Annie Hall
(1977)
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Woody Allen cowrote, directed, and stars in this award-winning film as a kvetchy Brooklyn comedian wistfully recalling his bygone relationship with flighty, adorable, and irrepressibly midwestern (read: not Jewish) Annie Hall. The film marked a transition from Allen's earlier absurdist comedies to a richer vein of thoughtful consideration of relationships. The gentle narrative revolutionized the urban romantic-comedy genre, while Keaton's hip, man-tailored wardrobe set the 1977 fashion standard. The film is filled with memorable scenes and oft-quoted lines and features Allen talking right into the camera, a technique that was not commonplace at the time. Allen, playing comedian Alvy Singer, uses many of his stand-up comedy routines in the film as he woos the wonderful Diane Keaton, playing the title character, Annie Hall. As Alvy helps Annie mature, she grows apart from him, choosing to live in Southern California, which is the antithesis of his deep love for New York. The film features fabulous visual and verbal gags, a propensity for food scenes, and memorable cameos by the likes of Marshall McLuhan, Paul Simon, Christopher Walken, Truman Capote, Shelley Duvall, and others. |
Although Woody Allen had still to acquire great technical strength as a film-maker, this was the movie where he found his own singular voice, a voice that echoes across events with a mixture of exuberance and introspection. Peppered with hilarious, snappy insights into the meaning of life, love, psychiatry, ambition, art and New York, this comic delight also gains considerably from the spirited playing of Diane Keaton as the kooky innocent from the Midwest, and Woody himself as the fumbling New York neurotic. The narrative runs parallel to the real-life relationship between the two leads (Keaton's father's name was Hall), and the film scooped four Oscars, including best film and screenplay (co-written with Marshall Brickman) for Allen, and best actress for Keaton.
Halliwell's Film Guide
Semi-serious collage of jokes and bits of technique, some of the former very funny and some of the latter very successful. For no very good reason it hit the box-office spot and turned its creator, of whom it is very typical, from a minority performer to