the quintessence of Allen's mood

Rating: 8/10 (1 November 2009)

Let's first admit I am not among Woody Allen's fans, but after having seen and liked "Whatever works" and discovered its script went back to the same period as Annie Hall, I felt like seeing it. Let's also admit I watched it in company of my parents who constantly repeated to themselves how it was possible to award it with the Oscar as best movie, and how it was possible to found a movie on talking, walking, talking while walking, walking while talking.... quite a funny condition to see one of Allen's best creation.
The movie is a romantic and "cerebral" comedy about man-woman relationship, seen from the point of view of a neurotic, nerve-wracking and too a self-conscious man, Alvy Singer, the prototype of many of Allen's characters, you may love or hate him abut he cannot leave you indifferent, and I would like to cite Roger Ebert when he says that Alvy is "a seeker of the unattainable and an expert at making it unattainable, he is not a victim of forces beyond his control, but their author", as they can best summarize the condition of this eccentric, almost border-line man.
There are extremely funny moments, as when he says that has been attending an analyst for fifteen years, and he will allow him another year before going to Lourdes: what strikes you as odd and disarming is the naturalness and immediacy when he pronounces such philosophical sentences or quotations, so that you can either laugh or despise him. I liked him, although I must admit that his neurotic talkativeness sometimes gets annoying, but in the end I cannot deny the movie is involving and innovative for the seventies. As I had said in my review of "Whatever works", old age make people, if not wiser, more disillusioned, and more at ease with the bitterness of life, I think that in Annie Hall's script we could have never found the idea that "Every temporary measure of grace" is the best we can obtain from life. Annie Hall reveals a yearning for life, even only for a speculation about life that "Whatever works" puts aside in favour of a more disenchanted view and comforting final happy ending, but it is undoubted that the neurotic and sometimes pedantic nature of Allen's movies, characters, and probably nature, belong to both movies.
You may love or hate it, but I think "Annie Hall" is a must see movie for all those who like thinking about life and about the "irrational" quality of man-woman relationship.