91. ANNIE HALL

LIFE, LOVE AND PURSUIT OF COMEDY

By Darin Skaggs

     Life is full of ups and downs.  You will fall in love, you will feel regret, you will feel full of hope, you will feel hopeless and hopefully will spend it laughing. Woody Allen’s 1977 film Annie Hall explores all of these themes while also making one of the greatest comedies of all time.

     This film is about a man named Alvy Singer, played by Allen himself, who goes through life pessimistic and worried.  He meets the title character during a tennis match.  In this meet up he finds out that she is awkward, a crazy driver and dresses the way she wants.  This encounter gets Singer’s attention and he pursues a relationship.  This leads to many complications and some fun moments all provoking life and love.

     A few moments of the film has Alvy narrating telling us about what has gone on in his life. These moments include him growing up by a roller coaster, him having an interest in girls at a very young age and his ups and downs with Annie Hall.  It captures moments of life so perfectly. At one point Singer considers Hall his best friend, so when they are trying to cook lobster for the first time and they continue to drop them and loose them behind appliances they cannot help but laugh together.   The scene is later parodied with a lady that Alvy hardly knows, she is bored and apathetic to even making the food.  At one point while they are broken up Annie calls Alvy to come kill a spider in her apartment.  Alvy comes over as quickly as he can to save the day.  Throughout the film he does not care about anyone this much, he almost treats some people, mostly women, like they are nothing.  However Annie Hall changes him and makes him want to take care of her and make sure she is always ok. 

     Now most of Allen’s earlier work before this was pure comedy and starting with this film he matured greatly and continued to do so throughout his career.  This film still has amazingly funny comedy and absurd jokes.  There are jokes like Annie and Alvy standing in line of a movie and a man behind them is loudly giving a bad opinion about a filmmaker, well bad opinion according to Alvy.  Alvy eventually takes the man and says he is wrong then brings out the bashed upon filmmaker to give a rebuttal to the loud man’s opinions. Alvy then turns to the camera and proclaims “I wish real life was like this.”  He includes a scene where they get to know each other and subtitles are used to show what they really think.  The movie is filled with this type of humor.   Other jokes come from Allen’s dialogue complaining Curb Your Enthusiasm style about what people do and what he thinks about how life works.

     It is the first mature effort from Allen and definitely one of his best.  It is super funny and insightful about what love does to a person and how it can change their outlook.  It has stood the test of time and will for decades to come.