Annie Hall: A nervous romance.

Movie: Annie Hall

Release year: 1977

Director: Woody Allen

Woody Allen has always been one of my favorite film-makers. ‘Manhattan’ especially has been a favorite for the longest time. Until I stumbled upon this film. ‘Annie Hall’ contains more intellectual wit and cultural references than any other movie ever to win the Oscar for best picture, and in winning the award in 1977 it edged out ‘Star Wars’, an outcome unthinkable today. I still think it’s one of the funniest movies I have ever watched. The structure itself is unique; from the first minute of the opening monologue, when Alvy wonders what went wrong in his relationship with Annie Hall, I was hooked. While the film begins in the present time with Alvy whining for his lost relationship, we see the relationship in bits and pieces.

The story begins in the present, then shows us some hysterical scenes of Alvy’s early childhood. He grew up under a rollercoaster, he says, which is why he tends to be a little nervous. The film flashes back to his two marriages. We share some of his memories with Annie, then we flashback to Alvy’s first encounter with Annie when they first meet on the tennis court.

When I first watched the film, I tried to analyze the structure in relation to the paradigm, but I realized it wouldn’t work. I didn’t understand how Annie Hall was put together. I wondered if you could structure a story around the growth and change of a character? Alvy is a person who refuses to change, whereas Annie Hall is a person who changes and grows constantly. Can a screenplay told mostly in flashback be structured around the dramatic need of the character?

Annie Hall is structured a lot like a stage play. Woody Allen sets up his character’s point of view immediately from page one, word one, in Alvy’s monologue. Act I sets up Alvy’s present situation and past relationships. Everything Alvy refers to relates to the time when he and Annie were together. Alvy’s character, as set up in Act I, goes from the present to the past.

Act II deals with Alvy and Annie’s relationship, from recreating their first stirrings of passion (including that glorious subtext scene on the balcony) to their final separation. The last part of the movie is played out as Alvy unsuccessfully tries to recreate his relationship with Annie with other women.

Alvy Singer, the gag writer, and stand-up comic played by Allen in the movie is the template for many of his other roles — neurotic, wisecracking, kvetching, a romantic who is not insecure. Annie Hall, played by Diane Keaton(in an impossible-to-not-fall-in-love-with performance), sets the form for many of Allen’s on-screen girlfriends: Pretty, smart, scatterbrained, younger, with affection, gradually fading into exasperation.

Alvy Singer, like so many other Allen characters and Allen himself, accompanies every experience in life with a running commentary. He lives to talk about living. And his interior monologues provide not merely the analysis but the alternative.

‘Annie Hall’ is built on such dialogue, and centers on conversation and monologue. Because it is just about everyone’s favorite Woody Allen movie, because it won the Oscar, because it is a romantic comedy, few viewers probably notice how much of it consists of people talking, simply talking. They walk and talk, sit and talk, go to shrinks, go to lunch, talk to the camera, or launch into inspired monologues like Annie’s free-association as she describes her family to Alvy. The more we listen to Annie and Alvy talk, the more we doubt they meet many people who can keep up with them.

What makes ‘Annie Hall’ a film for the ages, however, is how deftly it handles Allen-surrogate Alvy’s neuroses and weaknesses while remaining empathetic to his problems. He may be too controlling and too inflexible for Annie who wants to branch out and try new things, but we still want him to succeed in love and life. Although ‘Annie Hall’ clearly contains splendid moments in which Annie and Alvy seem the ideal match, the film doesn’t airbrush out the flaws in the relationship. The film has none of the bitterness that sours some of Allen’s other films, like ‘Celebrity’, but instead sees relationships and personal growth as difficult but essential. Whereas most romantic comedies consist of a couple of meetings and overcoming numerous obstacles before eventually realizing they are meant to be together till death do them part, ‘Annie Hall’ comes at love from a different angle, following the storyline of one relationship’s bittersweet end. Relationships are “totally irrational, crazy, and absurd, but we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs.”

Woody Allen also experiments with the medium, not in any remarkable ways really, but still in ways that impress, from the scene where subtitles translate characters’ inner thoughts, to frequent, contrasting split screens and even an animated sequence. One of the most famous techniques used in Annie Hall is the double-exposed scene, to visually display Annie’s distance and lack of interest, her body is double-exposed so that one Annie is in bed with Alvy while another rises out of bed to search for her drawing pad. Alvy speaks to both Annies, separately and collectively. The visual gag gives humorous emphasis to the conflict of the scene and of course, revises what actually would have happened. The visual gag is entertaining and gets a laugh but also demonstrates that Alvy is fantasizing.

Another, similar, visual technique is the addition of subtitles that contradict the onscreen dialogue as Alvy and Annie converse on Annie’s balcony. The subtitles ostensibly offer their respective character’s thoughts as they chat nervously. This gag adds another layer of awareness to the scene, as well as a bit of humor in exposing the completely unrelated thoughts that most people have while interacting with someone they are attempting to attract. Again, the gag serves as a way to editorialize upon the story’s reality and also humorously points out the difference in perspective that two people have while participating in the same conversation.

Time travel and animation are other techniques that emphasize the fantastical aspect of ‘Annie Hall’. In several scenes, Alvy revisits the past and occasionally takes companions with him. He goes back to his childhood to defend his younger self’s actions by explaining them in Freudian terms.

The animation scene takes this fantastical tack and pulls it in another direction, inserting the characters into a fictional cartoon in which Annie is portrayed as the wicked queen in ‘Snow White’, and Alvy is portrayed as a childish victim. Alvy is psychoanalyzing the situation too much. Other visually inventive elements in the film include interactive split screens, sudden physical transformations (such as when Alvy turns into a Hasidic Jew), and the sudden production of a real-life character (Marshall McLuhan) paired with the direct-to-camera comment “Boy if only life were like this.” Together, these techniques support the notion that art can and should be used to reshape life into an easier-to-swallow, more fulfilling version of itself.

‘Annie Hall’ carries a tinge of regret, as though its narrator’s attempt to improve upon life is only half-hearted. Indeed, the fact remains that, regardless of the ending Alvy conjures up in his play, Annie and Alvy in reality do not last as a couple. Although the fantasy elements frequently add a layer of unpredictability and delight to the narrative, the basic elements and conflicts of the story are true to life. The film ends by celebrating the romance between Annie and Alvy, though failed, adding weight to Alvy’s final monologue about the necessity of relationships. ‘Annie Hall’ simultaneously relishes and dismisses them.

~ The 2000’s Cinemascope.