Annie Hall (1977)
Directed by Woody Allen

Film Review

It may be heretical to say it (or even think it), but Star Wars wasn't the most important film to be released in 1977.  The year's other big hit, Annie Hall, probably had a far greater cultural impact, as it completely redefined the romantic comedy and forever altered how relationships between men and women were to be portrayed on the screen.  True, Star Wars did usher in a cultural and technological revolution of its own (on the back of a massive self-promotional campaign), but Annie Hall was just as influential and represents no less a cinematic milestone.  The film was a significant turning point in the career of its writer-director Woody Allen, marking a decisive break from his early lowbrow farces - Sleeper (1973), Love and Death (1975) - and the beginning of his more mature phase, in which he became far more preoccupied with the deeper, more serious aspects of human experience, such as the apparent incompatibility of the sexes and the elusive nature of true love.

For Annie Hall, Woody Allen appears to take his cue from Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage (1973), performing a similarly rigorous post-mortem on a failed relationship, in an attempt to work out just why it is that men and women cannot sustain a lasting love affair.  As well as being one of Allen's most insightful films, it is also his funniest, and a pretty good contender for the funniest film ever made.  Many of Woody Allen's greatest one-liners are here, including: "Sex with you is really a Kafka-esque experience" and "Hey, don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love."  It also includes what is arguably the best visual gag of any Woody Allen film (when our hero sneezes away a small fortune in cocaine), and features Diane Keaton in her best comedy role (proving she can sing as well as act).

Annie Hall breaks new ground for Allen both in its content (less slapstick, more character depth) and in its non-linear structure (the film should be especially noted for its highly effective use of flashbacks and flash forwards).  Allen's willingness to experiment goes as far as to include a mad animated digression, numerous asides where Allen talks straight to camera, and several sequences in which the main characters turn up in their past lives, like ghosts - all hilarious.  The result is a fragmented flurry of experiences, part real, part imaginary, reflecting the confused state of mind of someone who is struggling to comes to grips with the onset of a mid-life crisis.  When he set out to make the film, Woody Allen was inspired by Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963), and whilst his film is every bit as vibrant and daring as Fellini's great cinematic folly, it attains a far higher degree of narrative and stylistic coherence, and is consequently a far more accessible work.  Annie Hall provided a leaping off point for much of Allen's subsequent work, and many of its central themes (including the director's love for New York and abject loathing for Los Angeles) would recur in later films, becoming his personal trademark.

Woody Allen was himself greatly disappointed by the film, as it failed to turn out as he had hoped.  The critics thought otherwise and Annie Hall was widely hailed as a modern comic masterpiece.  The film was to be one of the director's most commercially successful, taking 38 million dollars worldwide, recouping its modest production cost almost ten times.  The film won four Oscars in 1978, including awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Actress (Keaton); Allen was himself nominated for the Best Actor award (for the first and only time in his career).  With Annie Hall, Woody Allen left the world in no doubt that he was a serious auteur filmmaker - one with a supreme talent for drawing art from life, finding humour in the tragedies of human experience whilst never letting us forget its pains and upsets.  His best work was just around the corner.

Film Synopsis

Alvy Singer is a New York stand-up comedian who is still obsessed with his former girlfriend Annie Hall, a year after their relationship ended.   With two failed marriages already under his belt, Alvy really believed Annie would be his lifelong partner, but it was not to be.  Just where did it go wrong?  Alvy recalls their first meeting and how easily they became friendly towards one another.  Admittedly, Annie, an aspiring singer, didn't share his morbid obsession with misery, failure and death, and she didn't seem that pleased when he insisted she should hold onto her insect-infested apartment, but apart from that, and her inability to make love to him without the stimulus of mind-altering drugs, he would say that they had a pretty secure relationship.  By the time Annie had hooked up with a record producer who was eager to make her a star, it was all over bar the screaming.  As Annie starts a new life in Los Angeles, Alvy writes a play about his affair with her, but cannot resist giving his fiction a happy ending.