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| Annie Hall (1977) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Background
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. [Note: 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 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 Me and My Gay, or It Had to Be Jew if one of its alternative titles had been chosen. [Note: Allen later directed murder mysteries to satisfy that impulse: Shadows and Fog (1992), and Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) - retooled from this script.] 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 - and before that Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934). 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:
Plot Synopsis 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:
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 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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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!):
In a brilliant introductory shot, Annie pulls up in a taxicab at the curb - and she is not apologetic but irritable:
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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