Is there any better Woody Allen film than Annie Hall? Not according to the Academy who decorated it with its highest award, the Best Picture of 1977 despite Allen’s complete disdain for Award shows in general. In fact, the actor/writer/director skipped the ceremony altogether having no interest in whether it won or not. It wouldn’t be until the 2002 ceremony that he would even show up for the awards show when he made a brief appearance to introduce a segment dedicated to New York City, his home base and setting for most of his movies. He narrated a tribute to those lost in the recent attacks on the World Trade Center. Woody Allen has never cared for awards and preferred the work to speak for itself so when Annie Hall, his first major foray into serious filmmaking, became a critical darling and started winning at the Golden Globes and the Oscars he was off playing in his band back in New York and plotting out his next film.
1977 was a year of surprises at the Oscars. The talk of the town was that this little sci-fi film made in Europe by a young American director was going to go big at the ceremony. Star Wars was a cultural phenomenon and unsurprisingly was nominated for a staggering twelve Oscars. It was expected to dominate across the board. Yet that is not what happened. It swept the technology categories but hit a brick wall in the big awards, losing for the best screenplay, supporting actor, director and picture. Thanks to Woody Allen, most of those categories went to him and his little movie about relationship difficulties and personal neurosis’s, all while bathing in his personal brand of satire.
Woody Allen plays Alvy Singer, a stand-up comedian in New York City who is trying to make sense of why his relationship with Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) ended a year before. His introspection spans his childhood where he plagued his parents with a fascination of the emptiness of existence, his unhealthy fascination with girls at a very young age, and his various relationships leading up to and including his one with Annie. When he suddenly kisses a girl in his grade school class he cannot understand why that is considered wrong or why she isn’t interested in reciprocating. This lack of understanding colors all of his relationships.
He meets Annie while playing a game of tennis doubles with a friend and the two hit it off almost immediately. They date, then get intimate. Afterwards she relaxes with a joint while he is a nervous wreck. She performs a song for an audition at a night club and, even though the crowd isn’t interested, Alvy encourages her and praises her vocals. Soon she is able to say that she is in love with him and moves in. But this only causes tension in their relationship and he soon catches her in the arms with one of her college professors and they break up. He tries to move on but is eventually drawn back to her and they reconcile but it is short lived and soon Annie is accepting a contract to sing for a music producer in Los Angeles while Alvy insists on staying in New York City.
This is Woody Allen attempting to analyze love and why it often doesn’t work out. In doing so he will often break narrative traditions and do things like break the forth wall, overlay subtitles over dialogue to represent what is really being said, and even randomly stop strangers on the street to comment on aspects of their love lives. In this way he is psychoanalyzing his character’s psyche and laying it all out for us to look at and judge. It’s a form of mental masturbation and even Annie herself calls him out for it. “Hey, don’t knock masturbation. It’s sex with someone I love,” he responds to her. These conversations showcase just how different these two individuals are from each other and how he hides behind his snarkyness and one liners. They are both seeing analysts and, when asked about their sex life the answer is the same from opposite perspectives. He sees 3-5 times a week as hardly ever and she sees the same number as all the time.
There is also little details that show how she doesn’t make an effort to conform to his lifestyle, too. While out dining at a kosher deli one day she orders a pastrami sandwich on white bread with mayonnaise, all items that speak to her WASPy side and are at odds with his Jewish upbringing. They discuss having a flexibility in their relationship which she uses to justify being in the arms of another man while living with him. This relationship, just like all of his others, is doomed from the start. It’s just a matter of analyzing exactly why that is. It matters not that she loves him and he reciprocates, his neuroses are simply not compatible with her easy going nature as seen in their first encounter when she drives him home from the tennis courts, weaving through traffic crazily while proclaiming that she is a great driver, all the while he is panicing in the passenger seat imagining a brutal accident. The one time we do see him behind the wheel he is so afraid of the act of driving that he is riding the break, lunging the car forward in fits and starts, and eventually has an accident.
In typical Woody Allen fashion this film is all over the place, taking liberties with time and structure, while also peppering the entire script with his signature rat-a-tat dialogue and satyrical observations that seem to come at random but actually aren’t. In his lessor efforts this can come off as anoying and pretentious. Here, it serves a purpose and provides us with a deeper understanding of his character and why he cannot make relationships work. There is no happy ending for Alvy Singer, just a deeper understanding of who he is and how he got there. It’s a character study and one only Woody Allen could have managed. He has made other great films since this one and would be in front of the Academy again in the future but none of it would reach the heights of Annie Hall. His observations and, to some degree, character assassination, struck the right note in 1977 and made this the Best Picture of the year.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Charles H. Joffe (won)
Best Director: Woody Allen (won)
Best Actor: Woody Allen
Best Actress: Diane Keaton (won)
Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen Based on Factual Material or on a Story Material Not Previously Published or Produced: Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman
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Release Date: April 20, 1977
Running Time: 93 Minutes
Rated PG
Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Carol Kane, Paul Simon, Janet Margolin, Shelley Duvall, Christopher Walken and Colleen Dewhurst
Directed By: Woody Allen
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