Annie Hall

Despite its status in many circles as writer/director/star Woody Allen's comedic masterpiece, Annie Hall nonetheless will remain to many the film that "stole" the Best Picture Oscar away from the (retrospectively) far more influential Star Wars. At the time of their release in 1977, however, although Star Wars initiated a new era of upbeat science fiction films, Annie Hall was the culmination of America's nearly decade-long struggle to come to terms with the aftermath of political and sexual revolution of the 1960s. The film seemed to give voice to the frustrations of a generation regarding their inability to maintain romance. Surprised by the overwhelming acceptance of the picture, Allen himself commented, "I guess what everybody understood was the impossibility of sustaining relationships, because of entirely irrational elements…. Later in life, youdon't really know what went wrong."

Annie Hall also represented the peak of America's love affair with stand-up comic turned filmmaker and film star Woody Allen. While he had been performing in films since 1965's What's New, Pussycat?, his screen vehicles had consistently been outrageousfantasies that displaced him in either time or space—though Allen played essentially the same character, a neurotic, intellectual nerdish Everyman struggling to get the girl and avoid violence. But Annie Hall changed everything. According to his longtime editor, Ralph Rosenblum, Allen had been struggling to make the transition into maturer, less clownish films about the urban angst regarding love, sex, and romance. Toward this end Allen had initially set out to make a murder mystery entitled Anhedonia (the chronic inability to feel pleasure) that would illuminate these problems and would co-star former lover and frequent leading lady Diane Keaton. However, once they began viewing the dailies and establishing some structure to the rambling two-hour-and-twenty-minute narrative, which included extensive flashbacks and comedic asides, Rosenblum finally convinced Allen that the film came to life in the scenes involving the romance with Annie, which were set in the present. The murder mystery plot was thus altered to focus on the romance, becoming, in Rosenblum's words, "A light-headed, devil-may-care Midwestern girl who grew up in a Norman Rockwell painting meets urban Jewish comedian who has enough awareness for both of them and hang-ups to match."

Annie Hall then became the story of their rocky romance, as Alvy Singer (Allen) tells the camera that he and Annie have broken up and that he is "sifting the pieces o' the relationship through my mind and—and examining my life to figure out where did the screw-up come?" The ensuing stream of consciousness exploration of memory and fantasy—somewhat reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries—results in Alvy coming to the conclusion, "Relation-ships … You know they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd … but uh, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us need the eggs," i.e., the fleeting moments of happiness they can bring. But even after these ruminations, he is unable to discern the reasons for his separation from Annie, though filmmaker Allen illuminates very clearly that it is because of Alvy's neuroses and insecurities. As critic Douglas Brode concludes, Alvy presents his own persona as a lost, bewildered man, shell-shocked in the sexual battleground of the mid-1970s; thus, Woody turns Annie Hall into a warning against the dangers of the Culture of Narcissism.

Annie Hall was rendered even more compelling due to the extreme autobiographical associations between the characters and Allen's own life. Like Allen, Alvy Singer was born in Brooklyn and grew up during World War II. Professionally their progress is also the same: both began as gag writers, evolved into stand-up comedy, then became playwrights. In terms of relationships, Alvy Singer has been married and divorced twice when he becomes involved with Annie Hall and then breaks up with her. Likewise twice divorced, Allen had a long-term relationship with Diane Keaton—real name Hall—, which also ended. Though Allen maintains that his introduction to Keaton and other factual aspects of their relationship were completely different from Alvy and Annie's, he has acknowledged that the "mildly misanthropic and socially discontent" Alvy and his constant complaints about love and life parallel his own, once telling columnist Alfred Bester, "Sure it's me—but greatly exaggerated … my most embarrassing moments." Annie Hall seemed to be an autobiographical compendium of all the issues that Allen had always been obsessed with—death, sex, intellect, art, and mostly, himself—but this time without the fantasy elements to distract the viewer from the nakedness of this self-absorption.

According to a Variety survey of the ten best movie lists proposed by thirty-two American film reviewers, Annie Hall was the most frequently selected film, named on thirty of the lists. Beyond the many awards and acclaim, the popularity of the film also affectedfashion. Diane Keaton's casual ensembles for Annie Hall, which she explained were basically her style and were largely clothes from her own closet, established new fashion trends, which included the appropriation of men's slacks, shirts, and neckties in a loose, unstructured look that paralleled Annie's idiosyncratic look at the world.

Brode, Douglas. The Films of Woody Allen. New York, Citadel Press, 1991.

Rosenblum, Ralph, and Robert Karen. When the Shooting Stops … the Cutting Begins: A Film Editor's Story. New York, The Viking Press, 1979.

Wernblad, Annette. Brooklyn Is Not Expanding: Woody Allen's Comic Universe. Madison, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1992.

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