Annie Hall

I love "Annie Hall", or maybe I just love Diane Keaton, or maybe it's just Woody Allen, or his dialogue, it's really the whole package. It's hard to believe what a little movie "Annie Hall" really is, even by Woody Allen's standards, yet it was a sleeper hit in 1977 beating out "Star Wars" for the Best Picture Oscar back then, also picking up statues for Keaton's performance plus Screenplay, and Director for Allen. It marked brave new territory for Allen, who before then made mostly comedies with great wit and visual gags, but this was the first film that hinted at a more personal and reflective work.

The film actually started off with a more ambitious outline, but Allen cut it down from an original print that ran 140 minutes to the one we have today at a little more than 90. The film we have today remains a bare bones relationship comedy about an on and off romance between Allen's stand-up comic Alvy Singer, and Keaton's title character.

The film begins with Allen addressing the camera in monologue, this is probably the image people associate with Allen the most, and it's really a bold move by the filmmaker, something that has been repeated mostly unsuccessfully by others. We find out at the beginning that Alvy and Annie have broken up, and the film moves in flashbacks going back to Alvy's childhood, to the moment the two first meet and fall in love, and to their eventual break up.

We see Alvy and Annie meet, talk, fall in love, fight, break up, get back together, then break up again. It's all done very economically, with Allen's usual visual aesthetic of people walking and talking. He rarely does cutaways, and it's really the actors in the frame that keep the film alive.

But unlike his later ensemble films which juggled multiple characters like "Manhattan", "Hannah and her Sisters" or "Crimes and Misdemeanors", "Annie Hall" doesn't stray from its main story, it has a more intimate feel then his later films, and because of this we start to care about Alvy and Annie probably more than any one of Allen's other characters. We want to see them make it, because we get the sense they are meant to be together, but it's Alvy's own anxiety and indecisiveness about love, and life that becomes the relationship's undoing. It's only when it's too late does he realize that Annie was the girl for him.

There are other women in Alvy's life that we meet, including a political advocate, (Carol Kane) who he dates before Annie, and a religious follower of the Dalai Llama (Shelley Duvall) who he sleeps with while he and Annie are broken up. But none of these come close to having the same kind of dynamic he has with Annie, we feel that she gets him,and they can match barbs better together than with anyone else.

It's probably no surprise that at the making of this film Allen and Keaton were in a relationship, and Keaton's nickname was in fact Annie. Allen also instructed Keaton to wear the same kinds of clothes she wears in real life for the film. It's also been hinted that Allen added many Keatonisms in Annie's speech such as the famous "la,di,da" scene when Annie and Alvy first meet.

Wherever the lines between fact and fiction get blurred, Keaton gives a purely naturalistic performance, so much so it's hard not to fall in love with her. This is one of my absolute favorite performances by any actress because it feels so real, look for example at Keaton's monologue about an Uncle of hers who is a narcaleptic, who one day doesn't wake up and is dead; her reaction is funny because it's an honest moment. There's also the scene where Annie and Alvy are cooking live lobster, something that had to have been improvised by both actors, especially since dealing with live lobster crawling around the floor, one must.

"Annie Hall" was also made at the time Allen liked to experiment with structure on his film. The movie weaves in and out of various comedic moments that, if you think about it might interrupt the flow of the film, yet it imbeds itself with the tone quite well. I'm speaking of such moments as the exaggerated childhood flashbacks where Alvy swears his family lived underneath a rollercoaster, and his hilarious take on his former school mates and where they ended up. My favorite has always been the kid who says "I used to be a heroin addict, now I'm a methadone addict."

At one point Allen even cuts to an animated sequence where Annie is portrayed as the Evil Queen from Disney's "Snow White". Yet Allen makes all this randomness work, they are portrayed more or less as sketch ideas, but fill in the tapestry of the story he's telling.

But what really counts and what I think makes this Allen's most beloved film is the relationship between Alvy and Annie, it's a human comedy about two very intelligent and neurotic people. They are unsure about what makes them happy, they are too concerned about life and how to live it, and analyzing it, they don't seem to settle down with each other. You could call this an anti-romantic comedy since it ends with the two not being together, but it's really Allen's tale about love, and even if it doesn't last, it makes life worth living.

Throughout the film Alvy uses jokes as an analogy on how he sees his life, he ends the film with a joke that basically explains why people like him enter into relationships, and it's really a bittersweet and beautiful sentiment the way it's delivered, and it's usually what I think of when I am reminded of this film.

The other thing I am reminded of is the image of Keaton in the two instances Allen films her singing in a nightclub. The first time, she is overshadowed by the noises of audience members and the ambiance of the nightclub, the second time, Allen gives her the moment to sing a song, but it's as if she is alone, we don't hear anything else but quite murmurs. I'm pretty sure she sings the whole song, and Allen doesn't cut away, he is showing us Keaton in this moment, and she is able to reveal herself to us. It's not just a moment where we get to see the real Keaton, but also the way you feel Allen saw her as well. Allen films Keaton singing again in his later film "Radio Days", where she had a cameo, and you feel in that film that the admiration for this women has not gone away. How he must've really loved her at one time, I'm sure they remained friends, but we know from this film that what they had was very special.