that first viewing informs us of where Allen is going to take the film on visual terms and surprizes that spring from it without warning seperate it from the typical fare in the rom com genre.
ANNIE HALL is probably the most influential and artistically inspired comedy of the past 40 years and the one that changes the game on how the typical can be remolded to resemble nothing like it. 1977 saw the face of comedy changed forever and, as I said above in the review, is the comedy by which all modern comedies since 1977 are measured by. If influence were the measuring tape, then ANNIE HALL is up there as one of the five or six greatest of all time with Keaton’s THE GENERAL, Chaplins THE GOLD RUSH, Sturges’ SULLIVANS TRAVLES and Hawks BRINGIN UP BABY.
Woody Allen broke the mold with ANNIE HALL. He’s the greatest comedy writer and director of our lifetime.
I totally agree on all points, Dennis. Except one. THE GOODBYE GIRL (which I am going to rewatch tonight, because I love its performances and dialogue) was directed by Herbert Ross, who at least had one masterpiece in him: PENNIES FROM HEAVEN, from 81. Martin Ritt was a very good, humanistic director who had a unique point of view, I thought (especially with HUD, SOUNDER and CONRACK).
MY BAD, DEAN….
I meant to say Herbert Ross. I love THE GOODBYE GIRL, too, for it’s performances (Marsha Mason is a stand-out as a very real, harried mother on the end of her tether) and dialoque (probably the best and most realistic thing Simon ever wrote without feeling too stagey). But, the film is, basically, a transplant of the Broadway show to the screen and shows no signs of ingenuity or daring creativity to make it more than just a straight forward adaptation. I learned some lessons from the themes in Simon’s story, but nothing in the way of inventive, ground-breaking cinematics.
Thanks, Dennis, for your ode to Annie Hall. I found it most enjoyable to read. For you, me and many others, this film has a special sentimental spot in our hearts. It was so fresh when it first appeared, and – surprisingly – remains so, though the film has been downplayed by some over the years as “not Woody’s best” or “overrated” or whatever. Recently it popped up on TV and, as I hadn’t seen it in decades, I decided to stay, and I’m glad I did. I think one of the reasons it won the Oscar was because it was so “of the moment,” so “cool”: Keaton was so cool – her clothes were so cool, the stylistic touches were so cool, and so on. In retrospect, though, I agree with you that it has a lot more than “cool” going for it. It may not be as ambitious or as majestic as Manhattan, for example, but there’s a warmth, a lightness, and a certain spontaneity to this film that seems to endure. Keaton has taken a few knocks for simply “playing herself” — I say, well, whatever. . . . If would’ve been easy to blow her portrayal, but she nailed it.
Also, I really enjoy the scenes with the young Walken and Paul Simon.
Great job!
PIERRE-
Thanks so much for the kind words.
You say the film holds a sentimental spot for many of us. However, for me, sentimentality has nothing serious, in my viewing of it, to do with anything to be frank. I LOVE ANNIE HALL because it is, plain and simple, just a perfect film. The writing is some of the most top-notch stuff to ever lend voice to characters on screen, the visual daring of the film is over-the-top yet helps lend a very real perspective on the subject of broken romance, and the performances are legendary in their reality yet still able to navigate the absurdity that Allen throws in to punctuate the truth.
I never bought the thought of Keaton “playing herself”. I think her performance is a skillful comic turn loaded with truth and a kind of twisted and numb-skulled beauty. Annie comes off as a very confused transplant to New York City, full of hopes and dreams of making it there when she couldn’t find herself amongst the stifling smiles of her home in Wisonsin. Keaton, who we knew from very different performances in the GODFATHER films, and earlier Allen slapsticks, really gets to the roots of a full bodied and conflicted person desperate to meet and communicate with someone who is either exactly like her or, at the very least, willing to slow down and listen to what she really thinks. Her performance was the best of the five nominated for the Academy Award that year and her statue was WELL deserved in my opinion. Truthfully, I think Keatons turn in ANNIE HALL is the best thing to come from a female performance in a comedy since Shirley MacLaine broke my heart in Billy Wilder’s gem, THE APARTMENT. Annie Hall is a real person, warts and all, and still Keatons best and most innovative turn.
As for the “cool” factor you speak of… Well, I don’t know about that.
Personally, I think the reason that ANNIE HALL became a hit during its release and did so well at the Oscars was because most viewed it the same way that I did. It was an exceptionally well made, brave and daring piece of comic cinema that fused reality with the kind of slapstick approach that Allen had been perfecting in films like BANANAS and LOVE AND DEATH. The slapstick, however, was NOT the main focus, big difference, and I think the response the film has received since it’s release was more for it’s ingenuity in relating our own feelings about romantic loss and relationships and daring to poke fun at all the embarassing and not so pleasing moments we all have been a part of at some time or another. I think ANNIE HALL was a success precisely because it presented the truth in all the funny things we, as human beings, are notorious for when we try too hard to win anothers heart and keep it in our grasp.
Dennis, everything you say is true. When I speak of sentiment I’m referring, for example, to Allen’s light melancholy reminiscences about the failed relationship — he’s not bitter, but wistful. Some of the moments we see that occur in the way Annie is filmed during her song performance, in the closing master shot of the lobster scene, and during the last scene where the film’s events are recapped with the musical overlay. And, as someone else mentioned here, anyone who has experienced a romance that was strongly heartfelt but somehow mismatched, we can safely indulge our sentimentality by relating to Annie/Alvie because Allen takes us by the hand in a way that doesn’t threaten.
When I say “cool,” I refer, for example, to the effect Keaton’s wardrobe in the film caused a big stir in the fashion world. I don’t know whether you’re old enough to remember this, but this factor alone had an enormous effect on what women wore not to mention putting a new, softer slant on feminism. Going further, Allen’s aloofness to Hollywood and the Oscar machine also was regarded as cool, a lot of having to do with the fact that it was good natured. He was able to be an intellectual while at the same time lampooning pretentious snobs (such as in the Marshall McLuhan scene). During the LA sequences, Allen managed to make fun of Hollywood culture without offending people; he was able to take a few pokes at the natural foods movement without seeming retro. All of this was regarded as cool — up to and including his decision to avoid all the awards hoopla in favor of playing his clarinet in NYC the night of the Oscarcast. He gave nerddom some sex appeal.
I getcha, PIERRE…
However, I wanted to make it perfectly clear that, for me, ANNIE HALL transcends all the “coolness” and “sentimentality” that would, rightfully, be picked up as floatation devices by lesser films to seem greater than they really are. The love, respect, and fandom ANNIE HALL has received since its release was won on merit. It is a daring, creative, well made and, best of all, achingly funny examination of real lives in the greatest city of the world…
ANNIE HALL transcends all the “coolness” and “sentimentality”
Message received, loud and clear — and I agree totally.
He gave nerddom some sex appeal.
Fantastic observation here Pierre, but loved you entire insightful response here!
Thanks, Sam. I might add that the coolness factor also was amplified by Allen’s ability to address the drug culture without being seedy and seeming to endorse drug use. Until Annie Hall, how many times did we see someone smoking a joint? And without seeming to either condemn or endorse pot smoking? The scene with the cocaine — a master stroke — acknowledged the phenomenon in our culture without endorsing it. At the time, people simply weren’t accustomed to seeing such things portrayed in films that reached the mass audience. To me, that’s the coolness factor.
You know, PIERRE,
the more that I think about it the more I never realized that you raise a point of interest that is absolutely correct. Everyone was going crazy for, as Allen puts it in the film, “artificial stimulation”, in the mid 70′s and I can, often, remember, my parents hosting parties where we were banished to our rooms with the doors shut of, often, sent off to stay with my grandparents. Thinking back to Paul Thomas Andersons BOOGIE NIGHTS, the whole disco craze, lets-do-some-drugs, talk about how many times I got high to seeing STAR WARS culture, was in full swing when ANNIE HALL was released and dominated the Oscars…
I know, that the few times I have shown this film to groups of friends close to my age the “cocaine” scene gets a huge, HUGE laugh!!!!!
Reblogged this on shafiqah1 and commented:
I just watched this for the first time last weekend, and I’ve always been a Woody Allen fan, how did I miss this gem. #LOVELOVELOVE
SHAFIQAH…
You do me honor but, even more, you do Woody Allen and ANNIE HALL honor by reblogging this review at you site.
What is your age. For those just discovering film in their twwns and twenties, a film like ANNIE HALL could have gotten lost in a sea of films on your “MUST SEE” list. In any case, that you SAW ANNIE HALL is the big triumph/. No other comedy film of the past 40 years has been more imitated, homaged and down-right stolen from than this one. Woody Allen set the bar to the ultimate height with this one and only saw poor imitators and good homages come out of it. It’s a witty, very real and often racously funny look at the truths we face when we analyze the mistakes we make in romance and the mating rituals. Allen punctuates the truth with wonderfully absurd moments like the “Rabbi” moment I mentioned in the first passage of the review and it’s flashes of over-the-top hilarity that not only sets ANNIE HALL apart from oither comedies, but puts a sting in the details of OUR realities as we look at ourselves in the mirror.
I’m so glad that you LOVELOVELOVE ANNIE HALL!!!!!
Yes, my Dad encouraged me to check Woodie Allen out, when I was watching every single Hitchcock movie ever made, I am a young movie buff. I like the part when Diane Keaton steps out of her body while they are in bed together, or when Woodie Allen flashes back to his childhood home in Brooklyn, there are too many parts to list <3 I'm so happy you posted about the film
Well, we are all very glad to welcome you here, SHAFIQAH…
As a person who is so admired of books and an obsessive reader, then I think you’d like Woody Allen very much. He is considered one of the most revered screenwriters in all of cinema and has, actually, written some very well received volumes of comic short stories which, I’m sure you can check, you can find on AMAZON for a song.
There’s an amazing story in his 2nd volume (SIDE EFFECTS) that finds Abraham Lincoln getting ready to give the Gettysberg address and wondering, out loud, to Mary Todd and his aides, whether he should start the whole thing off with a joke…
Side-splittingly funny stuff….
Fabulous Dennis, just fabulous! The film was an artistic game changer for Woody, that’s for sure. I saw this film when it first opened in 1977 at the Baronet on Third Avenue and dragged a cousin of mine along a few weeks later to go see it again. This is a fantastic and loving tribute to one of the great comedies of our time. Kudos!!!
JOHN…
Thank you so much for the words of praise (in actuality, I labored over this one, because the film has such a massive and influential reputation, and while I am more critical over my own writing than others are, thought it just made the “passing grade”).
I have seen ANNIE HALL over 100 times (probably 120 with the almost non-stop repeat viewings as I wrote about it) and, like you, I still marvel at how alive and fresh it still seems after almost 40 years since it’s release. Yes, the funny absudities still keep it balls-to-the-floor funny (and Allen is the greatest one-liner man the screen has ever seen since Groucho), but for me, it’s the honest depiction pof the quiet moments between Alvie and Annie getting to know each other and become comfortable in their admissions of love that do it for me every time. I listen to what they are saying and I can almost hear the same words in memories i have of the great loves of my life that went south for the winter. Allen may be the finest comedy scribe working in cinema for the last half century, but his ear for funny lines and jokes is only half of his brilliance as the other is his other ear for realistic conversation and interior thought monologues. Not a word spoken in ANNIE HALL resembles something that would never be said in a situation like this and the dialogue in this film is the text book example for words written about love that got away and broke our hearts. Woody Allen may have made films that have bested ANNIE HALL in the years that followed (I adore the majesty of MANHATTAN, swoon over the hijinx and plotting of BROADWAY DANNY ROSE and am frighteningly move by the dark probing of his neglected, but brilliant, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS), but ANNIE HALL is still his most impoortant work. It established the realistic character that Woody Allen really is (foibles and quirks and all), showed us that he could get serious while balancing the absurd to comment and jab at our flawed nature as people but, most of all, declared Allen as amajor innovator within the realms of comedy. Without ANNIE HALL, there would be no attempts at intellectual humor on this par and wonderful films like 500 DAYS OF SUMMER, THE BROTHERS MCMULLEN and MOONSTRUCK would never have found the backing they needed to get made.
ANNIE HALL is THE comedy film that gobbled up the rules and spit them back out with a completely different feel for all to use from that point on. Frankly, its probably one of the most important films of the last 40 odd years and the single most important comedy film post 1970.
I love how you GET the Allen output, Dennis. Yes. It’s ANNIE HALL, MANHATTAN, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, and BROADWAY DANNY ROSE. I would round out the five with INTERIORS, a much different film from all, of course, and astonishing as a follow-up to ANNIE HALL. But that’s just me. At any rate…what an extraordinary career Allen has had, from TV to supreme stand-up material to singular books and movies! Even if he has disappointed me time and time again in the last 25 years, he has also left me flabbergasted at his energy, tenacity and genius. We all need to keep reminding ourselves of his brilliance. I think your impassioned review helps. By the way, I think I might have seen ANNIE HALL 90 or so times. It has been a mainstay of mine ever since it came out. And I agree–Ralph Rosenblum is one of its heroes. Could he be the one who most helped Allen find his true voice?
I know what you mean about being disappointed by his work in the past 25 years… In the 70′s and 80′s he hits them out of the park, most times and sees most of his classics come from that period. But, considering the amount of time Allen has been making movies (1 a year since 1969), his ratio for more success than failure is amazing.
In my mind, these are the ones that must be a part of any study of Allen:
Take The Money And Run
Bananas
Love And Death
Sleeper
ANNIE HALL
Interiors
Manhattan
Stardust Memories
Zelig
Broadway Danny Rose
The Purple Rose Of Cairo
Hannah And Her Sisters
Radio Days
Alice
Another Woman (one of his most neglected films)
CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS
Bullets Over Broadway
Husbands And Wives
Manhattan Murder Mystery (if only for the return of the great Diane Keaton)
Matchpoint
Vicki Cristina Barcelona
I’m glad you included Manhattan Murder Mysery on that list as I really enjoyed that little film. It was released at an unfortunate point in time, of course, right on the heels of the scandal involving Farrow’s daughter Soon-Yi. Did you know that Farrow originally was cast in the role that Keaton had to take over at the last minute because of the scandal/breakup?
Actually, PIERRE, you have the facts a bit reversed…
ANNIE HALL was intended to be a big three and a half hour production that paralleled the rise and fall of a great romance with the solving of a murder mystery. That film was, eventually, edited down by Allen in the gallies phase because he didn’t want to work over time or give up his court-side seats for the New York Knicks games (he’s a major fan and never misses a game-matter of fact, Alvy is watching the Knicks in the scene where his ex-wife deflates him in the bedroom for being anti-social towards her “intellectual” friends during a cocktail party).
As it would come to be, Allen kept the ideas of the murder mystery sub-plot as an idea for a follow up film for him and KEATON, but 86′d the idea for years when he was given the opportunity to realize his dream project at the time, INTERIORS. The murder/mystery plot laid in limbo until 1993. He WAS going to offer the part to Mia Farrow, that is true, because she was his current “squeeze” at the time. However, it WAS originally written for Diane Keaton and, finally, re-offered to her when the shit hit the fan over the whole “Soon-Yi” debacle. In the end, MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY, while no great shakes from the Woody Allen canon, is a joyous romp that definately benefitted from the return of Allen’s GREATEST leading lady and sparring partner. Their chemistry never skipped a beat and the scene where Allen begins to panic in the stalled elevator with her reminds us how great the two of them were/are together. In the recent documentary on Allen (WOODY ALLEN: A DOCUMENTARY), Keaton talks of her old lover/screen partner with smiles and revere. You can tell that she never truly got over him, loves him to death and thinks much of her best work in film happened with him.
MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY was, really, always Keatons.
Well – not totally reversed, Dennis. I’m aware of the history of Annie Hall’s script, but I was not aware that the role Keaton got at the last minute in MMM was originally written for her. I’m glad she got it — she was perfect in that film. Thanks for setting the record straight.
You really did wonderful justice to this comedic masterpiece. Geez, how many New York romantic comedies let alone rom-coms in general owe a debt to ANNIE HALL? It is like Allen’s film has been ingrained in rom-com DNA from that point on.
Not only does the film have poignant things to say about men and women and the romantic relationships that form between them but it does so in such an engaging and entertaining way. And, as your essay points out, it is an insanely quotable film. I’ve seen ANNIE HALL countless times and never tire of it. And, I find as I get older and revisit it, I get more out of it. There are not many films that I can say that about I think that speaks to the strength of the writing and how there are so many truths in the film that resonate.
J. D. ….
While I touched on most of what you praised about this film in my comment to JOHN GRECO, I will also add that you are DEAD ON that this is one of the most “quotable” comedies of all time. Woody Allen is on fire with his one liners in this film and, as I have said so often, they rattle off his tongue like rapid machine gun fire. Allen has the best delivery of verbal jabs since the late, great Groucho Marx (though Bob Hope is also a big influence to him) and ANNIE HALL sees his tongue dipped in acid for the better part of its running time.
The line about his Grandmother “getting raped by cossacks” is so off-the-wall that I ache from laughter ever time I hear it. The other one that does it for me is when the girl at the Lacey party asks him why he’s visiting California and he replies that he “came to get shock therapy treatments but there was an energy crisis.”
On a side note, the monologue that Alvie presents when doing his stand-up routine at the University of Wisconsin is directly lifted from Allens own legendary stage set ups when he was one of the hottest and most appaulded stand-up comedians in New York and Las Vegas. Just another in a string of triumphs in his long career
In a nutshell, Allen is one of a handful of American screenwriters that have earned the title of “master”. He is also one of the most honored writers in American cinema and holds the record for the most nominations for Original Screenwriting EVER (he’s won three-ANNIE HALL, HANNAH AND HER SISTERS and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS).
You’ve hit a home run with this Dennis. This will always be the Woody Allen film that makes any short list of the great comedies. Your creative approach is thorough and engaging. This was Woody on magic mode.
FRANK…
Yup, you hit it. MAGIC MODE!!!! I love that assessment. For me, most of Woody Allens films are magic of the most nostalgiac and probing kind. He sees life alot like we do (or, at least, for us that live in the Tri-State area) and I often think he’s our voice in film on the East Coast. Like Allen, I have suffered from severe depressions in the past, have neurotic tendencies (as SAM will attest-ask him about how I worry about cleaning the house or how I obsess with organization) and often make mountains out of mole-hills and worry about stuff that will never happen (the end of the world coming December 21st 2012?????).
For me, Allen, and this film particularly, speak directly to me and touches on alot that I have pondered personally over the years…
Thank you so much for the praise!!!!!
Dennis -
This is a brilliant, beautifully written, comprehensive apprecation of a groundbreaking work. Seeing ANNIE HALL for the first time was a major moment in my filmgoing experience, as it was in yours – and every detail of that first veiwing (for me, as a college freshman in January 1978) and my reactions to it remains with me to this day. I was a Woody fan before ANNIE HALL, but became sort of a fanactic afterwards, and the impact this film had on me still informs my compulsive need to see every subsequent Allen film on its opening weekend.
I especially like that you credit Ralph Rosenblum’s work on the film – I assume you’ve read his book where he talks at great length about ANNIE HALL evolved and changed from the original concept (a much longer and denser film) to the final product. I would give anything, though to see the scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor.
Thank you for a wonderful morning read.
PAT…
Rosenblum should have won the Oscar for ANNIE HALL. It went, instead, to the team for STAR WARS (Brilliant, but not on par with the emmense parring down Allen and he did with AH), and I, too have often wondered what those lost scenes contained.
Like you, I consider every new film from this master of the form like it was an event and I am often stunned by the praise that is heaped, almost always, on his films by the critics at large. Yet, his “darling” status with the critics and fans was hard won. Each film sees him breaking new grounds in the comic form, changing his tone (I love many of his outright dramas-INTERIORS is a favorite of mine) from time to time, and always giving us something that we can repeat in our own dialogue sometime down the road when a situation demands levity or acidic retort. I was also a fan of his before ANNIE HALL (pesonal favorites include LOVE AND DEATH and BANANAS)but, as you have illustrated with your own personal account, it’s ANNIE HALL that put up the sign post for the sharpest turn a genre has ever seen constructed on an often taken road.
I hate to repeat myself, but it IS the comedy by which all other comedies (post 1977) measure themselves by.
I’m overjoyed that this review/essay brought a smile to your face. You’re too sweet.
Well Dennis, a celebration is again in order for you. This is your second essay for this countdown (both within a week no less) and you again raised the bar in bringing a real energy and spirit to your writing, not to mention a glowing lifelong affinity for the Woodman, a director you’ve always held in the highest esteem. Whenever you saw or write anything about Allen, I listen at rapt attention. Not only have you always translated the humor and deciphered the psychology and the characters, but you have made a shining testament to why Allen’s work belongs in the upper pantheon of comedy genius.
ANNIE HALL?
Well, the vast majority of people would say it’s a greatest film (those anti-populists out there will try their damndest to pose another film for the top spot (yeah we at WitD like to rank things and are proud of it! Ha!) but it’s pretty much impossible to diminish this effervescent work, that showed the comic at the top of his form. The film of course is autobiographical and therapeutic, and is suffused with Jewish paranoia, pessimism and at last…romance. The film contains the most impressive array of sight gags and one-liners and Keaton is wholly exhilarating in her Oscar winning performance. Yeah Oscar got it right that year. Love so many scenes, including the one where Alvy battles spiders, and best of all when Woody pulls director McLuhan from behind a poster to tell some self-righteous and pretentious geek that “You know nothing of my work.” I probably should have voted the film higher on my own ballot, but all in all I’m delighted to see it make the Top 10 (it just seems so right) and that WitD’s resident Woody Allen expert extraordinaire Dennis Polifroni has come to this countdown with all kinds of passion and expertise.
Oh, SAMMY, you made me blush…
The “Woody Allen Expert Extraordinaire” is a great compliment but I concede that there are many others out there that analyze and ingest his films with asd much passion as I do. Jaime Grijalba has written extensively on Allens work and I know there are many here at WITD that have just as much as I do to say about the little nebbish from Brooklyn that made good.
It’s hard to dispute ANNIE HALL as his greatest film when so many consistently site it and quote it. It’s influence has such reaching hands that I cannot think of too many “smart’ comedies since 1977 that don’t owe it a debt of gratitude.
As for my life long love for this film and, particularly it’s writer/director, well, all I can say is that I’m sorry for all the years that I have been rambling on and on about him. You have always been my greatest supporter when it comes to my enthusiasm for Allen’s work and I am always flattered when you have told me, time and again, that you think I’m one of the major brains when it comes to assessing the Woodman’s work. He has been a hero of mine ever since I saw TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN, I have seen him play live jazz at Micheal in the city, and I thrill whenever I spot him walking through the city as I drive through it myself. He’s a “real” legend in these parts and I am so glad that we, on the Easdt coast, can call him, very dearly, our own.
Thank you so much for the effusive praise, my dearest pal!
Great Great Great stuff Dennis. This one definitely belongs in the top 10 and I’m glad it made it. More than half of those of us that voted for it, had it in the top 10. That says a lot. It is the best comedy of the last 35 years. Hands down. It’s a nearly flawless comedy. From the dialogue, jokes, cinematography….everything. Keaton and Allen also cemented themselves as one of the greatest romantic screen pairs. I have introduced this film to other people on random occasions…watching it with them and then seeing them go on to explore his other films. It is the one that I would always say….if you’ve never seen a Woody Allen film….see this one.
JON…
I TOTALLY AGREE!!!!! ANNIE HALL is like the Woody Allen 101 course if you decide you wanna jump into him and study all of his work. However, for me personally, I find it a joy to watch his films in order where you can see his maturation into one of the most influential and appreciated film-makers ascend. Frankly, nobody in the world saw ANNIE HALL coming and it’s the sharp turn he does towards more dramatic and serious themes in this film that sets him up for his bigger, more reaching films. I love films like MANHATTAN and CRIMES, I think his output in the 80′s is something to behold (nary a dud in the bunch), but, and I think you are right, ANNIE HALL might just be his very best and tightest film to date (though HANNAH AND HER SISTERS is always said to be hot on it’s heels-another film I love), and is certainly the one that sees him kick open the doors to take a place at the table with scribes and directors like Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges, Charlie Chaplin and Billy Wilder and I. A. Diamond.
Thanks so much for the kind assessment of the essay. It made my day!!!!!
Dennis yes I do like to see the growth of a director and it would be great if everyone could see them in order. Unfortunately, it’s possible someone might stop after Woody’s first film or 2 if presented that way. Anne Hall is different. If you like it, you’ll find lots of other gems in his canon. If you don’t like it….I’m not sure there’s any hope for liking Woody Allen.
Oh, JON, I agree….
However, the purist in me always seems to surface when analyzing Allen. Funny you should mention this, though. My middle brother, David, is a big fan of Woody Allen…
However, he hates Allens “cerebral” work and only swoons when the subject is the slapstick comedies. He thinks TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN, BANANAS and EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX are Allens truest masterworks, will scoff at films like ANNIE HALL and HANNAH AND HER SISTERS as being overly “intellectual” for their own good, and raves about his more comic, later films, like SMALL TIME CROOKS, OEDIPUS REX, MIGHTY APHRODITE and SWITCH…
We often think that my brother was left in a basket on our doorstep when he was a baby and my youngest brother, Daniel, and I often move away from him at parties when he starts talking about film (he and BOB CLARK could get together for a major, orgiastic circle jerk over George Lucas and STAR WARS). I guess there’s one in every family…. Ughhhhhhh!
Well done Dennis. Woody Allen isn’t one of my favorite filmmakers but AH, Manhattan, and one or two other examples in his oeuvre I admire without reservations. And while I would place a few modern comedies over this movie on a list, I can’t really find fault with a #9 placement.
Thank you, so much, MAURIZIO…
I can’t argue this with you as you have, rightfully, conceded to ANNIE HALL and a few of his other, great films with admiration and respect. He’s not every persons cup of tea as a film-maker, but it’s good to know that we can still get into some serious debate on the subject knowing you like this one…
As for it’s high placement on the list… I don’t know…
I like a few recent modern comedies (Albert Brooks LOST IN AMERICA, Wes Andersons RUSHMORE and THE ROYAL TENNENBAUMS, Marc Webb’s 500 DAYS OF SUMMER and Alexander Payne’s ELECTION definately make the grade with me), but I see all of them, just as much as almost every comedy since the 70′s all paying a tremedous debt of gratitude to ANNIE HALL. For me, ANNIE HALL is the only comedy, post 1970, that can viably seen standing tall with the top ten likes of Hawkes BRINGIN UP BABY (my own No. 1 choice), LaCava’s MY MAN GODFREY, and the many works of Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, W. C. Fields and The Marx Brothers.
I also wee Allen as the greatest director of screen comedy since those geniuses walked the earth.
Dennis, you have outdone yourself!! This is an incredible essay on such a memorable and worthy film. There are many funny moments in Annie Hall and on numerous occasions I found myself missing out on critical dialogue as I was too busy laughing at a previous joke. A cinema related favorite moment is the cinephile discussion while Alvie & Annie are standing in line to see a film. I can’t remember seeing such a hilarious discussion about foreign films in another movie. Sheer brilliance.
Also, love the background about the film Dennis. I am glad the film was made the way it was but happy that the component left out finally found a way on screen in 1993.
Ah, SACHIN, you do me great honor and I am deeply humbled by your words of praise and kindness…
I know exactly what you mean, I have had a ball rewatching this film again and again, as I do with most of Allens comedy work, because the jokes come so fast you need to rewind to catch what you were laughing through. The “Marshall MacLuhan” joke in the foreign film theatre is brillinat for its invention, but also hysterical because of the pomposity of the man that causes Alvy’s flight into the surreal, and because WE know all too well, as filmgoers, what it’s like to be in that situation (although, sometimes I fear Sam and I are that annoying guy when we wait for tickets-talking about directors, our favorite foreign films and the social importance of art in foreign cinema).
The sheer beauty of ANNIE HALL comes from it’s truth about life, not just the invention Allen uses to illustrate such truths.
Another wonderful essay, maybe your best for the way it fuses intelligent insight with personal style (kind of like the film itself, come to think of it).
God, I love this movie. Maybe it’s my favorite comedy of all time. You mention 500 Days of Summer favorably, and I liked that film on second viewing more than I did initially, but it also points out to me how cowardly American films are today vs. then; even when they’re being “bold” they toe the line. Annie Hall is just so sharp, so brilliant, so fucking right. I don’t know how else to describe it.
In the abstract, I know that it mixes fantasy with reality, avant-garde approaches with a naturalistic textures, broad humor with subtle dramatic insight, impulsive stream-of-consciousness with highly inventive structural ingenuity. And yet I can’t quite point out where one element ends and the other begins because the thing’s so seamless, it just flows naturally and perfectly like a jazz improvisation, or a particularly inspired stand-up routine.
I gotta be honest…
If there is ONE person whose comments I look forward to on ANY piece I write, it most definately is MOVIEMAN0283 (aka. Joel)…
You have been the biggest supporter of my “personal” style of writing, have often hailed the anectdotes that I relay to parallel a films greatest attributes, and have always, ALWAYS, “Bravo-ed” any attempt I have made to make a personal connection to the films I review in an attempt to illustrate why they are so important to me and how thay have changed my life.
That said, I am deeply greatful for the kind words on this, what I feared was a failed review. I thought I lost my train of thought in the mid-section. However, along with you, Dear Joel, and many others, it seems like my worry was mis-placed.
As fractured as the narrative is in ANNIE HALL, I will agree with you that it all falls together so “fucking right”. However, where you are guessing as to why it all comes together, amazed that is does so perfectly well, I think it;’s obvious.
What Allen, in my estimation, is doing, is recounting the trial and tribulations of a great moment in the life of a specific character in the way WE all recall memories. In life, when we look back at the high and low points, the memories come back in flashes. There is no linear structure to dreaming or memory. When we “recall”, we recall in fits and spurts, we remember things as they happened with the high or low points taking center stage and then filling in the gaps with everything else about them like mortar that holds the bricks in a giant wall or building together. That ANNIE HALL jumps all over the place, sees disjointed ideas hit at any time and place in the narratve, is, at once, both a burst of creativity to Allen as a artist of film, but truthful in the way we recall key moments of our life in real memories and dreams. This, for me, is why ANNIE HALL ping-pongs between fantasy and reality, between REAL events and SURREAL moments that comment on the absurdity of reality. This, more than anything else, is what is often robbed by lesser film-makers that attempt the romantic comedy form these days and what bouys very few of the better ones (and I DO think that 500 DAYS OF SUMMER is one of the great ones).
While he may have made bigger, more probing films since ANNIE HALL, very few would say that any of them come together as perfect and breathlessly tight as ANNIE HALL.
Again, my very dear friend, thanks for the kind words and the accute observations.
Great point; personal investment does wonders to cohere what otherwise might come apart. Part of the mysterious alchemy of art, I suppose.
Well, JOEL, I think personal investment is key to any kind of art, though visual art seems to see it happen even more these days than say, I dunno, music or the written word. As an artistwhose neurotic tendencoies we know almost better than our own, it’s a natural to think that Allen is deeply influenced by his soul and thinking about things that WE all ponder as the biggest question in life. Love, death, our place in the universe, guilt and redemption seem to be the big ones for him and any interview with or, even, that recent documentary on, Allen prove that. INTERIOR saw him get dramtic but, whereas he could have done a simple film about the arguments and worries of a great family he decided, instead, to do a deeply probing examination of a family torn apart by mental illness, the effects of it on both the sufferer and the family, and her eventual suicide. ANNIE HALL, though a comedy, is really about Alvy’s worries in life and what’s important to HIM.
Will I ever fall in love forever? Does she really love me? Why am I so hard to get along with? What does love really have to do with the big things plaquing the world I live in?
These are the important themes Allen touches upon in a film as funny as ANNIE HALL and it’s precisely this stuff that makes the filmn stand-out like a sore thumb in a sea of predictability. Allen is asking these questions, and poking fun at the stupid neurosis over them, to illustrate the moments when we should have shut up and listened, perhaps gave our partner more attention or attended to their needs no matter how stupid we may feel they are, and absolutely analyzing the nails that condemn us from finding that perfect person, or worse, distancing ourselves from the ones that are already there and have the greatest potential. I see Allens art as a working out of his damages, commenting on their absurdity and, possibly, finding the answer through the therapy a film-maker sees his art as sometimes.
Woody Allen is, in my humble opinion, one of the supreme thinkers in film. His movies are never made for audience approval (though he yearns for it as much as any director ever does) as much as they are made for his approval. He has often stated that most of his films come off in a way he wasn’t happy about and I think this has to do with him being depressed that the answers he was looking for in his exploration of himself through his films are not always there in the end when he finally has to let it go and sacrifice it for release. Personally, I am not as harsh on Allen as Allen is on himself and think pictures like ANNIE HALL, MANHATTAN, HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, RADIO DAYS, ANOTHER WOMAN, HUSBANDS AND WIVES and, particularly, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS ask many great questions and, often, give us a sastisfying answer about a big subject that has crossed all of our minds at some point.
CRIMES, for example, I feel, is the best illustrator of a big subject that gets its questions asked and answered within the running time of the movie. In that film, the subject of the weight of guilt over a dastardly action is explored and, as we see in the end during Judah’s monologue, is answered as perfectly as we’d ever hope a question like that could ever be answered. Sure, it might not be the groundshaking answer we were expecting or hoping for, but it IS another point of view that could be held up to the light and seen without any pin-holes.
In a nutshell, this guy is far smarter and far more reaching than just about any “comedy” director that has ever worked on the form. He is, absolutely, one of the great brains and innovators in film comedy and coasts with the titans of the form (namely, the other big thinkers: Chaplin, Keaton, Sturges, Lubitsch, Wilder). As a pure intellectual who happens to make funny movies, there is no competition, Allen is the top director/screenwriter. PERIOD.