Reel Classics: Annie Hall

In the pre­vi­ous edi­tion of Reel Classics we looked at a film described as “a clas­sic romance.” Today we take a look at anoth­er clas­sic described as “a ner­vous romance.”  Released in 1977, Annie Hall fea­tures Woody Allen as Alvy Singer and Diane Keaton as Annie Hall.  I would describe them both as two of our most quirky char­ac­ters and actors. 

The film also includes a host of well-known names includ­ing Tony Roberts, Carol Kane, Paul Simon, Shelley Duvall, Janet Margolin, Colleen Dewhurst, Christopher Walken, Dick Cavett, Jeff Goldblum and Sigourney Weaver.  Quite an impres­sive list, eh?

Alvy Singer is stand-up com­ic liv­ing and work­ing in New York City.  When we meet him, he is forty years old, mar­ried and divorced twice and has just gone through anoth­er rela­tion­ship break-up.  We quick­ly learn that he is also quite neu­rot­ic and has been in ther­a­py for many years.  We explore with Alvy what he per­ceives to be the caus­es for his neu­roses and dif­fi­cul­ties in his past rela­tion­ships.  This includes his guilt-rid­den child­hood expe­ri­ences with con­stant­ly argu­ing par­ents liv­ing in a home next to Coney Island in Brooklyn. 

Annie Hall is orig­i­nal­ly from the Midwest and has moved to New York City with the goal of becom­ing a night­club singer.  As we soon see, she too has her quirks (which is a good part of her attractiveness.) 

Alvy and Annie first meet on a ten­nis court.  After play­ing, they enter into small talk which leads to Annie offer­ing Alvy a ride uptown, an invi­ta­tion to a glass of wine on her bal­cony, and increas­ing flir­ty behav­iors between the two.   They agree to a date after Annie does an audi­tion as a singer at a local club.  The song she sings is “It Had to Be You.”  They pro­ceed on their date, and it ends in pas­sion­ate love­mak­ing.  In typ­i­cal Woody Allen fash­ion, he is a ner­vous wreck after­wards while Annie kicks back and smokes a joint. 

The cou­ple find them­selves falling in love with each oth­er.  Annie pro­fess­es her love and Alvy responds by buy­ing her books on death. He pro­fess­es that his feel­ings for her are much more than love.  They even­tu­al­ly move in togeth­er but in time the rela­tion­ship grows more tense.  They even­tu­al­ly part ways and Alvy again tries to under­stand what and why things went wrong.  He stops total strangers on the street ask­ing them what they believe to be the nature of love.

In many ways it is the “quirk­i­ness” of both Alvy and Annie that car­ry this film and lead to the com­ic scenes with­in.  There is a scene where Alvy and Annie are wait­ing in line to get into a movie the­ater and behind them there is a man going on and on about the works of Federico Fellini (film mak­er) and Marshall McLuhan (philoso­pher).  Alvy has had enough of what he per­ceives to be errors in the man’s state­ments and goes off cam­era to bring on Marshall McLuhan him­self to refute the man. 

Another unfor­get­table scene occurs when Annie and Alvy are at a friend’s house and the friend lays out some cocaine.  Alvy is per­suad­ed to give it a try.  Alvy sneezes and the cocaine goes fly­ing.  That scene was not in the orig­i­nal script, but in one of the rehearsals Allen did sneeze and it was decid­ed to keep the scene in the film.  Reportedly in test runs of the film that scene was received with so much laugh­ter from the audi­ence that dia­logue was delayed to allow the laugh­ter to die down. 

One scene that is spe­cial to me is when Alvy and Annie decide to fix lob­sters at a beach house.  The lob­sters escape and run all over the kitchen.  As Alvy tries to cap­ture them Annie runs to get her cam­era and begins to take pic­tures of Alvy in his efforts — laugh­ing while doing so.  Why is this scene spe­cial to me?  Because I expe­ri­enced a very sim­i­lar scene.  While vis­it­ing my mom and aunt in Baltimore one sum­mer many years ago, I bought some crabs for us to steam.  They were prepar­ing them for the pot when I heard screams from the kitchen and pleas for me to come imme­di­ate­ly.  When I got there, I saw crabs run­ning all over the kitchen floor and my mom and aunt danc­ing to get out of the way yelling “Do some­thing Ron!” I imme­di­ate­ly ran to get my cam­era and began to take pic­tures.  And yes, I did help cap­ture the escap­ing crabs. 

As men­tioned above, Annie Hall includes a host of well-known names.  This was one of the ear­ly appear­ances of Jeff Goldblum when he appeared in the par­ty scene.  The film was the screen debut for Sigourney Weaver.  She appeared as Alvy’s date near the end of the film (no speak­ing part, how­ev­er.) Not men­tioned above in the cred­its is Truman Capote.  A fel­low pass­es by Alvy and he states he “is the win­ner of the Truman Capote look-alike con­test.”  In fact, it was Truman Capote. 

Part of the quirk­i­ness attrib­uted to Annie was her choice of cloth­ing.  As it turned out, the clothes worn by Diane Keaton in the film were indeed her own.  Her out­fits became quite a fash­ion state­ment for a peri­od of time after the release of the film.  Woody Allen once recalled that when Diane Keaton showed up on the set the cos­tume lady said “Tell her not to wear that.  She can’t wear that.  It’s so crazy.”  Allen respond­ed “Leave her.  She’s a genius.  Let’s just leave her alone, let her wear what she wants.” 

Keaton also lat­er pro­claimed the char­ac­ter of Annie Hall was indeed an “affa­ble ver­sion” of her­self.  She had worked with Woody Allen in sev­er­al films pri­or to Annie Hall, includ­ing Play It Again, Sam (1972), Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975).  Keaton once described the sim­i­lar­i­ties between her and the char­ac­ter of Annie Hall.  She said both were “semi-artic­u­late, dreamed of being a singer and suf­fered from insecurity.” 

Many have thought the char­ac­ter of Alvy to be sim­i­lar to Woody Allen as well.  Both were stand-up come­di­ans, Alvy was Allen’s nick­name as a child, and they shared sim­i­lar child­hood expe­ri­ences.  Also, Allen and Keaton had been roman­ti­cal­ly involved in the past.  Allen denied that the char­ac­ter was auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal.  He was quot­ed as say­ing “The stuff that peo­ple insist is auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal is almost invari­ably not . . . People got it into their heads that Annie Hall was auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, and I could­n’t con­vince them it wasn’t.” 

Annie Hall was an extreme­ly suc­cess­ful pic­ture earn­ing over $38 mil­lion — mak­ing it the 11^th high­est gross­ing pic­ture in 1977.  Not only was it finan­cial­ly suc­cess­ful, but it was crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed as well.  It was nom­i­nat­ed for five Oscars includ­ing Best Picture (won), Best Actor (Woody Allen), Best Actress (Diane Keaton-won), Best Director (Woody Allen-won) and Best Writing, Screenplay (Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman-won). 

Critics reviews were very pos­i­tive.  The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner called it Woody Allen’s “wit­ti­est, best film to date, both more social­ly and per­son­al­ly obser­vant in its depar­ture into the foibles and trau­mas of human rela­tion­ship.”  Judith Crist in Saturday Review described it as “Allen’s most sat­is­fy­ing cre­ation and our most grat­i­fy­ing comedic expe­ri­ence in recent years.” 

Annie Hall has con­tin­ued to receive trib­utes as time has passed.  The film was select­ed in 1992 for inclu­sion in the National Film Registry, and is list­ed as #2 in American Film Institute’s Top Ten Romantic Comedies.  It is also list­ed in American Film Institute’s list of Top 100 Greatest American Movies. 

Roger Ebert has includ­ed Annie Hall on his list of great movies, stat­ing “Annie Hall is a movie about a man who is always look­ing for loop­holes in per­fec­tion.  Who can turn every­thing into a joke and wish­es he could­n’t.”  A crit­ic with The Guardian named it as the best com­e­dy of all time, stat­ing “this won­der­ful­ly fun­ny, unbear­ably sad film is a mir­a­cle of com­ic writ­ing and inspired film-mak­ing.” Rotten Tomatoes ranks it as #2 on their list of 25 best roman­tic comedies. 

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rates Annie Hall at 8 of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a crit­ics score of 97% and an audi­ence score of 92%. 

Unfortunately, I was unable to locate any free stream­ing sites on my Roku device.  Also, sur­pris­ing­ly, the Clark County Public Library does not have a copy of the DVD on the shelf.  However, I’m sure they will get a copy if you ask.

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Wikipedia.

I’ll be back soon with the next Reel Classic, but before I leave you with the trail­er below let me remind you that if you enjoy these clas­sic movies, please join me on the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6 p.m. at the Clark County Public Library for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics.”  I present a clas­sic com­e­dy film usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a vin­tage car­toon.  Popcorn and drinks are pro­vid­ed.  More infor­ma­tion about the next film is avail­able on the library’s web­site and Facebook page, as well as WinCity Voices Facebook page.