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Annie Hall

October 15, 2023

For the High Sheriff of Derbyshire, see Annie Hall (high sheriff).

Annie Hall is a 1977 American satirical romantic comedy-drama film directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay written by Allen and Marshall Brickman, and produced by Allen's manager, Charles H. Joffe. The film stars Allen as Alvy Singer, who tries to figure out the reasons for the failure of his relationship with the eponymous female lead, played by Diane Keaton in a role written specifically for her.

Annie Hall
Theatrical release poster
Directed byWoody Allen
Written by
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyGordon Willis
Edited by
Music bySee soundtrack
Production
company
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release dates
Running time
93 minutes
CountryUnited States
Languages
  • English
  • German
Budget$4 million
Box office$44 million

Principal photography for the film began on May 19, 1976, on the South Fork of Long Island, and continued periodically for the next ten months. Allen has described the result, which marked his first collaboration with cinematographer Gordon Willis, as "a major turning point",[1] in that, unlike the farces and comedies that were his work to that point, it introduced a new level of seriousness. Academics have noted the contrast in the settings of New York City and Los Angeles, the stereotype of gender differences in sexuality, the presentation of Jewish identity, and the elements of psychoanalysis and modernism.

Annie Hall was screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival on March 27, 1977, before its official release in the United States on April 20, 1977. The film received widespread critical acclaim, and was nominated for the Big Five Academy Awards, winning four: the Academy Award for Best Picture, two for Allen (Best Director and, with Brickman, Best Original Screenplay), and Best Actress for Keaton. The film additionally won four BAFTA awards and a Golden Globe, the latter being awarded to Keaton. The film's box office receipts in the United States and Canada of $38,251,425 are fourth-best of Allen's works when not adjusted for inflation.

Ranking among the best films ever made, it ranks 31st on AFI's List of the greatest films in American cinema, 4th on their list of greatest comedy films and 28th on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies". Film critic Roger Ebert called it "just about everyone's favorite Woody Allen movie".[2] The film's screenplay was also named the funniest ever written by the Writers Guild of America in its list of the "101 Funniest Screenplays".[3] In 1992, the Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."[4]

Plot Edit

Comedian Alvy Singer is trying to understand why his relationship with Annie Hall ended a year ago. Growing up in Brooklyn, he vexed his mother with impossible questions about the emptiness of existence, but he was precocious about his innocent sexual curiosity, suddenly kissing a classmate at six years old and not understanding why she was not keen to reciprocate.

Annie and Alvy, in a line for The Sorrow and the Pity, overhear another man deriding the work of Federico Fellini and Marshall McLuhan; Alvy imagines McLuhan himself stepping in at his invitation to criticize the man's comprehension. That night, Annie shows no interest in sex with Alvy. Instead, they discuss his first wife, whose ardor gave him no pleasure. His second marriage was to a New York writer who did not like sports and was unable to reach orgasm.

With Annie, it is different. The two of them have fun cooking a meal of boiled lobster together. He teases her about the unusual men in her past. They had met playing tennis doubles with friends. Following the game, awkward small talk leads her to offer him a ride uptown, and then a glass of wine on her balcony. There, what seemed a mild exchange of trivial personal data is revealed in "mental subtitles" as an escalating flirtation. Their first date follows Annie's singing audition for a night club ("It Had to be You"). After their lovemaking that night, Alvy is "a wreck", while Annie relaxes with a joint.

Soon, Annie admits she loves Alvy, while he buys her books on death and says that his feelings for her are more than just love. When Annie moves in with him, things become very tense. Eventually, Alvy finds her arm-in-arm with one of her college professors, and the two begin to argue about whether this is the "flexibility" they had discussed. They eventually break up, and he searches for the truth of relationships, asking strangers on the street about the nature of love, questioning his formative years, and imagining a cartoon version of himself arguing with a cartoon Annie portrayed as the Evil Queen in Snow White.

Alvy attempts a return to dating, but the effort is marred by neurosis and an episode of bad sex that is interrupted when Annie calls in the middle of the night, insisting that he come over immediately to kill two spiders in her bathroom. A reconciliation follows, coupled with a vow to stay together, come what may. However, their separate discussions with their therapists make it evident there is an unspoken and unbridgeable divide. When Alvy accepts an offer to present an award on television, they travel to Los Angeles with Alvy's friend Rob. However, on the return trip, they agree that their relationship is not working. After losing Annie to her record producer Tony Lacey, Alvy unsuccessfully tries rekindling the flame with a marriage proposal. Back in New York, he stages a play of their relationship, but he changes the ending: now she accepts.

The last meeting between Annie and Alvy is a wistful coda on Manhattan's Upper West Side after they have both moved on to someone new. Alvy's voice returns with a summation: love is essential, especially if it is neurotic. Annie sings "Seems Like Old Times", and the credits roll.

Cast Edit

 
Truman Capote, pictured here in 1959, had a cameo role in the film.

Truman Capote has a cameo in the film. Alvy is making quips about people walking by. He says "There's the winner of the Truman Capote look-alike contest" as Truman Capote walks through the frame.[6] Several actors who later gained a higher profile had small parts in the movie: John Glover as Annie's actor boyfriend, Jerry; Jeff Goldblum as a man who "forgot [his] mantra" at Tony Lacey's Christmas party; Beverly D'Angelo as an actress in Rob's TV show; Christopher Walken as Annie's brother, Duane; and Sigourney Weaver, in her film debut, in the closing sequence as Alvy's date at the movie theater. Laurie Bird also appears, two years before her suicide.

Style and technique Edit

Technically, the film marked an advance for the director. He selected Gordon Willis as his cinematographer—for Allen "a very important teacher" and a "technical wizard," saying, "I really count Annie Hall as the first step toward maturity in some way in making films."[7] At the time, it was considered an "odd pairing" by many, Keaton among them. The director was known for his comedies and farces, while Willis was known as "the prince of darkness" for work on dramatic films like The Godfather.[8] Despite this, the two became friends during filming and continued the collaboration on several later films, including Zelig, which earned Willis his first Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography.[8]

Willis described the production for the film as "relatively easy."[8] He shot in varying styles; "hot golden light for California, grey overcast for Manhattan and a forties Hollywood glossy for ... dream sequences," most of which were cut.[9] It was his suggestion which led Allen to film the dual therapy scenes in one set divided by a wall instead of the usual split screen method.[8] He tried long takes, with some shots, unabridged, lasting an entire scene, which, for Ebert, add to the dramatic power of the film: "Few viewers probably notice how much of Annie Hall consists of people talking, simply talking. They walk and talk, sit and talk, go to shrinks, go to lunch, make love and talk, talk to the camera, or launch into inspired monologues like Annie's free-association as she describes her family to Alvy. This speech by Diane Keaton is as close to perfect as such a speech can likely be ... all done in one take of brilliant brinksmanship." He cites a study that calculated the average shot length of Annie Hall to be 14.5 seconds, while other films made in 1977 had an average shot length of 4–7 seconds.[2] Peter Cowie suggests that "Allen breaks up his extended shots with more orthodox cutting back and forth in conversation pieces so that the forward momentum of the film is sustained."[10] Bernd Herzogenrath notes the innovation in the use of the split-screen during the dinner scene to powerfully exaggerate the contrast between the Jewish and the gentile family.[11]

Although the film is not essentially experimental, at several points it undermines the narrative reality.[12] James Bernardoni notes Allen's way of opening the film by facing the camera, which immediately intrudes upon audience involvement in the film.[13] In one scene, Allen's character, in line to see a movie with Annie, listens to a man behind him deliver misinformed pontifications on the significance of Fellini's and Marshall McLuhan's work. Allen pulls McLuhan himself from just off-camera to correct the man's errors personally.[2] Later in the film, when we see Annie and Alvy in their first extended talk, "mental subtitles" convey to the audience the characters' nervous inner doubts.[2] An animated scene—with artwork based on the comic strip Inside Woody Allen—depicts Alvy and Annie in the guise of the Wicked Queen from Snow White.[2] Although Allen uses each of these techniques only once, the "fourth wall" is broken several other times when characters address the camera directly. In one, Alvy stops several passers-by to ask questions about love, and in another, he shrugs off writing a happy ending to his relationship with Annie in his autobiographical first play as forgivable "wish-fulfillment." Allen chose to have Alvy break the fourth wall, he explained, "because I felt many of the people in the audience had the same feelings and the same problems. I wanted to talk to them directly and confront them."[7]

Production Edit

Writing Edit

The idea for what would become Annie Hall was developed as Allen walked around New York City with co-writer Marshall Brickman. The pair discussed the project frequently, sometimes becoming frustrated and rejecting the idea. Allen wrote a first draft of a screenplay within a four-day period, sending it to Brickman to make alterations. According to Brickman, this draft centered on a man in his forties, someone whose life consisted "of several strands." One was a relationship with a young woman, another was a concern with the banality of the life that we all live, and a third an obsession with proving himself and testing himself to find out what kind of character he had. Allen himself turned forty in 1975, and Brickman suggests that "advancing age" and "worries about death" had influenced Allen's philosophical, personal approach to complement his "commercial side".[14][15] Allen made the conscious decision to "sacrifice some of the laughs for a story about human beings".[8] He recognized that for the first time he had the courage to abandon the safety of complete broad comedy and had the will to produce a film of deeper meaning which would be a nourishing experience for the audience.[1] He was also influenced by Federico Fellini's comedy drama 8½ (1963), created at a similar personal turning point, and similarly colored by each director's psychoanalysis.[15]

Brickman and Allen sent the screenplay back and forth until they were ready to ask United Artists for $4 million.[15] Many elements from the early drafts did not survive. It was originally a drama centered on a murder mystery with a comic and romantic subplot.[16] According to Allen, the murder occurred after a scene that remains in the film, the sequence in which Annie and Alvy miss the Ingmar Bergman film Face to Face (1976).[17] Although they decided to drop the murder plot, Allen and Brickman made a murder mystery many years later: Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), also starring Diane Keaton.[18] The draft that Allen presented to the film's editor, Ralph Rosenblum, concluded with the words, "ending to be shot."[19]

Allen suggested Anhedonia, a term for the inability to experience pleasure, as a working title,[20][21] and Brickman suggested alternatives including It Had to Be Jew, Rollercoaster Named Desire and Me and My Goy.[22] An advertising agency, hired by United Artists, embraced Allen's choice of an obscure word by suggesting the studio take out newspaper advertisements that looked like fake tabloid headlines such as "Anhedonia Strikes Cleveland!".[22] However, Allen experimented with several titles over five test screenings, including Anxiety and Annie and Alvy, before settling on Annie Hall.[22]

Casting Edit

Several references in the film to Allen's own life have invited speculation that it is autobiographical. Both Alvy and Allen were comedians. His birthday appears on the blackboard in a school scene, and "Alvy" was one of Allen's childhood nicknames;[23] certain features of his childhood are found in Alvy Singer's;[24] Allen went to New York University and so did Alvy. Diane Keaton's real surname is "Hall" and "Annie" was her nickname, and she and Allen were once romantically involved.[25] However, Allen is quick to dispel these suggestions. "The stuff that people insist is autobiographical is almost invariably not," Allen said. "It's so exaggerated that it's virtually meaningless to the people upon whom these little nuances are based. People got it into their heads that Annie Hall was autobiographical, and I couldn't convince them it wasn't".[26] Contrary to various interviewers and commentators, he says, Alvy is not the character that is closest to himself; he identified more with the mother (Eve, played by Geraldine Page) in his next film, Interiors.[27] Despite this, Keaton has stated that the relationship between Alvy and Annie was partly based on her relationship with the director.[28]

The role of Annie Hall was written specifically for Keaton, who had worked with Allen on Play It Again, Sam (1972), Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975).[28] She considered the character an "affable version" of herself—both were "semi-articulate, dreamed of being a singer and suffered from insecurity"—and was surprised to win an Oscar for her performance.[28] The film also marks the second film collaboration between Allen and Tony Roberts, their previous project being Play It Again, Sam.[8]

Federico Fellini was Allen's first choice to appear in the cinema lobby scene because his films were under discussion,[17] but Allen chose cultural academic Marshall McLuhan after both Fellini and Luis Buñuel declined the cameo.[29] Some cast members, biographer John Baxter claims, were aggrieved at Allen's treatment of them. The director "acted coldly" towards McLuhan, who had to return from Canada for reshooting, and Mordecai Lawner, who played Alvy's father, claimed that Allen never spoke to him.[29] However, during the production, Allen began a two-year relationship with Stacey Nelkin, who appears in a single scene.[29]

Filming, editing and music Edit

 
Woody Allen saw the Coney Island Thunderbolt when scouting locations and wrote it into the script as Alvy's childhood home.[23]

Principal photography began on May 19, 1976, on the South Fork of Long Island with the scene in which Alvy and Annie boil live lobsters; filming continued periodically for the next ten months,[30] and deviated frequently from the screenplay. There was nothing written about Alvy's childhood home lying under a roller coaster, but when Allen was scouting locations in Brooklyn with Willis and art director Mel Bourne, he "saw this roller-coaster, and ... saw the house under it. And I thought, we have to use this."[24] Similarly, there is the incident where Alvy scatters a trove of cocaine with an accidental sneeze: although not in the script, the joke emerged from a rehearsal happenstance and stayed in the movie. In audience testing, this laugh was so sustained that a much longer pause had to be added so that the following dialogue was not lost.[31]

Editor Ralph Rosenblum's first assembly of the film in 1976 left Brickman disappointed. "I felt that the film was running off in nine different directions," Brickman recalled.[32] "It was like a first draft of a novel... from which two or three films could possibly be assembled."[33] Rosenblum characterized the first cut, at two hours and twenty minutes,[34] as "the surrealistic and abstract adventures of a neurotic Jewish comedian who was reliving his highly flawed life and in the process satirizing much of our culture... a visual monologue, a more sophisticated and more philosophical version of Take the Money and Run".[34] Brickman found it "nondramatic and ultimately uninteresting, a kind of cerebral exercise."[35] He suggested a more linear narrative.[36]

The present-tense relationship between Alvy and Annie was not the narrative focus of this first cut, but Allen and Rosenblum recognized it as the dramatic spine, and began reworking the film "in the direction of that relationship."[37] Rosenblum recalled that Allen "had no hesitation about trimming away much of the first twenty minutes in order to establish Keaton more quickly."[35] According to Allen, "I didn't sit down with Marshall Brickman and say, 'We're going to write a picture about a relationship.' I mean the whole concept of the picture changed as we were cutting it."[36]

As the film was budgeted for two weeks of post-production photography,[19] late 1976 saw three separate shoots for the final segment, but only some of this material was used.[38] The narration that ends the film, featuring the joke about 'we all need the eggs', was conceived and recorded only two hours before a test screening.[38]

The credits call the film "A Jack Rollins and Charles H. Joffe Production"; the two men were Allen's managers and received this same credit on his films from 1969 to 1993. However, for this film, Joffe took producer credit and therefore received the Academy Award for Best Picture. The title sequence features a black background with white text in the Windsor Light Condensed typeface, a design that Allen would use on his subsequent films. Stig Björkman sees some similarity to Ingmar Bergman's simple and consistent title design, although Allen says that his own choice is a cost-saving device.[39]

Very little background music is heard in the film, a departure for Allen influenced by Ingmar Bergman.[39] Diane Keaton performs twice in the jazz club: "It Had to be You" and "Seems Like Old Times" (the latter reprises in voiceover on the closing scene). The other exceptions include a boy's choir "Christmas Medley" played while the characters drive through Los Angeles, the Molto allegro from Mozart's Jupiter Symphony (heard as Annie and Alvy drive through the countryside), Tommy Dorsey's performance of "Sleepy Lagoon",[40] and the anodyne cover of the Savoy Brown song "A Hard Way to Go" playing at a party in the mansion of Paul Simon's character.

Soundtrack Edit

Release Edit

Box office and release Edit

Annie Hall was shown at the Los Angeles Film Festival on March 27, 1977,[20] before its official release in the United States on April 20, 1977.[41] The film ultimately earned $38,251,425 ($185 million in 2022 dollars) in the United States and Canada against a $4-million budget, making it the 11th highest-grossing picture of 1977.[41] On raw figures, it currently ranks as Allen's fourth-highest-grossing film in the United States, after Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters and Midnight in Paris; when adjusted for inflation, the gross figure makes it Allen's biggest box office hit.[42] It played for over 100 consecutive weeks in London and grossed over $5.6 million in the United Kingdom.[43] It was first released on Blu-ray on January 24, 2012, alongside Allen's film Manhattan (1979).[44] Both releases include their original theatrical trailers.[44]

Reception Edit

Critical response Edit

 
Diane Keaton received widespread critical acclaim and numerous accolades for her performance.

Annie Hall met with widespread critical acclaim upon its release, with major praise directed towards the film's script and the performances of Allen and Keaton.

Tim Radford of The Guardian called the film "Allen's most closely focused and daring film to date".[45] The New York Times' Vincent Canby preferred Annie Hall to Allen's second directorial effort, Take the Money and Run, since the former is more "humane" while the latter is more a "cartoon".[46] Several critics have compared the film favorably to Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage (1973),[46][47][48] including Joseph McBride in Variety, who found it Allen's "most three-dimensional film to date" with an ambition equal to Bergman's best even as the co-stars become the "contemporary equivalent of ... Tracy-Hepburn."[47]

More critically, Peter Cowie commented that the film "suffers from its profusion of cultural references and asides".[49] Writing for New York magazine, John Simon called the film "unfunny comedy, poor moviemaking, and embarrassing self-revelation," and wrote that Keaton's performance was "in bad taste to watch and indecency to display," saying that the part should have been played by Robin Mary Paris, the actress who appears briefly in the scene where Alvy Singer has written a two-character play nakedly based on himself and Annie Hall. Simon's review of Annie Hall "It is a film so shapeless, sprawling, repetitious, and aimless as to seem to beg for oblivion. At this, it is successful."[50]

The film has continued to receive positive reviews. In his 2002 lookback, Roger Ebert added it to his Great Movies list and commented with surprise that the film had "an instant familiarity" despite its age,[2] and Slant writer Jaime N. Christley found the one-liners "still gut-busting after 35 years".[48] A later Guardian critic, Peter Bradshaw, named it the best comedy film of all time, commenting that "this wonderfully funny, unbearably sad film is a miracle of comic writing and inspired film-making".[51] John Marriott of the Radio Times believed that Annie Hall was the film where Allen "found his own singular voice, a voice that echoes across events with a mixture of exuberance and introspection", referring to the "comic delight" derived from the "spirited playing of Diane Keaton as the kooky innocent from the Midwest, and Woody himself as the fumbling New York neurotic".[52] Empire magazine rated the movie five out of five stars, calling it a "classic".[53] In 2017, Claire Dederer wrote, "Annie Hall is the greatest comic film of the twentieth century [...] because it acknowledges the irrepressible nihilism that lurks at the center of all comedy."[54]

The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited Annie Hall as one of his favorite films.[55][56]

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 97% based on 108 reviews, with an average rating of 9.10/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Filled with poignant performances and devastating humor, Annie Hall represents a quantum leap for Woody Allen and remains an American classic."[57] Metacritic gave the film a score of 92 out of 100 based on 20 critical reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[58]

Critical analysis Edit

Love and sexuality Edit

 
Woody Allen in New York City in 2006

Sociologists Virginia Rutter and Pepper Schwartz consider Alvy and Annie's relationship to be a stereotype of gender differences in sexuality.[59] The nature of love is a repeating subject for Allen and co-star Tony Roberts described this film as "the story of everybody who falls in love, and then falls out of love and goes on."[8] Alvy searches for love's purpose through his effort to get over his depression about the demise of his relationship with Annie. Sometimes he sifts through his memories of the relationship, at another point he stops people on the sidewalk, with one woman saying that "It's never something you do. That's how people are. Love fades," a suggestion that it was no one's fault, they just grew apart and the end was inevitable. By the end of the film, Alvy accepts this and decides that love is ultimately "irrational and crazy and absurd", but a necessity of life.[60] Christopher Knight believes Alvy's quest upon meeting Annie is carnal, whereas hers is on an emotional note.[61]

Richard Brody of The New Yorker notes the film's "Eurocentric art-house self-awareness" and Alvy Singer's "psychoanalytic obsession in baring his sexual desires and frustrations, romantic disasters, and neurotic inhibitions".[62]

Jewish identity Edit

Singer is identified with the stereotypical neurotic Jewish male, and the differences between Alvy and Annie are often related to the perceptions and realities of Jewish identity. Vincent Brook notes that "Alvy dines with the WASP-y Hall family and imagines that they must see him as a Hasidic Jew, complete with payot (ear locks) and a large black hat."[63] Robert M. Seltzer and Norman J. Cohen highlight the scene in which Annie remarks that Annie's grandmother "hates Jews. She thinks they just make money, but she's the one. Is she ever, I'm telling you.", revealing the hypocrisy in her grandmother's stereotypical American view of Jews by arguing that "no stigma attaches to the love of money in America".[64] Bernd Herzogenrath also considers Allen's joke, "I would like to but we need the eggs", to the doctor at the end when he suggests putting him in a mental institution, to be a paradox of not only the persona of the urban neurotic Jew but also of the film itself.[11]

Woody Allen persona Edit

Christopher Knight points out that Annie Hall is framed through Alvy's experiences. "Generally, what we know about Annie and about the relationship comes filtered through Alvy, an intrusive narrator capable of halting the narrative and stepping out from it in order to entreat the audience's interpretative favor."[65] He suggests that because Allen's films blur the protagonist with "past and future protagonists as well as with the director himself", it "makes a difference as to whether we are most responsive to the director's or the character's framing of events".[66] Despite the narrative's framing, "the joke is on Alvy."[67] Emanuel Levy believes that Alvy Singer became synonymous with the public perception of Woody Allen in the United States.[68] Annie Hall is viewed as the definitive Woody Allen film in displaying neurotic humor.[69]

Location Edit

 
Upper East Side of New York City

Annie Hall "is as much a love song to New York City as it is to the character,"[70] reflecting Allen's adoration of the island of Manhattan. It was a relationship he explored repeatedly, particularly in films like Manhattan (1979) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).[8] Annie Hall's apartment, which still exists on East 70th Street between Lexington Avenue and Park Avenue is by Allen's own confession his favorite block in the city.[71] Peter Cowie argues that the film shows "a romanticized view" of the borough, with the camera "linger[ing] on the Upper East Side [... and where] the fear of crime does not trouble its characters."[72] By contrast, California is presented less positively, and David Halle notes the obvious "invidious intellectual comparison" between New York City and Los Angeles.[73] While Manhattan's movie theaters show classic and foreign films, Los Angeles theaters run less-prestigious fare such as The House of Exorcism and Messiah of Evil.[72] Rob's demonstration of adding canned laughter to television demonstrates the "cynical artifice of the medium".[72] New York City serves as a symbol of Alvy's personality ("gloomy, claustrophobic, and socially cold, but also an intellectual haven full of nervous energy") while Los Angeles is a symbol of freedom for Annie.[70]

Psychoanalysis and modernism Edit

Annie Hall has been cited as a film which uses both therapy and analysis for comic effect.[74] Sam B. Girgus considers Annie Hall to be a story about memory and retrospection, which "dramatizes a return via narrative desire to the repressed and the unconscious in a manner similar to psychoanalysis".[75] He argues that the film constitutes a self-conscious assertion of how narrative desire and humor interact in the film to reform ideas and perceptions and that Allen's deployment of Freudian concepts and humor forms a "pattern of skepticism toward surface meaning that compels further interpretation". Girgus believes that proof of the pervasiveness of Sigmund Freud in the film is demonstrated at the beginning through a reference to a joke in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, and makes another joke about a psychiatrist and patient, which Girgus argues is also symbolic of the dynamic between humor and the unconscious in the film.[75] Further Freudian concepts are later addressed in the film with Annie's recall of a dream to her psychoanalyst in which Frank Sinatra is smothering her with a pillow, which alludes to Freud's belief in dreams as "visual representations of words or ideas".[75]

Peter Bailey in his book The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen, argues that Alvy displays a "genial denigration of art" which contains a "significant equivocation", in that in his self-deprecation he invites the audience to believe that he is leveling with them.[76] Bailey argues that Allen's devices in the film, including the subtitles which reveal Annie's and Alvy's thoughts "extend and reinforce Annie Hall's winsome ethos of plain-dealing and ingenuousness".[76] He muses that the film is full of antimimetic emblems such as McLuhan's magical appearance which provide quirky humor and that the "disparity between mental projections of reality and actuality" drives the film. His view is that self-reflective cinematic devices intelligently dramatize the difference between surface and substance, with visual emblems "incessantly distilling the distinction between the world mentally constructed and reality".[76]

In his discussion of the film's relation to modernism, Thomas Schatz finds the film an unresolved "examination of the process of human interaction and interpersonal communication"[77] and "immediately establishes [a] self-referential stance" that invites the spectator "to read the narrative as something other than a sequential development toward some transcendent truth".[78] For him, Alvy "is the victim of a tendency toward overdetermination of meaning – or in modernist terms 'the tyranny of the signified' – and his involvement with Annie can be viewed as an attempt to establish a spontaneous, intellectually unencumbered relationship, an attempt which is doomed to failure."[77]

Awards and accolades Edit

Annie Hall won four Oscars at the 50th Academy Awards on April 3, 1978, and was nominated for five (the Big Five) in total. Producer Charles H. Joffe received the statue for Best Picture, Allen for Best Director and, with Brickman, for Best Original Screenplay, and Keaton for Best Actress. Allen was also nominated for Best Actor.[79] Many had expected Star Wars to win the major awards, including Brickman and executive producer Robert Greenhut.[8]

The film was also honored five times at the BAFTA awards. Along with the top award for Best Film and the award for Best Editing, Keaton won for Best Actress, Allen won for Best Direction and Best Original Screenplay alongside Brickman.[80] The film received one Golden Globe Award, for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical (Keaton), in addition to four nominations: Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy (the latter three for Allen).

In 1992, the United States' Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in its National Film Registry that includes "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" films.[4] The film is often mentioned among the greatest comedies of all time. The American Film Institute lists it 31st in American cinema history.[81] In 2000, they named it second greatest romantic comedy in American cinema.[81] Keaton's performance of "Seems Like Old Times" was ranked 90th on their list of greatest songs included in a film, and her line "La-dee-da, la-dee-da." was named the 55th greatest movie quote.[81] The screenplay was named the sixth greatest screenplay by the Writers Guild of America, West[82] while IGN named it the seventh greatest comedy film of all time.[83] In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted it the forty-second greatest comedy film of all time, and the seventh greatest romantic comedy film of all time.[84] Several lists ranking Allen's best films have put Annie Hall among his greatest work.[85][86][87]

In June 2008, AFI revealed its 10 Top 10—the best ten films in ten classic American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community and Annie Hall was placed second in the romantic comedy genre.[88] AFI also ranked Annie Hall on multiple other lists. In November 2008, Annie Hall was voted in at No. 68 on Empire magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.[89] It is also ranked #2 on Rotten Tomatoes' 25 Best Romantic Comedies, second only to The Philadelphia Story.[90] In 2012, the film was listed as the 127th best film of all time by the Sight & Sound critics' poll.[91] The film was also named the 132nd best film by the Sight & Sound directors' poll.[91] In October 2013, the film was voted by the Guardian readers as the second best film directed by Woody Allen.[92] In November 2015, the film was named the funniest screenplay by the Writers Guild of America in its list of 101 Funniest Screenplays.[93]

American Film Institute recognition Edit

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

1992 – National Film Registry.[101]

In 2006, Premiere magazine ranked Keaton in Annie Hall as 60th in its list of the "100 Greatest Performances of All Time", and noted:

It's hard to play ditzy. ... The genius of Annie is that despite her loopy backhand, awful driving, and nervous tics, she's also a complicated, intelligent woman. Keaton brilliantly displays this dichotomy of her character, especially when she yammers away on a first date with Alvy (Woody Allen), while the subtitle reads, "He probably thinks I'm a yoyo." Yo-yo? Hardly.[102]

Legacy and influence Edit

 
Diane Keaton's dress style as Annie Hall; an influence on the fashion world during the late 1970s

Although the film received widespread critical acclaim and numerous awards, Allen himself was disappointed with it, and said in an interview, "When Annie Hall started out, that film was not supposed to be what I wound up with. The film was supposed to be what happens in a guy's mind ... Nobody understood anything that went on. The relationship between myself and Diane Keaton was all anyone cared about. That was not what I cared about ... In the end, I had to reduce the film to just me and Diane Keaton, and that relationship, so I was quite disappointed in that movie".[103] Allen has repeatedly declined to make a sequel,[104] and in a 1992 interview stated that "Sequelism has become an annoying thing. I don't think Francis Coppola should have done Godfather III because Godfather II was quite great. When they make a sequel, it's just a thirst for more money, so I don't like that idea so much".[105]

Diane Keaton has stated that Annie Hall was her favorite role and that the film meant everything to her.[106] When asked if being most associated with the role concerned her as an actress, she replied, "I'm not haunted by Annie Hall. I'm happy to be Annie Hall. If somebody wants to see me that way, it's fine by me". Costume designer Ruth Morley, working with Keaton, created a look which had an influence on the fashion world during the late-70s, with women adopting the style: layering oversized, mannish blazers over vests, billowy trousers or long skirts, a man's tie, and boots.[107] The look was often referred to as the "Annie Hall look".[108] Some sources suggest that Keaton herself was mainly responsible for the look, and Ralph Lauren has often claimed credit, but only one jacket and one tie were purchased from Ralph Lauren for use in the film.[109] Allen recalled that Lauren and Keaton's dress style almost did not end up in the film. "She came in," he recalled in 1992, "and the costume lady on Annie Hall said, 'Tell her not to wear that. She can't wear that. It's so crazy.' And I said, 'Leave her. She's a genius. Let's just leave her alone, let her wear what she wants.'"[110]

The film's script topped the Writers Guild of America's list of 101 funniest screenplays ever, surpassing Some Like It Hot (1959), Groundhog Day (1993), Airplane! (1980), and Tootsie (1982).[111] James Bernardoni states that the film is "one of the very few romantic comedy dramas of the New Hollywood era and one that has rightly taken its place among the classics of that reverted genre", likening the seriocomic meditation on the couple relationship to George Cukor's Adam's Rib (1949), starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.[13] Since its release, other romantic comedies have inspired comparison. When Harry Met Sally... (1989), Chasing Amy (1997), Burning Annie (2007), 500 Days of Summer (2009) and Allen's 2003 film, Anything Else, are among them,[91][112][113][114][115] while film director Rian Johnson said in an interview for the book, The Film That Changed My Life, that Annie Hall inspired him to become a film director.[116] Karen Gillan stated that she watched Annie Hall as part of her research for her lead role in Not Another Happy Ending.[117] In 2018, Matt Starr and Ellie Sachs released a short film remake starring senior citizens.[118][119]

Note Edit

  1. ^ Misspelled as "Christopher Wlaken" in the closing credits.[5]

References Edit

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External links Edit

 
Wikiquote has quotations related to Annie Hall.

October 15, 2023
annie, hall, high, sheriff, derbyshire, high, sheriff, 1977, american, satirical, romantic, comedy, drama, film, directed, woody, allen, from, screenplay, written, allen, marshall, brickman, produced, allen, manager, charles, joffe, film, stars, allen, alvy, s. For the High Sheriff of Derbyshire see Annie Hall high sheriff Annie Hall is a 1977 American satirical romantic comedy drama film directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay written by Allen and Marshall Brickman and produced by Allen s manager Charles H Joffe The film stars Allen as Alvy Singer who tries to figure out the reasons for the failure of his relationship with the eponymous female lead played by Diane Keaton in a role written specifically for her Annie HallTheatrical release posterDirected byWoody AllenWritten byWoody Allen Marshall BrickmanProduced byCharles H Joffe Jack Rollins uncredited StarringWoody Allen Diane Keaton Tony Roberts Carol Kane Paul Simon Janet Margolin Shelley Duvall Christopher Walken Colleen DewhurstCinematographyGordon WillisEdited byRalph Rosenblum Wendy Greene BricmontMusic bySee soundtrackProductioncompanyA Jack Rollins and Charles H Joffe ProductionDistributed byUnited ArtistsRelease datesMarch 27 1977 1977 03 27 Los Angeles Film Festival April 20 1977 1977 04 20 United States Running time93 minutesCountryUnited StatesLanguagesEnglish GermanBudget 4 millionBox office 44 millionPrincipal photography for the film began on May 19 1976 on the South Fork of Long Island and continued periodically for the next ten months Allen has described the result which marked his first collaboration with cinematographer Gordon Willis as a major turning point 1 in that unlike the farces and comedies that were his work to that point it introduced a new level of seriousness Academics have noted the contrast in the settings of New York City and Los Angeles the stereotype of gender differences in sexuality the presentation of Jewish identity and the elements of psychoanalysis and modernism Annie Hall was screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival on March 27 1977 before its official release in the United States on April 20 1977 The film received widespread critical acclaim and was nominated for the Big Five Academy Awards winning four the Academy Award for Best Picture two for Allen Best Director and with Brickman Best Original Screenplay and Best Actress for Keaton The film additionally won four BAFTA awards and a Golden Globe the latter being awarded to Keaton The film s box office receipts in the United States and Canada of 38 251 425 are fourth best of Allen s works when not adjusted for inflation Ranking among the best films ever made it ranks 31st on AFI s List of the greatest films in American cinema 4th on their list of greatest comedy films and 28th on Bravo s 100 Funniest Movies Film critic Roger Ebert called it just about everyone s favorite Woody Allen movie 2 The film s screenplay was also named the funniest ever written by the Writers Guild of America in its list of the 101 Funniest Screenplays 3 In 1992 the Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being culturally historically or aesthetically significant 4 Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Style and technique 4 Production 4 1 Writing 4 2 Casting 4 3 Filming editing and music 5 Soundtrack 6 Release 6 1 Box office and release 7 Reception 7 1 Critical response 7 2 Critical analysis 7 2 1 Love and sexuality 7 2 2 Jewish identity 7 2 3 Woody Allen persona 7 2 4 Location 7 2 5 Psychoanalysis and modernism 7 3 Awards and accolades 7 4 American Film Institute recognition 7 5 Legacy and influence 8 Note 9 References 10 Bibliography 11 External linksPlot EditComedian Alvy Singer is trying to understand why his relationship with Annie Hall ended a year ago Growing up in Brooklyn he vexed his mother with impossible questions about the emptiness of existence but he was precocious about his innocent sexual curiosity suddenly kissing a classmate at six years old and not understanding why she was not keen to reciprocate Annie and Alvy in a line for The Sorrow and the Pity overhear another man deriding the work of Federico Fellini and Marshall McLuhan Alvy imagines McLuhan himself stepping in at his invitation to criticize the man s comprehension That night Annie shows no interest in sex with Alvy Instead they discuss his first wife whose ardor gave him no pleasure His second marriage was to a New York writer who did not like sports and was unable to reach orgasm With Annie it is different The two of them have fun cooking a meal of boiled lobster together He teases her about the unusual men in her past They had met playing tennis doubles with friends Following the game awkward small talk leads her to offer him a ride uptown and then a glass of wine on her balcony There what seemed a mild exchange of trivial personal data is revealed in mental subtitles as an escalating flirtation Their first date follows Annie s singing audition for a night club It Had to be You After their lovemaking that night Alvy is a wreck while Annie relaxes with a joint Soon Annie admits she loves Alvy while he buys her books on death and says that his feelings for her are more than just love When Annie moves in with him things become very tense Eventually Alvy finds her arm in arm with one of her college professors and the two begin to argue about whether this is the flexibility they had discussed They eventually break up and he searches for the truth of relationships asking strangers on the street about the nature of love questioning his formative years and imagining a cartoon version of himself arguing with a cartoon Annie portrayed as the Evil Queen in Snow White Alvy attempts a return to dating but the effort is marred by neurosis and an episode of bad sex that is interrupted when Annie calls in the middle of the night insisting that he come over immediately to kill two spiders in her bathroom A reconciliation follows coupled with a vow to stay together come what may However their separate discussions with their therapists make it evident there is an unspoken and unbridgeable divide When Alvy accepts an offer to present an award on television they travel to Los Angeles with Alvy s friend Rob However on the return trip they agree that their relationship is not working After losing Annie to her record producer Tony Lacey Alvy unsuccessfully tries rekindling the flame with a marriage proposal Back in New York he stages a play of their relationship but he changes the ending now she accepts The last meeting between Annie and Alvy is a wistful coda on Manhattan s Upper West Side after they have both moved on to someone new Alvy s voice returns with a summation love is essential especially if it is neurotic Annie sings Seems Like Old Times and the credits roll Cast Edit nbsp Truman Capote pictured here in 1959 had a cameo role in the film Woody Allen as Alvy Singer Diane Keaton as Annie Hall Tony Roberts as Rob Carol Kane as Allison Portchnik Paul Simon as Tony Lacey Janet Margolin as Robin Shelley Duvall as Pam Christopher Walken a as Duane Hall Colleen Dewhurst as Mrs Hall Donald Symington as Mr Hall Joan Newman as Mrs Singer Mordecai Lawner as Alvy s father Marshall McLuhan as himselfTruman Capote has a cameo in the film Alvy is making quips about people walking by He says There s the winner of the Truman Capote look alike contest as Truman Capote walks through the frame 6 Several actors who later gained a higher profile had small parts in the movie John Glover as Annie s actor boyfriend Jerry Jeff Goldblum as a man who forgot his mantra at Tony Lacey s Christmas party Beverly D Angelo as an actress in Rob s TV show Christopher Walken as Annie s brother Duane and Sigourney Weaver in her film debut in the closing sequence as Alvy s date at the movie theater Laurie Bird also appears two years before her suicide Style and technique EditTechnically the film marked an advance for the director He selected Gordon Willis as his cinematographer for Allen a very important teacher and a technical wizard saying I really count Annie Hall as the first step toward maturity in some way in making films 7 At the time it was considered an odd pairing by many Keaton among them The director was known for his comedies and farces while Willis was known as the prince of darkness for work on dramatic films like The Godfather 8 Despite this the two became friends during filming and continued the collaboration on several later films including Zelig which earned Willis his first Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography 8 Willis described the production for the film as relatively easy 8 He shot in varying styles hot golden light for California grey overcast for Manhattan and a forties Hollywood glossy for dream sequences most of which were cut 9 It was his suggestion which led Allen to film the dual therapy scenes in one set divided by a wall instead of the usual split screen method 8 He tried long takes with some shots unabridged lasting an entire scene which for Ebert add to the dramatic power of the film Few viewers probably notice how much of Annie Hall consists of people talking simply talking They walk and talk sit and talk go to shrinks go to lunch make love and talk talk to the camera or launch into inspired monologues like Annie s free association as she describes her family to Alvy This speech by Diane Keaton is as close to perfect as such a speech can likely be all done in one take of brilliant brinksmanship He cites a study that calculated the average shot length of Annie Hall to be 14 5 seconds while other films made in 1977 had an average shot length of 4 7 seconds 2 Peter Cowie suggests that Allen breaks up his extended shots with more orthodox cutting back and forth in conversation pieces so that the forward momentum of the film is sustained 10 Bernd Herzogenrath notes the innovation in the use of the split screen during the dinner scene to powerfully exaggerate the contrast between the Jewish and the gentile family 11 Although the film is not essentially experimental at several points it undermines the narrative reality 12 James Bernardoni notes Allen s way of opening the film by facing the camera which immediately intrudes upon audience involvement in the film 13 In one scene Allen s character in line to see a movie with Annie listens to a man behind him deliver misinformed pontifications on the significance of Fellini s and Marshall McLuhan s work Allen pulls McLuhan himself from just off camera to correct the man s errors personally 2 Later in the film when we see Annie and Alvy in their first extended talk mental subtitles convey to the audience the characters nervous inner doubts 2 An animated scene with artwork based on the comic strip Inside Woody Allen depicts Alvy and Annie in the guise of the Wicked Queen from Snow White 2 Although Allen uses each of these techniques only once the fourth wall is broken several other times when characters address the camera directly In one Alvy stops several passers by to ask questions about love and in another he shrugs off writing a happy ending to his relationship with Annie in his autobiographical first play as forgivable wish fulfillment Allen chose to have Alvy break the fourth wall he explained because I felt many of the people in the audience had the same feelings and the same problems I wanted to talk to them directly and confront them 7 Production EditWriting Edit The idea for what would become Annie Hall was developed as Allen walked around New York City with co writer Marshall Brickman The pair discussed the project frequently sometimes becoming frustrated and rejecting the idea Allen wrote a first draft of a screenplay within a four day period sending it to Brickman to make alterations According to Brickman this draft centered on a man in his forties someone whose life consisted of several strands One was a relationship with a young woman another was a concern with the banality of the life that we all live and a third an obsession with proving himself and testing himself to find out what kind of character he had Allen himself turned forty in 1975 and Brickman suggests that advancing age and worries about death had influenced Allen s philosophical personal approach to complement his commercial side 14 15 Allen made the conscious decision to sacrifice some of the laughs for a story about human beings 8 He recognized that for the first time he had the courage to abandon the safety of complete broad comedy and had the will to produce a film of deeper meaning which would be a nourishing experience for the audience 1 He was also influenced by Federico Fellini s comedy drama 8 1963 created at a similar personal turning point and similarly colored by each director s psychoanalysis 15 Brickman and Allen sent the screenplay back and forth until they were ready to ask United Artists for 4 million 15 Many elements from the early drafts did not survive It was originally a drama centered on a murder mystery with a comic and romantic subplot 16 According to Allen the murder occurred after a scene that remains in the film the sequence in which Annie and Alvy miss the Ingmar Bergman film Face to Face 1976 17 Although they decided to drop the murder plot Allen and Brickman made a murder mystery many years later Manhattan Murder Mystery 1993 also starring Diane Keaton 18 The draft that Allen presented to the film s editor Ralph Rosenblum concluded with the words ending to be shot 19 Allen suggested Anhedonia a term for the inability to experience pleasure as a working title 20 21 and Brickman suggested alternatives including It Had to Be Jew Rollercoaster Named Desire and Me and My Goy 22 An advertising agency hired by United Artists embraced Allen s choice of an obscure word by suggesting the studio take out newspaper advertisements that looked like fake tabloid headlines such as Anhedonia Strikes Cleveland 22 However Allen experimented with several titles over five test screenings including Anxiety and Annie and Alvy before settling on Annie Hall 22 Casting Edit Several references in the film to Allen s own life have invited speculation that it is autobiographical Both Alvy and Allen were comedians His birthday appears on the blackboard in a school scene and Alvy was one of Allen s childhood nicknames 23 certain features of his childhood are found in Alvy Singer s 24 Allen went to New York University and so did Alvy Diane Keaton s real surname is Hall and Annie was her nickname and she and Allen were once romantically involved 25 However Allen is quick to dispel these suggestions The stuff that people insist is autobiographical is almost invariably not Allen said It s so exaggerated that it s virtually meaningless to the people upon whom these little nuances are based People got it into their heads that Annie Hall was autobiographical and I couldn t convince them it wasn t 26 Contrary to various interviewers and commentators he says Alvy is not the character that is closest to himself he identified more with the mother Eve played by Geraldine Page in his next film Interiors 27 Despite this Keaton has stated that the relationship between Alvy and Annie was partly based on her relationship with the director 28 The role of Annie Hall was written specifically for Keaton who had worked with Allen on Play It Again Sam 1972 Sleeper 1973 and Love and Death 1975 28 She considered the character an affable version of herself both were semi articulate dreamed of being a singer and suffered from insecurity and was surprised to win an Oscar for her performance 28 The film also marks the second film collaboration between Allen and Tony Roberts their previous project being Play It Again Sam 8 Federico Fellini was Allen s first choice to appear in the cinema lobby scene because his films were under discussion 17 but Allen chose cultural academic Marshall McLuhan after both Fellini and Luis Bunuel declined the cameo 29 Some cast members biographer John Baxter claims were aggrieved at Allen s treatment of them The director acted coldly towards McLuhan who had to return from Canada for reshooting and Mordecai Lawner who played Alvy s father claimed that Allen never spoke to him 29 However during the production Allen began a two year relationship with Stacey Nelkin who appears in a single scene 29 Filming editing and music Edit nbsp Woody Allen saw the Coney Island Thunderbolt when scouting locations and wrote it into the script as Alvy s childhood home 23 Principal photography began on May 19 1976 on the South Fork of Long Island with the scene in which Alvy and Annie boil live lobsters filming continued periodically for the next ten months 30 and deviated frequently from the screenplay There was nothing written about Alvy s childhood home lying under a roller coaster but when Allen was scouting locations in Brooklyn with Willis and art director Mel Bourne he saw this roller coaster and saw the house under it And I thought we have to use this 24 Similarly there is the incident where Alvy scatters a trove of cocaine with an accidental sneeze although not in the script the joke emerged from a rehearsal happenstance and stayed in the movie In audience testing this laugh was so sustained that a much longer pause had to be added so that the following dialogue was not lost 31 Editor Ralph Rosenblum s first assembly of the film in 1976 left Brickman disappointed I felt that the film was running off in nine different directions Brickman recalled 32 It was like a first draft of a novel from which two or three films could possibly be assembled 33 Rosenblum characterized the first cut at two hours and twenty minutes 34 as the surrealistic and abstract adventures of a neurotic Jewish comedian who was reliving his highly flawed life and in the process satirizing much of our culture a visual monologue a more sophisticated and more philosophical version of Take the Money and Run 34 Brickman found it nondramatic and ultimately uninteresting a kind of cerebral exercise 35 He suggested a more linear narrative 36 The present tense relationship between Alvy and Annie was not the narrative focus of this first cut but Allen and Rosenblum recognized it as the dramatic spine and began reworking the film in the direction of that relationship 37 Rosenblum recalled that Allen had no hesitation about trimming away much of the first twenty minutes in order to establish Keaton more quickly 35 According to Allen I didn t sit down with Marshall Brickman and say We re going to write a picture about a relationship I mean the whole concept of the picture changed as we were cutting it 36 As the film was budgeted for two weeks of post production photography 19 late 1976 saw three separate shoots for the final segment but only some of this material was used 38 The narration that ends the film featuring the joke about we all need the eggs was conceived and recorded only two hours before a test screening 38 The credits call the film A Jack Rollins and Charles H Joffe Production the two men were Allen s managers and received this same credit on his films from 1969 to 1993 However for this film Joffe took producer credit and therefore received the Academy Award for Best Picture The title sequence features a black background with white text in the Windsor Light Condensed typeface a design that Allen would use on his subsequent films Stig Bjorkman sees some similarity to Ingmar Bergman s simple and consistent title design although Allen says that his own choice is a cost saving device 39 Very little background music is heard in the film a departure for Allen influenced by Ingmar Bergman 39 Diane Keaton performs twice in the jazz club It Had to be You and Seems Like Old Times the latter reprises in voiceover on the closing scene The other exceptions include a boy s choir Christmas Medley played while the characters drive through Los Angeles the Molto allegro from Mozart s Jupiter Symphony heard as Annie and Alvy drive through the countryside Tommy Dorsey s performance of Sleepy Lagoon 40 and the anodyne cover of the Savoy Brown song A Hard Way to Go playing at a party in the mansion of Paul Simon s character Soundtrack Edit Seems Like Old Times 1945 Music by Carmen Lombardo Lyrics by John Jacob Loeb Sung by Diane Keaton uncredited accompanied by Artie Butler uncredited It Had to Be You 1924 Music by Isham Jones Lyrics by Gus Kahn Sung by Diane Keaton uncredited accompanied by Artie Butler uncredited A Hard Way To Go 1977 Written and performed by Tim Weisberg Christmas Medley Traditional Christmas songs We Wish You a Merry Christmas uncredited O Christmas Tree uncredited and God Rest You Merry Gentlemen uncredited Lyrics by Ernst Anschutz Performed by the Do Re Mi Children s Chorus Sleepy Lagoon 1930 Composed by Eric Coates Performed by Tommy Dorsey Symphony No 41 in C Major K 551 Molto Allegro 1788 uncredited Written by Wolfgang Amadeus MozartRelease EditBox office and release Edit Annie Hall was shown at the Los Angeles Film Festival on March 27 1977 20 before its official release in the United States on April 20 1977 41 The film ultimately earned 38 251 425 185 million in 2022 dollars in the United States and Canada against a 4 million budget making it the 11th highest grossing picture of 1977 41 On raw figures it currently ranks as Allen s fourth highest grossing film in the United States after Manhattan Hannah and Her Sisters and Midnight in Paris when adjusted for inflation the gross figure makes it Allen s biggest box office hit 42 It played for over 100 consecutive weeks in London and grossed over 5 6 million in the United Kingdom 43 It was first released on Blu ray on January 24 2012 alongside Allen s film Manhattan 1979 44 Both releases include their original theatrical trailers 44 Reception EditCritical response Edit nbsp Diane Keaton received widespread critical acclaim and numerous accolades for her performance Annie Hall met with widespread critical acclaim upon its release with major praise directed towards the film s script and the performances of Allen and Keaton Tim Radford of The Guardian called the film Allen s most closely focused and daring film to date 45 The New York Times Vincent Canby preferred Annie Hall to Allen s second directorial effort Take the Money and Run since the former is more humane while the latter is more a cartoon 46 Several critics have compared the film favorably to Bergman s Scenes from a Marriage 1973 46 47 48 including Joseph McBride in Variety who found it Allen s most three dimensional film to date with an ambition equal to Bergman s best even as the co stars become the contemporary equivalent of Tracy Hepburn 47 More critically Peter Cowie commented that the film suffers from its profusion of cultural references and asides 49 Writing for New York magazine John Simon called the film unfunny comedy poor moviemaking and embarrassing self revelation and wrote that Keaton s performance was in bad taste to watch and indecency to display saying that the part should have been played by Robin Mary Paris the actress who appears briefly in the scene where Alvy Singer has written a two character play nakedly based on himself and Annie Hall Simon s review of Annie Hall It is a film so shapeless sprawling repetitious and aimless as to seem to beg for oblivion At this it is successful 50 The film has continued to receive positive reviews In his 2002 lookback Roger Ebert added it to his Great Movies list and commented with surprise that the film had an instant familiarity despite its age 2 and Slant writer Jaime N Christley found the one liners still gut busting after 35 years 48 A later Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw named it the best comedy film of all time commenting that this wonderfully funny unbearably sad film is a miracle of comic writing and inspired film making 51 John Marriott of the Radio Times believed that Annie Hall was the film where Allen found his own singular voice a voice that echoes across events with a mixture of exuberance and introspection referring to the comic delight derived from the spirited playing of Diane Keaton as the kooky innocent from the Midwest and Woody himself as the fumbling New York neurotic 52 Empire magazine rated the movie five out of five stars calling it a classic 53 In 2017 Claire Dederer wrote Annie Hall is the greatest comic film of the twentieth century because it acknowledges the irrepressible nihilism that lurks at the center of all comedy 54 The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited Annie Hall as one of his favorite films 55 56 On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film has a rating of 97 based on 108 reviews with an average rating of 9 10 10 The site s critical consensus reads Filled with poignant performances and devastating humor Annie Hall represents a quantum leap for Woody Allen and remains an American classic 57 Metacritic gave the film a score of 92 out of 100 based on 20 critical reviews indicating universal acclaim 58 Critical analysis Edit Love and sexuality Edit nbsp Woody Allen in New York City in 2006Sociologists Virginia Rutter and Pepper Schwartz consider Alvy and Annie s relationship to be a stereotype of gender differences in sexuality 59 The nature of love is a repeating subject for Allen and co star Tony Roberts described this film as the story of everybody who falls in love and then falls out of love and goes on 8 Alvy searches for love s purpose through his effort to get over his depression about the demise of his relationship with Annie Sometimes he sifts through his memories of the relationship at another point he stops people on the sidewalk with one woman saying that It s never something you do That s how people are Love fades a suggestion that it was no one s fault they just grew apart and the end was inevitable By the end of the film Alvy accepts this and decides that love is ultimately irrational and crazy and absurd but a necessity of life 60 Christopher Knight believes Alvy s quest upon meeting Annie is carnal whereas hers is on an emotional note 61 Richard Brody of The New Yorker notes the film s Eurocentric art house self awareness and Alvy Singer s psychoanalytic obsession in baring his sexual desires and frustrations romantic disasters and neurotic inhibitions 62 Jewish identity Edit Singer is identified with the stereotypical neurotic Jewish male and the differences between Alvy and Annie are often related to the perceptions and realities of Jewish identity Vincent Brook notes that Alvy dines with the WASP y Hall family and imagines that they must see him as a Hasidic Jew complete with payot ear locks and a large black hat 63 Robert M Seltzer and Norman J Cohen highlight the scene in which Annie remarks that Annie s grandmother hates Jews She thinks they just make money but she s the one Is she ever I m telling you revealing the hypocrisy in her grandmother s stereotypical American view of Jews by arguing that no stigma attaches to the love of money in America 64 Bernd Herzogenrath also considers Allen s joke I would like to but we need the eggs to the doctor at the end when he suggests putting him in a mental institution to be a paradox of not only the persona of the urban neurotic Jew but also of the film itself 11 Woody Allen persona Edit Christopher Knight points out that Annie Hall is framed through Alvy s experiences Generally what we know about Annie and about the relationship comes filtered through Alvy an intrusive narrator capable of halting the narrative and stepping out from it in order to entreat the audience s interpretative favor 65 He suggests that because Allen s films blur the protagonist with past and future protagonists as well as with the director himself it makes a difference as to whether we are most responsive to the director s or the character s framing of events 66 Despite the narrative s framing the joke is on Alvy 67 Emanuel Levy believes that Alvy Singer became synonymous with the public perception of Woody Allen in the United States 68 Annie Hall is viewed as the definitive Woody Allen film in displaying neurotic humor 69 Location Edit nbsp Upper East Side of New York CityAnnie Hall is as much a love song to New York City as it is to the character 70 reflecting Allen s adoration of the island of Manhattan It was a relationship he explored repeatedly particularly in films like Manhattan 1979 and Hannah and Her Sisters 1986 8 Annie Hall s apartment which still exists on East 70th Street between Lexington Avenue and Park Avenue is by Allen s own confession his favorite block in the city 71 Peter Cowie argues that the film shows a romanticized view of the borough with the camera linger ing on the Upper East Side and where the fear of crime does not trouble its characters 72 By contrast California is presented less positively and David Halle notes the obvious invidious intellectual comparison between New York City and Los Angeles 73 While Manhattan s movie theaters show classic and foreign films Los Angeles theaters run less prestigious fare such as The House of Exorcism and Messiah of Evil 72 Rob s demonstration of adding canned laughter to television demonstrates the cynical artifice of the medium 72 New York City serves as a symbol of Alvy s personality gloomy claustrophobic and socially cold but also an intellectual haven full of nervous energy while Los Angeles is a symbol of freedom for Annie 70 Psychoanalysis and modernism Edit Annie Hall has been cited as a film which uses both therapy and analysis for comic effect 74 Sam B Girgus considers Annie Hall to be a story about memory and retrospection which dramatizes a return via narrative desire to the repressed and the unconscious in a manner similar to psychoanalysis 75 He argues that the film constitutes a self conscious assertion of how narrative desire and humor interact in the film to reform ideas and perceptions and that Allen s deployment of Freudian concepts and humor forms a pattern of skepticism toward surface meaning that compels further interpretation Girgus believes that proof of the pervasiveness of Sigmund Freud in the film is demonstrated at the beginning through a reference to a joke in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious and makes another joke about a psychiatrist and patient which Girgus argues is also symbolic of the dynamic between humor and the unconscious in the film 75 Further Freudian concepts are later addressed in the film with Annie s recall of a dream to her psychoanalyst in which Frank Sinatra is smothering her with a pillow which alludes to Freud s belief in dreams as visual representations of words or ideas 75 Peter Bailey in his book The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen argues that Alvy displays a genial denigration of art which contains a significant equivocation in that in his self deprecation he invites the audience to believe that he is leveling with them 76 Bailey argues that Allen s devices in the film including the subtitles which reveal Annie s and Alvy s thoughts extend and reinforce Annie Hall s winsome ethos of plain dealing and ingenuousness 76 He muses that the film is full of antimimetic emblems such as McLuhan s magical appearance which provide quirky humor and that the disparity between mental projections of reality and actuality drives the film His view is that self reflective cinematic devices intelligently dramatize the difference between surface and substance with visual emblems incessantly distilling the distinction between the world mentally constructed and reality 76 In his discussion of the film s relation to modernism Thomas Schatz finds the film an unresolved examination of the process of human interaction and interpersonal communication 77 and immediately establishes a self referential stance that invites the spectator to read the narrative as something other than a sequential development toward some transcendent truth 78 For him Alvy is the victim of a tendency toward overdetermination of meaning or in modernist terms the tyranny of the signified and his involvement with Annie can be viewed as an attempt to establish a spontaneous intellectually unencumbered relationship an attempt which is doomed to failure 77 Awards and accolades Edit Academy Awards1 Best Picture Charles H Joffe2 Best Director Woody Allen3 Best Actress Diane Keaton4 Best Original Screenplay Woody Allen and Marshall BrickmanGolden Globe Awards1 Best Actress Motion Picture Comedy or Musical Diane KeatonBAFTA Awards1 Best Film2 Best Direction Woody Allen3 Best Actress in a Leading Role Diane Keaton4 Best Screenplay Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman5 Best Editing Ralph Rosenblum and Wendy Greene BricmontAnnie Hall won four Oscars at the 50th Academy Awards on April 3 1978 and was nominated for five the Big Five in total Producer Charles H Joffe received the statue for Best Picture Allen for Best Director and with Brickman for Best Original Screenplay and Keaton for Best Actress Allen was also nominated for Best Actor 79 Many had expected Star Wars to win the major awards including Brickman and executive producer Robert Greenhut 8 The film was also honored five times at the BAFTA awards Along with the top award for Best Film and the award for Best Editing Keaton won for Best Actress Allen won for Best Direction and Best Original Screenplay alongside Brickman 80 The film received one Golden Globe Award for Best Actress Motion Picture Comedy or Musical Keaton in addition to four nominations Best Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Best Director Best Screenplay and Best Actor Motion Picture Musical or Comedy the latter three for Allen In 1992 the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in its National Film Registry that includes culturally historically or aesthetically significant films 4 The film is often mentioned among the greatest comedies of all time The American Film Institute lists it 31st in American cinema history 81 In 2000 they named it second greatest romantic comedy in American cinema 81 Keaton s performance of Seems Like Old Times was ranked 90th on their list of greatest songs included in a film and her line La dee da la dee da was named the 55th greatest movie quote 81 The screenplay was named the sixth greatest screenplay by the Writers Guild of America West 82 while IGN named it the seventh greatest comedy film of all time 83 In 2000 readers of Total Film magazine voted it the forty second greatest comedy film of all time and the seventh greatest romantic comedy film of all time 84 Several lists ranking Allen s best films have put Annie Hall among his greatest work 85 86 87 In June 2008 AFI revealed its 10 Top 10 the best ten films in ten classic American film genres after polling over 1 500 people from the creative community and Annie Hall was placed second in the romantic comedy genre 88 AFI also ranked Annie Hall on multiple other lists In November 2008 Annie Hall was voted in at No 68 on Empire magazine s list of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time 89 It is also ranked 2 on Rotten Tomatoes 25 Best Romantic Comedies second only to The Philadelphia Story 90 In 2012 the film was listed as the 127th best film of all time by the Sight amp Sound critics poll 91 The film was also named the 132nd best film by the Sight amp Sound directors poll 91 In October 2013 the film was voted by the Guardian readers as the second best film directed by Woody Allen 92 In November 2015 the film was named the funniest screenplay by the Writers Guild of America in its list of 101 Funniest Screenplays 93 American Film Institute recognition Edit The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists 1998 AFI s 100 Years 100 Movies 31 94 2000 AFI s 100 Years 100 Laughs 4 95 2002 AFI s 100 Years 100 Passions 11 96 2004 AFI s 100 Years 100 Songs Seems Like Old Times 90 97 2005 AFI s 100 Years 100 Movie Quotes Annie Hall La dee da la dee da 55 98 Alvy Singer I don t want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light Nominated Alvy Singer Don t knock masturbation It s sex with someone I love Nominated 2007 AFI s 100 Years 100 Movies 10th Anniversary Edition 35 99 2008 AFI s 10 Top 10 2 Romantic Comedy Film 100 1992 National Film Registry 101 In 2006 Premiere magazine ranked Keaton in Annie Hall as 60th in its list of the 100 Greatest Performances of All Time and noted It s hard to play ditzy The genius of Annie is that despite her loopy backhand awful driving and nervous tics she s also a complicated intelligent woman Keaton brilliantly displays this dichotomy of her character especially when she yammers away on a first date with Alvy Woody Allen while the subtitle reads He probably thinks I m a yoyo Yo yo Hardly 102 Legacy and influence Edit nbsp Diane Keaton s dress style as Annie Hall an influence on the fashion world during the late 1970sAlthough the film received widespread critical acclaim and numerous awards Allen himself was disappointed with it and said in an interview When Annie Hall started out that film was not supposed to be what I wound up with The film was supposed to be what happens in a guy s mind Nobody understood anything that went on The relationship between myself and Diane Keaton was all anyone cared about That was not what I cared about In the end I had to reduce the film to just me and Diane Keaton and that relationship so I was quite disappointed in that movie 103 Allen has repeatedly declined to make a sequel 104 and in a 1992 interview stated that Sequelism has become an annoying thing I don t think Francis Coppola should have done Godfather III because Godfather II was quite great When they make a sequel it s just a thirst for more money so I don t like that idea so much 105 Diane Keaton has stated that Annie Hall was her favorite role and that the film meant everything to her 106 When asked if being most associated with the role concerned her as an actress she replied I m not haunted by Annie Hall I m happy to be Annie Hall If somebody wants to see me that way it s fine by me Costume designer Ruth Morley working with Keaton created a look which had an influence on the fashion world during the late 70s with women adopting the style layering oversized mannish blazers over vests billowy trousers or long skirts a man s tie and boots 107 The look was often referred to as the Annie Hall look 108 Some sources suggest that Keaton herself was mainly responsible for the look and Ralph Lauren has often claimed credit but only one jacket and one tie were purchased from Ralph Lauren for use in the film 109 Allen recalled that Lauren and Keaton s dress style almost did not end up in the film She came in he recalled in 1992 and the costume lady on Annie Hall said Tell her not to wear that She can t wear that It s so crazy And I said Leave her She s a genius Let s just leave her alone let her wear what she wants 110 The film s script topped the Writers Guild of America s list of 101 funniest screenplays ever surpassing Some Like It Hot 1959 Groundhog Day 1993 Airplane 1980 and Tootsie 1982 111 James Bernardoni states that the film is one of the very few romantic comedy dramas of the New Hollywood era and one that has rightly taken its place among the classics of that reverted genre likening the seriocomic meditation on the couple relationship to George Cukor s Adam s Rib 1949 starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy 13 Since its release other romantic comedies have inspired comparison When Harry Met Sally 1989 Chasing Amy 1997 Burning Annie 2007 500 Days of Summer 2009 and Allen s 2003 film Anything Else are among them 91 112 113 114 115 while film director Rian Johnson said in an interview for the book The Film That Changed My Life that Annie Hall inspired him to become a film director 116 Karen Gillan stated that she watched Annie Hall as part of her research for her lead role in Not Another Happy Ending 117 In 2018 Matt Starr and Ellie Sachs released a short film remake starring senior citizens 118 119 Note Edit Misspelled as Christopher Wlaken in the closing credits 5 References Edit a b Bjorkman 1995 p 75 a b c d e f Ebert Roger May 12 2002 Annie Hall movie 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June 17 2008 Archived from the original on June 15 2016 Retrieved November 15 2014 Empire s The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time Empire magazine Archived from the original on October 26 2011 Retrieved July 18 2012 Best Romantic Comedies Rank 2 Rotten Tomatoes Archived from the original on June 25 2012 Retrieved June 24 2012 a b c Annie Hall British Film Institute Archived from the original on August 20 2012 Retrieved August 19 2012 The 10 best Woody Allen films The Guardian October 4 2013 Archived from the original on November 29 2014 Retrieved November 22 2014 101 Funniest Screenplays List Writers Guild of America West November 11 2015 Archived from the original on February 2 2016 Retrieved November 14 2015 AFI s 100 Years 100 Movies PDF American Film Institute Archived PDF from the original on April 12 2019 Retrieved July 16 2016 AFI s 100 Years 100 Laughs PDF American Film Institute Archived PDF from the original on June 24 2016 Retrieved July 16 2016 AFI s 100 Years 100 Passions PDF 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Retrieved July 18 2012 Biskind Peter December 2005 Reconstructing Woody Vanity Fair Archived from the original on October 14 2007 Retrieved January 23 2007 Bjorkman 1995 p 51 Mitchell 2001 p 45 Steele 2010 p 336 Eagan 2010 Gross Michael January 18 1993 Letters The Costumer is Always Right New York New York Media Bjorkman 1995 p 85 Gajewski Ryan November 11 2015 Annie Hall Tops WGA s List of 101 Funniest Screenplays Ever The Hollywood Reporter Archived from the original on August 16 2018 Retrieved October 1 2019 Buchanan Jason 500 Days of Summer gt Overview Allmovie Archived from the original on February 6 2010 Retrieved January 7 2010 Puig Claudia July 19 2009 Bask in the warmth of delightful 500 Days of Summer USA Today Archived from the original on July 20 2009 Retrieved July 19 2009 James Caryn July 12 1989 It s Harry Loves Sally in a Romance Of New Yorkers and Neuroses The New York Times Archived from the original on March 25 2009 Retrieved September 23 2007 Ranked Woody Allen Films from Worst to Best Page 3 Nerve com May 17 2011 Archived from the original on December 31 2011 Retrieved July 28 2012 Johnson 2011 p 17 People DVD roundup The Fifth Estate Not Another Happy Ending Archived from the original on December 8 2015 Retrieved November 26 2015 Marotta Jenna March 2 2018 My Annie Hall Woody Allen Approves of New Short Film Starring Seniors IndieWire Archived from the original on May 2 2021 Retrieved August 11 2020 Leland John March 2 2018 The Woody Allen Reboot You Won t See at the Oscars or Maybe Anywhere The New York Times Archived from the original on July 30 2020 Retrieved August 11 2020 Bibliography EditBailey Peter J 2001 The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen University Press of Kentucky ISBN 0 8131 9041 X Archived from the original on June 29 2014 Retrieved September 29 2016 Baxter John 1999 Woody Allen A Biography Revised paperback ed London Harper Collins ISBN 0 00 638794 2 Bernardoni James January 1 2001 The New Hollywood What the Movies Did with the New Freedoms of the Seventies McFarland ISBN 978 0 7864 1206 8 Archived from the original on June 29 2014 Retrieved September 29 2016 Bjorkman Stig 1995 1993 Woody Allen on Woody Allen London Faber and Faber ISBN 0 571 17335 7 Brook Vincent 2006 You Should See Yourself Jewish Identity in Postmodern Jewish Culture New Brunswick NJ Rutgers University Press Cowie Peter 1996 Annie Hall London British Film Institute ISBN 0 85170 580 4 Eagan Daniel 2010 America s Film Legacy The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry London Continuum International Publishing Group ISBN 978 0 8264 1849 4 Archived from the original on April 23 2017 Retrieved September 29 2016 Girgus Sam B 1993 Philip Roth and Woody Allen Freud and the Humor of the Repressed In Ziv Avner Zajdman Anat eds Semites and stereotypes characteristics of Jewish humor Greenwood Publishing Group ISBN 0 313 26135 0 Girgus Sam B November 18 2002 The Films of Woody Allen Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 00929 4 Archived from the original on June 29 2014 Retrieved September 29 2016 Halle David August 15 2003 New York and Los Angeles Politics Society and Culture A Comparative View University of Chicago Press ISBN 978 0 226 31369 6 Archived from the original on June 29 2014 Retrieved September 29 2016 Harvey Adam March 6 2007 The Soundtracks of Woody Allen A Complete Guide to the Songs and Music in Every Film 1969 2005 McFarland ISBN 978 0 7864 2968 4 Archived from the original on June 29 2014 Retrieved September 29 2016 Herzogenrath Bernd May 20 2009 The Films of Edgar G Ulmer Scarecrow Press ISBN 978 0 8108 6736 9 Archived from the original on June 29 2014 Retrieved September 29 2016 Johnson Rian 2011 Annie Hall Interview by Robert K Elder In Elder Robert K ed The Film That Changed My Life Chicago Chicago Review Press pp 13 24 ISBN 978 1 55652 825 5 Knight Christopher J 2004 Woody Allen s Annie Hall Galatea s Triumph Over Pygmalion Literature Film Quarterly 32 3 213 221 Lax Eric 2000 Woody Allen A Biography New ed Da Capo Press ISBN 0 306 80985 0 Mitchell Deborah C July 26 2001 Diane Keaton Artist and Icon McFarland ISBN 978 0 7864 1082 8 Archived from the original on June 29 2014 Retrieved September 29 2016 Meyers Joseph 2008 Inside New York 2009 Inside New York ISBN 978 1 892768 41 4 Archived from the original on June 29 2014 Retrieved September 29 2016 Pennington Jody W 2007 The History of Sex in American Film Greenwood Publishing Group ISBN 978 0 275 99226 2 Archived from the original on June 30 2014 Retrieved September 29 2016 Rosenblum Ralph Karen Robert 1986 When the Shooting Stops The Cutting Begins DaCapo Press ISBN 0 306 80272 4 Rutter Virginia Schwartz Pepper 2012 The Gender of Sexuality Exploring Sexual Possibilities Rowman amp Littlefield ISBN 978 0 7425 7003 0 Archived from the original on June 29 2014 Retrieved September 29 2016 Schatz Thomas 1982 Annie Hall and the Issue of Modernism Literature Film Quarterly 10 3 180 187 Seltzer Robert M Cohen Norman J 1995 The Americanization of the Jews NYU Press ISBN 978 0 8147 8001 5 Archived from the original on June 29 2014 Retrieved September 29 2016 Spignesi Stephen J 1992 The Woody Allen Companion London Plexus Publishing ISBN 0 85965 205 X Steele Valerie November 15 2010 The Berg Companion to Fashion Berg p 336 ISBN 9781847885920 Archived from the original on July 26 2020 Retrieved August 24 2017 Tueth Michael 2012 Reeling with Laughter American Film Comedies from Anarchy to Mockumentary Scarecrow Press ISBN 978 0 8108 8367 3 Archived from the original on June 29 2014 Retrieved September 29 2016 External links Edit nbsp Wikiquote has quotations related to Annie Hall nbsp Film portal nbsp United States portalAnnie Hall at IMDb Annie Hall at AllMovie Annie Hall at the TCM Movie Database Annie Hall at the American Film Institute Catalog Annie Hall at Box Office Mojo Annie Hall at Rotten Tomatoes Annie Hall essay by Jay Carr at National Film Registry Annie Hall essay by Daniel Eagan in America s Film Legacy The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry A amp C Black 2010 ISBN 0826429777 pp 738 740 Interview with Woody Allen about Annie Hall at Texas Archive of the Moving Image Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Annie Hall amp oldid 1180021763, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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