Annie Hall

Annie Hall
Directed by	Woody Allen
Written by	Woody Allen Marshall Brickman
Produced by	Charles H. Joffe Jack Rollins
Starring	Woody Allen Diane Keaton Tony Roberts Carol Kane Paul Simon Shelley Duvall Christopher Walken Jeff Goldblum Sigourney Weaver
Cinematography	Gordon Willis
Edited by	Ralph Rosenblum
Distributed by	1977 Release: United Artists current: Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Release date	20 April 1977
Running time	93 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$4 million
Box office	$38,251,425

Annie Hall is a 1977 American comedy film directed by Woody Allen from a script co-written with Marshall Brickman. One of Allen's most popular films, it won numerous awards at the time of its release, including four Academy Awards and one for best Best Picture, and in 2002 Roger Ebert referred to it as "just about everyone's favorite Woody Allen movie". Annie Hall was also the last comedy film to win the Academy Award for "Best Picture" until 1998's Shakespeare in Love.

Allen had previously been known as a maker of zany comedies; the director has described Annie Hall as "a major turning point", as it brought a new level of seriousness to his work.

Plot

The film is set in New York City and Los Angeles.

Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) is a neurotic comedian, attempting to maintain a relationship with the seemingly ditzy but exuberant Annie (Diane Keaton). The film chronicles their relationship over several years, intercut with various imaginary trips into each other's history (Annie is able to "see" Alvy's family when he was only a child, and likewise Alvy observes Annie's past relationships). In the first flashback showing Alvy as a child, we learn he was raised in Brooklyn; his father's occupation was operating a bumper cars concession and the family home was located below the Thunderbolt roller coaster on Coney Island.

After many arguments and reconciliations, the two realize they are fundamentally different and split up. Annie moves in with Tony Lacey (Paul Simon). Annie likes California, but Alvy hates it. Alvy soon realizes he still loves her and tries to convince her to return with him to New York. He fails and, resignedly, returns home to write a play about their relationship, recycling the conversation they had exchanged in California, but ending with him winning Annie back.

Later, with Annie back in New York, the two are able to meet on good terms as friends, now with different lovers. Alvy ends the film by musing about how love and relationships are something we all require despite their often painful and complex nature.

Cast

• Woody Allen as Alvy Singer
• Diane Keaton as Annie Hall
• Tony Roberts as Rob
• Carol Kane as Allison Portchnik
• Paul Simon as Tony Lacey
• Shelley Duvall as Pam
• Janet Margolin as Robin
• Colleen Dewhurst as Mrs. Hall
• Christopher Walken as Duane Hall
• Jeff Goldblum as LA party guy on phone
• Sigourney Weaver as Alvy's date
• Beverly D'Angelo as TV show actress
• Shelley Hack as shallow street girl
• John Glover as Annie's actor ex-boyfriend
• Truman Capote (uncredited) as Himself (passing by after Alvy's comment "Oh, there's the winner of the Truman Capote Look-Alike Contest")
• Marshall McLuhan as Himself (correcting misinterpretations of his work by a loud man in line for a movie)
• Laurie Bird as Tony Lacey's girlfriend
• Harvey Fierstein (deleted scenes)
• Danny Aiello (deleted scenes)
• Jack Gwillim (deleted scenes)

Production

Allen's working title for the film was Anhedonia (a psychoanalytic term for the inability to experience pleasure from normally pleasurable life events), but this was considered unmarketable, as were Brickman's suggested alternatives, It Had to Be Jew, Rollercoaster Named Desire and Me and My Goy. Ultimately Annie Hall was decided on as the release title. Because of biographical similarities between the character Alvy and Woody Allen (including Allen's previous relationship with co-star Diane Keaton, whose real name is Diane Hall, and who portrays the character Annie Hall), Annie Hall has been widely assumed to be semi-autobiographical. Allen has denied this.

The film was originally intended to be a drama centered on a murder mystery with a comic and romantic subplot, and was filmed that way. 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. After shooting had completed, the film's editor persuaded Woody Allen to cut the mystery plot and make the film a romantic comedy. (Allen would make a murder mystery film many years later, with 1993's Manhattan Murder Mystery, also starring Diane Keaton.)

Similarly, the production of the film was semi-improvisational. For example, in the original script, Alvy didn't grow up under a roller coaster, but while Allen was driving around Brooklyn with his crew, looking for locations, "I saw this roller-coaster, and I saw the house under it. And I thought, we have to use this." The 'house' in question is in fact the Kensington Hotel, which really was located underneath the Thunderbolt roller coaster. Another example is the scene in which Alvy sneezes into cocaine, which was purely accidental, but Allen decided to keep it in the movie; when they tested it with audiences they laughed so much that Allen had to add more footage after the scene so they wouldn't laugh through important conversations afterwards.

Style and technique

File:Annie hall scene.jpg

A scene from Annie Hall

Allen has said that Annie Hall was "a major turning point" both thematically and technically. "I had the courage to abandon... just clowning around and the safety of complete broad comedy. I said to myself, 'I think I will try and make some deeper film and not be as funny in the same way. And maybe there will be other values that will emerge, that will be interesting or nourishing for the audience.' And it worked out very very well."

Allen has also stated that working with cinematographer Gordon Willis for the first time on Annie Hall helped improve his technical skills, calling Willis "a very important teacher" and a "technical wizard." Annie Hall was the first of Allen's films to utilize long takes, where sometimes one shot will continue, unabridged, for an entire scene. Allen has commented, "It just seems more fun and quicker and less boring for me to do long scenes." Film critic Roger Ebert 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. Ebert adds that the long takes add to the dramatic power of the film, saying, "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 brinkmanship." As detailed in the book When the Shooting Stops... The Cutting Begins, written by the film's editor, Ralph Rosenblum, with Robert Karen, the trick to editing Annie Hall was paring the film down to its essential. The first rough cut was two hours and twenty minutes long; various subplots, background scenes and flashbacks-within-flashbacks were deleted to focus on the love story.

In one famous scene, Allen's character, standing in line to see a movie with Annie and listening to a man behind him deliver misinformed pontifications on the significance of Marshall McLuhan's work, leaves the line to speak to the camera directly. The man then steps out of the queue and speaks to the camera in his own defense, and Allen resolves the dispute by pulling McLuhan himself from behind a free-standing movie posterboard to tell the man that his interpretation is wrong. Another scene is animated, featuring a cartoon Allen and the Wicked Queen from Snow White. In another scene Allen's character again addresses the audience, and then stops several passers-by to ask questions about love. Woody 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."

Another notable scene is a visit by the main characters to Alvy’s childhood, a narrative technique that Ingmar Bergman uses in Wild Strawberries, one of Bergman’s most acclaimed films, and a technique Allen would use again in Crimes and Misdemeanors, where the main character, Judah (Martin Landau) would visit his childhood and ask his father, a rabbi, ethical questions about a crime he’d just committed. Similarly the school scenes in the beginning of the film were influenced by another idol of Allen’s, Federico Fellini, to whose Amarcord Annie Hall owes a great debt. The Jewish humor also draws from Roth's novel Portnoy's Complaint.

The film has no soundtrack and very little background music is heard—an homage to Allen’s idol, Ingmar Bergman. The few instances of music in the film include a boy's choir Christmas melody played while the characters drive through Los Angeles, the Molto allegro from the Jupiter Symphony by Mozart heard as Annie and Alvy drive through the countryside, Annie's two performances at the jazz club; Annie's song is also reprised in the film's final scene; and there is a muzak version of the Savoy Brown song "A Hard Way to Go" playing in the Paul Simon character's mansion during a party.

Many of Woody Allen's prevailing themes are strongly present, particularly that of Jewish identity. According to oomska, there is even a trace of political theme running through this ostensible 'romantic comedy', as the major cataclysms in Alvy's love life often coincide, or are compared to, current events. The classic example is the breakup of his marriage to Alison, which is precipitated by his obsession with the JFK assassination.

Awards and honors

Academy Awards record
1. Best Actress, Diane Keaton
2. Best Director, Woody Allen
3. Best Picture, Charles H. Joffe
4. Best Original Screenplay, Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman
Golden Globe Awards record
1. Best Actress - Musical/Comedy, Diane Keaton
BAFTA Awards record
1. Best Actress, Diane Keaton
2. Best Direction, Woody Allen
3. Best Editing, Ralph Rosenblum, Wendy Greene Bricmont
4. Best Film
5. Best Screenplay, Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman

1977 Academy Awards (Oscars)

• Won - Best Picture - Charles H. Joffe and Jack Rollins
• Won - Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role — Diane Keaton
• Won - Best Director — Woody Allen
• Won - Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen — Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman
• Nominated - Best Actor in a Leading Role — Woody Allen

1978 Golden Globes

• Annie Hall won one Golden Globe Award, for Best Actress in Musical or Comedy (Diane Keaton). It was nominated for three more: Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy), Best Director (Woody Allen), and Best Actor in Musical or Comedy (Woody Allen).

1978 BAFTA Awards

• Annie Hall won the BAFTA Award for Best Film

American Film Institute recognition

• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (1998) - #31
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs (2000) - #4
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions (2002) - #11
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs (2004):
  • "Seems Like Old Times" - #90
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes (2005):
  • "La-dee-da, la-dee-da." - #55
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) (2007) - #35
• AFI's 10 Top 10 (2008) - #2 Romantic Comedy

Other awards

• In 1992, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
• Zagat Survey Movie Guide (2002) ranks Annie Hall one of the top ten comedies of all time, one of the top ten movies of the 1970s and as Allen's best film as a director.
• In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted it the forty-second greatest comedy film of all time.
• The film is number 28 on Bravo's 100 Funniest Movies.

Considered sequel

Allen says he gets approached "all the time" about making a sequel to Annie Hall, but has repeatedly declined. He admitted in a 1995 interview that for a time he considered it, saying,

I did think once - I'm not going to do it - but I did think once that it would be interesting to see Annie Hall and the guy I played years later. Diane Keaton and I could meet now that we're about twenty years older, and it could be interesting, because we parted, to meet one day and see what our lives have become. But it smacks to me of exploitation....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.

Influence on fashion

The film also had an influence on the fashion world during the late-70s, with countless women adopting Keaton's distinctive look in the film, layering oversized, mannish blazers over vests, billowy trousers or long skirts, and boots. Keaton's wardrobe also included a tie by Ralph Lauren. The look was often referred to as the "Annie Hall look". So pervasive was the trend that in a 1970s Doonesbury comic strip, Gary Trudeau depicts radio interviewer Mark Slackmeyer asking the fictional Iranian revolutionary leader Dr. Ali Mahdavi if the Ayatollah Khomeini would approve of "The Annie Hall look" for Iranian women. Mahdavi's response: "If worn with a veil, fine."

Allen recalled that Keaton's natural fashion sense almost did not end up in the film. "She came in," he recalled in 1995, "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.'

External links

• Annie Hall at IMDb
• Annie Hall at AllMovie
• Annie Hall at the TCM Movie Database
• Annie Hall at Box Office Mojo
• Annie Hall at Rotten Tomatoes
• Good Small Films (Unofficial Woodypedia and blog)