Allen's most essential and accessible picture?

Rating: 8/10 (12 August 2009)

Manhattan's the better film, but there Allen's alter ego is a fundamentally selfish character. It's beautifully shot and well-written, but it's harder to like a picture where the central figure is a self-absorbed user in the middle of a relationship with an underage girl.
Annie Hall has no such problems for a casual audience, even though Allen does his usual neurotic, self-regarding schtick and his predilection for European cinema. This may be an issue with Annie Hall, in that Allen's character is an intellectual snob, whereas in Manhattan (8) he's well aware that the worst person in the room is himself and he's even intimidated by the intelligence of Diane Keaton's Mary Wilkie. In fact, as the titular Annie Hall then this issue is reversed, with Annie feeling she's not educated enough for Allen's Alvy Singer.
Regardless of comparing the "two big ones" against each other, it can't be denied that Woody was on outstanding form in the 1970s. There's the final cast offs of his all-out comedy vehicles with the likable Bananas (6) and the patchy, hit-and-miss Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (qv). Add to this the imaginative silent homage of Sleeper (7) and an attempt at a serious drama with Interiors (7). The Bergman influences may be too keenly felt at times, not just with Interiors, but with a lot of the work, yet it really is Woody at the top of his game.
Sole aberration for me is Love and Death (4), a popular entry but a pretentious farce that I find extremely grating. Yet back to Annie Hall, and it's probably the most accessible of his pictures. Sketchy, true, and Allen would learn more about genuine narrative structure in the future, but there's some experiments largely unique to his body of work, including characters walking through their own memories and Woody breaking the fourth wall. One criticism with Woody Allen's movies is that they do have a tendency to be similar, but there's a freshness and spontaneity at play here throughout. Yet what puts Annie Hall above all others is that Woody was rarely more likable than here, and all the great Freudian gags in the world can't compete with the charm of Allen and Keaton genuinely laughing during the lobster scene.