| Annie Hall | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Woody Allen |
| Produced by | Charles H. Joffe Jack Rollins |
| Written by | Woody Allen Marshall Brickman |
| Starring | Woody Allen Diane Keaton Tony Roberts Carol Kane Paul Simon Shelley Duvall Christopher Walken Colleen Dewhurst |
| Cinematography | Gordon Willis |
| Editing by | Ralph Rosenblum |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
| Release date(s) | April 20, 1977 |
| Running time | 93 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $4 million |
| Box office | $38,251,425 |
Annie Hall is a 1977 American romantic comedy directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay co-written with Marshall Brickman and co-starring Diane Keaton. One of Allen's most popular and most honored films, it won four Academy Awards including Best Picture. Roger Ebert described it as "just about everyone's favorite Woody Allen movie".[1]
Allen has described the film as "a major turning point",[2] as it introduced a level of seriousness to his films that was not found in the farces and comedies that was his work to that point.[1]
Contents |
The film is set in New York City, Chippewa Falls, WI, 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 persuade 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.
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, proposed in a brainstorming session: It Had to Be Jew, Rollercoaster Named Desire and Me and My Goy.[3] 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. However, during script revisions, Allen decided to drop the murder plot.[4] 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.[2] Allen and co-writer Marshall Brickman 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."[2] The "house" in question is in fact the Kensington Hotel, which really was located underneath the Thunderbolt roller coaster.[5] 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 would not laugh through important conversations afterwards.[6]
Alvy Singer is identified with the stereotypical neurotic Jewish male; Annie is not Jewish, and this forms the backdrop for the "list of common Allen preoccupations which show up in this film," that, says John Carvill, include "New York (in general, and as opposed to Los Angeles), neurosis, sex, the travails of the nebbish, modern-day male-female relationships, death, existential angst, city versus country, paranoia, the role of the artist, the meaning of life, or lack thereof,... and politics."[7]
The differences between the couple are often related to the perceptions and realities of Jewish identity. Vincent Brook notes that “Alvy dines with WASP-y Hall family and imagines that they must see him as a Hasidic Jew, complete with payess (ear locks) and a large black hat”.[8]
For Allen, Annie Hall was the film where he "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."[2]
Technically, too, the film marked an advance for the director. Working for the first time with cinematographer Gordon Willis-for Allen "a very important teacher" and a "technical wizard"[2]-he utilized long takes, with some shots, unabridged, lasting an entire scene. Allen has commented, "It just seems more fun and quicker and less boring for me to do long scenes."[2] 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.[1] 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.
Although the film is not essentially experimental, Allen at several points undermines the illusion of reality. 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. Later in the film, when we see Annie and Alvy in an earlier stage of their relationship making conversation and getting to know each other, humorous subtitles convey to the audience the characters' nervous inner thoughts. 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.
Other techniques that undermine the film's realism are taken from Allen's artistic influences. In one such scene (reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries) the main characters visit Alvy’s childhood. Allen would use this again in Crimes and Misdemeanors. Similarly, the school scenes in the beginning of the film were influenced by another favorite of Allen’s, Federico Fellini. The Jewish humor—particularly the character of the oversexed Jewish man—also draws from Philip Roth's novel Portnoy's Complaint.[9]
While Allen uses most of these techniques only one time, he "breaks the fourth wall" several times when Alvy directly addresses the audience. In one, he stops several passers-by to ask questions about love, and in one of the film's last scenes, he makes modest excuses for the fact that a scene from his "first play" (which the audience has just seen) is his wish-fulfillment version of his breakup with Annie. 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."[2]
Allen says he gets approached "all the time" about making a sequel to Annie Hall,[10] but has repeatedly declined. He admitted in a 1992 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.[11] | ” |
Very little background music is heard in the film—more of the influence of Bergman. The few exceptions 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.
| Academy Awards record | |
|---|---|
| 1. Best Actress in a Leading Role, 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 – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy | |
| 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 | |
1978 Academy Awards (Oscars)
1978 Golden Globes
1978 BAFTA Awards
American Film Institute recognition
The film had an influence on the fashion world during the late-70s, with many women adopting Keaton's distinctive look, 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". An example of the influence this look has had on the culture can be found in a 1970s Doonesbury comic strip, where Garry 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 (the outfits that Keaton wore in the film were her own clothes) 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.'"[2]
|
||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||