Annie Hall

Director: Woody Allen

Release Date: 1977

Should this be on the list?
Woody Allen had many great movies, but this is arguably his best. I will attempt to argue why this is.

Rating: 5 Stars out of 5

Would I watch this again?
Just did.

“We needed the eggs.”

It’s the punchline of the joke Woody Allen tells at the beginning of the movie, the one about the man whose brother thinks he’s a chicken, and the doctor eventually asks him why it’s taken so long for them to bring him in. He eventually relates this joke to relationships, and how, despite everything, we need them.

I was short for my age. From the time I was eight years old, I wore glasses. I was an only child. Throw this into the mix: I started kindergarten a year early at age 4, and I also started late in my first year, so when I walked into school on the first day—my first day, anyway—full of a class of staring eyes who had been present for nearly a month, I might as well have spoken in a series or grunts and screams, while preening the impressive set of antlers sprouting out of my forehead. I took my place at a desk too tall for me and tried to fit in, which is to say, I tried to disappear. But despite my best efforts, my position as an outsider was sealed from the moment I arrived, and it became more and more clear as years passed at that school.

At a time when the movie-going public still thought fondly of John Wayne, in the direct middle of Burt Reynolds’ reign as the top box-office draw, there was Woody Allen, a former stand-up who had become the unlikeliest of movie stars by playing the character of himself: a neurotic, cowardly, nervous ball of comedic energy. No one on the screen looked like him, this small, thin man with glasses, a bald spot appearing in the back of his dark-red hair, but he somehow became so popular that the comic section of the newspapers had a daily cartoon called “Inside Woody Allen.” For someone who was constantly dealing with all of the disadvantages of being different, to see this man doing the things he was doing was nothing short of an inspiration.

I devoured his movies. Not only did they make me laugh, even at a young age, I understood something about where he was coming from, or at least I felt I did. Even the jokes that were far too adult for me to understand, I understood why they were funny.

He was a comedian first, and he gained popularity initially by free-flowing and outrageous spoofs like Bananas and Sleeper, which both read like a mash-up of Danny Kaye, the Marx Brothers and a Mad Magazine parody. With Play It Again, Sam, a dose of reality began to creep in, and then there was Annie Hall in 1977, a semi-autobiographical story that is without a doubt his transition from comedian to filmmaker.

The plot: Alvy Singer (Allen), stand-up comedian, meets Annie Hall (Diane Keaton), an aspiring actress and singer. They have an on-again, off-again relationship, which ends at off-again. And that’s it, although you can spot Sigourney Weaver in a long-distance shot at the end.

While there isn’t a whole lot of plot, there is no shortage of real-life humor and an exploration of relationships that really hadn’t been done all that often in American movies. It is a landmark for that reason.

For some reason, I watched this movie late, partially because my Dad had seen it and said it was disappointing. And to some, I’m sure it was. It was strangely like Dylan going electric, a comedian getting serious, or at least, somewhat serious. This had none of the wildness that had made his early movies great, no Howard Cosell doing the play-by-play of a wedding night (Bananas), no bumbling about in a huge purple Hydrovac suit (Sleeper), but it does have a moment where he sneezes away a line of cocaine. While he lost the parts of his audience that were just there for the goofy humor and non-stop laughs, he gained the undying adoration of the critics, and the movie walked away with the 1977 Oscar for Best Picture.

If you haven’t watched this, or any of Woody Allen’s movies, I recommend you start at the beginning and work your way forward, because it really does help with context. When I finally did watch Annie Hall, I had already seen both Manhattan and Hannah and Her Sisters, so the impact that this movie had was considerable lessened.

During the last few years, we have spent a good deal of time tearing down those in the spotlight, especially those in Hollywood. In a lot of cases, the punishment has fit the crime, and in others, it seems to vary due to the person involved. It’s always been a great mystery to me why, through the awful, salacious details of Woody Allen’s breakup with Mia Farrow and subsequent relationship with her stepdaughter Soon-Yi, his reputation never wavered, and in some ways, continued to grow. Personally, I stopped watching, partially because of this and partially because his new ones didn’t interest me. After all these years, it seemed like he had reached the point where he was believing his own press clippings: in some ways, he was making the same movie over and over again. It became a joke: when is the word ‘pseudo-intellectual’ going to make an appearance? You could make a drinking game of this. Make sure you credit me if you do.

But despite all of that, and worse accusations to come, I would go back to the old ones and thoroughly enjoy them. Like this one. There’s something brilliant that exists in the transition: the aforementioned Bob Dylan was arguably never better than Bringing it All Back Home. For the Beatles, it was Sgt Pepper, the mid-ground between the  A Hard Day’s Night version and the Magical Mystery Tour. For Godard, everything seemed to lead up to Pierrot Le Fou and everything after wasn’t as good. Annie Hall was the culmination, and then most of what came afterwards was a reflection of it.

And why do I keep coming back? I still feel different, and I still need to know that’s all right.

I still kind of need the eggs.