It is striking how little music there is in Annie Hall, which opens silently, before a monologue, and features only a short blast of Mozart, with the exception of Diane Keaton’s singing. One effect is to make you realise how reliant Allen often is upon music to create his effects. You see this in films like Deconstructing Harry or Manhattan. It has been some fifteen years since I saw Annie Hall, which was put on the big screen this weekend as tribute to Diane Keaton’s death. What is so obvious now, which I had not seen before, are all the parallels to When Harry Met Sally, which was made twelve years later: as well as the tennis/baseball and all the talk of Death, there is the bookstore scene, the driving scene, the lunch at the deli scene, the call in the night when she cries, the exes, and the general story arc, including him chasing after her at the end, and their cultural differences. I cannot think of When Harry Met Sally now but as a response to Allen. Of course, Allen doesn’t have a happy ending, unlike Ephron. And it is a much more neurotic film. But if we had to pick a genre—(aren’t all Woody Allen films part of the “Woody Allen” genre?)—then “neurotic romantic comedy” really does catch what Annie Hall is about, formally and thematically. Annie Hall is part of Allen’s effort to Americanise and popularise Bergman and related modes of cinema (Bergman gets a prominent nod at the beginning), and so the strange effect of watching Annie Hall now is to see clearly that Woody Allen is the link between Ingmar Bergman and Nora Ephron. Annie Hall contains many of Allen’s most popular one-liners (“I cheated on my metaphysics final. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me.”) as well as many low-key excellent Allenisms (“Honey, I’ve been killing spiders since I was thirty.”; “I heard that Commentary and Dissent had merged and formed Dysentery.”) and the half-dozen others who dragged themselves out to see the movie were all laughing as heartily as I was. This is not peak Allen, (that would be: Manhattan Murder Mystery, Hannah and her Sisters, Stardust Memories, Bullets Over Broadway, and perhaps Blue Jasmine)1, but it is very worthwhile seeing Annie Hall on the big screen.
noting that I am not an Allen completionist, I also have a soft spot for Husbands and Wives, too, and Radio Days, and The Purple Rose of Cairo
I'm pretty sure there are clips of Rob Reiner saying explicitly that they wanted to make "When Harry Met Sally" like Woody would have. The final scene of Billy Crystal running to the New Years party is basically a shot for shot remake of the end of Manhattan when Ike runs to see Tracy.
I might be basic - but I do find Annie Hall to be peak Woody. He's never funnier, or more heartfelt - and when you consider the influence on the entire romantic comedy genre, it's got to be one of the most important films of the past 50 years. Glad you got to see this on the big screen! I'm screening it with my film society in March (soonest date we could get)
I will always have a soft spot for Annie Hall but my other favorites are Crimes and Misdemeanors, Hannah and Her Sisters, Broadway Danny Rose and Husbands and Wives, which I recently rewatched for the first time in a while. That movie has a particular, raw realism to it.