ANNIE HALL

'''Annie Hall''' is an Academy Award-winning, 1977 romantic comedy film directed by Woody Allen from a script he co-wrote with Marshall Brickman. It is one of Allen's most popular films: it won numerous awards at the time of its release, and in 2002 Roger Ebert referred to it as "just about everyone's favorite Woody Allen movie" Great Movies: Annie Hall . Allen had previously been known as a maker of zany comedies; the director has described ''Annie Hall'' as "a major turning point",Bjorkman, Stig, ed. ''Woody Allen on Woody Allen: Revised Edition''. London: Faber and Faber, 1995, 2004. p. 75-93. as it brought a new level of seriousness to his work, in addition to consolidating his signature cinematic style, which includes long, realistically-written scenes of conversation, often shot in uninterrupted takes, and an equal thematic investment in both hilarity and heartbreak. Great Movies: Annie Hall

Contents

Plot

Cast

Production

Style and technique

Awards and nominations

Considered sequel

Influence

''Just Shoot Me''

References

External links

Plot

The film is set in New York City and Los Angeles.
Allen plays Alvy Singer, a comedian obsessed with death, attempting to maintain a relationship with the ditzy but exuberant title character (played by Diane Keaton). The film chronicles their relationship over several years, intercut with various fantasy trips into each other's history (Annie is able to "see" Alvy's family when Alvy was only a child, and likewise Alvy observes Annie's past sexual relationships). In the flashbacks showing Alvy as a child, we learn that Alvy Singer grew up in Brooklyn. His father operated a bumper cars concession. He claims the family home was located below a rollercoaster on Coney Island.
After several years, many arguments and many reconciliations, the two realize they are fundamentally different and split up. Annie moves in with a Hollywood record company executive (played by Paul Simon). Alvy eventually 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 drama about their relationship. Later, after they are able to meet on good terms as friends, 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 — Alvy Singer

★ Diane Keaton — Annie Hall

★ Tony Roberts — Rob

★ Carol Kane — Allison Portchnik

★ Paul Simon — Tony Lacey

★ Shelley Duvall — Pam

★ Janet Margolin — Robin

★ Colleen Dewhurst — Mrs. Hall
The film features a number of appearances by actors and actresses who went on to later fame:

★ Christopher Walken, in an early film role, plays Annie's creepy, suicidal brother Duane.

★ Jeff Goldblum speaks one line as a man at an LA party phoning his guru: "I forgot my mantra."

★ Sigourney Weaver can be briefly glimpsed as Alvy's date outside a theatre.

★ Beverly D'Angelo plays one of the actors in Rob's TV show.

★ John Glover appears as Annie Hall's previous boyfriend.

★ Shelley Duvall as another date of Alvy who writes for Rolling Stone.
In the scene in which Alvy and Annie are observing passersby in the park and Alvy comments, "Oh, there goes the winner of the Truman Capote Look-Alike Contest," the passerby is actually Truman Capote, who appeared in the film uncredited.^[1]

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 was Brickman's suggested alternative, ''It Had to Be Jew''. Ultimately ''Annie Hall'' was settled upon 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 around 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''.Bjorkman, Stig, ed. ''Woody Allen on Woody Allen: Revised Edition''. London: Faber and Faber, 1995, 2004. p. 75-93. 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."Bjorkman, Stig, ed. ''Woody Allen on Woody Allen: Revised Edition''. London: Faber and Faber, 1995, 2004. p. 75-93. The 'house' in question is in fact the Kensington Hotel, which really was located underneath the Thunderbolt roller coaster.^[2] 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

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 well."Bjorkman, Stig, ed. ''Woody Allen on Woody Allen: Revised Edition''. London: Faber and Faber, 1995, 2004. p. 75-93.
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."."Bjorkman, Stig, ed. ''Woody Allen on Woody Allen: Revised Edition''. London: Faber and Faber, 1995, 2004. p. 75-93. ''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."Bjorkman, Stig, ed. ''Woody Allen on Woody Allen: Revised Edition''. London: Faber and Faber, 1995, 2004. p. 75-93. (Allen's tendency to use long takes has also meant that the time it takes to edit his films is negligible.) 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. Great Movies: Annie Hall 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 brinksmanship.".
The film also breaks with conventional realism: characters frequently break the "fourth wall" by addressing the camera directly, and Allen makes use of split-screen imagery, double exposure, and subtitles expounding the characters' real thoughts (in contrast to the dialogue). In one scene, Allen's character, standing in a cinema queue with Annie and listening to someone behind him expound on Marshall McLuhan's work, leaves the line to speak to the camera directly. The man then speaks to the camera in his defense, and Allen resolves the dispute by pulling McLuhan himself from behind a counter 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, then stops several passers-by to ask them 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."Bjorkman, Stig, ed. ''Woody Allen on Woody Allen: Revised Edition''. London: Faber and Faber, 1995, 2004. p. 75-93.
The film has no score and very little background music. The few instances of music include a boy's choir Christmas melody played while the characters drive through Los Angeles, a brief burst of classical music heard as Annie and Alvie drive through the countryside, and Annie's two performances at the jazz club; Annie's song is also reprised in the film's final scene.

Awards and nominations

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
'AFI 100 Years series'

★ The American Film Institute has placed ''Annie Hall'' on five of their 100 Years series:

★ AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (#31)

★ AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs (#4)

★ AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions (#11)

★ AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs (#90; "Seems Like Old Times," performed by Diane Keaton)

★ AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes (#55; Annie: "La-dee-da, la-dee-da...")
'Other Awards'

★ The film consistently rates in the top 150 on the Internet Movie Database's list of top 250 films, and has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. 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.

★ Woody Allen, however, did not attend the Academy Awards ceremony for ''Annie Hall'', claiming that the awards meant nothing to him.

Considered sequel

Allen says he gets approached "all the time" about making a sequel to ''Annie Hall'',^[3] but has repeatedly declined. However, he admitted in a 1995 interview that for a time he considered it, saying,

Influence

''Annie Hall's mix of relatively realistic scenes and surreal flights of fancy was highly influential on later films and TV series. The late-1980s TV series ''thirtysomething'', for instance, was just one of many shows that would break away from more realistic, dramatic scenes for comic trips into the imagination of the characters. In fashion, Keaton dressed in layers with a tie (by Ralph Lauren), which became a popular style. Allen recalled that Keaton's natural fashion sense almost didn't 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.'"Bjorkman, Stig, ed. ''Woody Allen on Woody Allen: Revised Edition''. London: Faber and Faber, 1995, 2004. p. 75-93.

''Just Shoot Me''

The sitcom ''Just Shoot Me'' pays homage to ''Annie Hall'' in the episode "My Dinner with Woody".^[4] Allen's general film making style (such as black and white sequences accompanied by jazz music) is honored also, but ''Annie Hall'' is the predominant source. In the episode, Maya (Laura San Giacomo) is contacted by an Allen-impersonator (Ed Crasnick) after writing a flattering article about the director.^[5]
Elements from ''Annie Hall'' specifically referenced include the bookend direct-to-camera addresses, including the 'eggs' and 'small portions' jokes and the subtext subtitle scene. The real Woody Allen makes his first sitcom appearance with a voice cameo at the end of the episode. He recorded his contribution in New York and sent it to the production team.^[6]

References

External links

★

★

★ Annie Hall - synopsis, production details, etc.

★ Greatest Films Essay - Filmsite.org essay