Focussed and funny, Allen's "Hall" is a winner.

Rating: 7/10 (7 March 2020)

Thank heavens I know about enough of people like William Buckley and Marshall McLuhan in order to enjoy "Annie Hall"; thank goodness I know who Federico Fellini is in order to laugh at one of its jokes whereby his name is mentioned. "Annie Hall" is like that - it's in and out with a joke or a reference or a line of dialogue and, before you've even been granted the time to absorb it; digest it; appreciate it, it's flown on to the next one. It plays, in fact, a little bit like a stand-up comedy routine - it has a certain flowing evanescence to it, an absorbing self-confidence. It isn't flippant or chaotic - moreover, it is a film under almost the complete control of those who have made it; its poise refreshing and its influence on its genre coming to it now quite evident.
"Annie Hall" is, in essence, a somewhat conventional love story told in an unconventional, even peculiar, manner. It breaks the fourth wall; hops around two different equilibriums; plucks famous people out from behind house plants and speaks to them; interviews people in the street; uproots the action from one end of the United States to the other halfway through and, perhaps most jarringly, departs for an animated sequence involving the film's protagonist and an old Disney villain. And yet, at its heart, is a relatively simple exploration of love; relationships and what it means to really feel something for someone else.
Alvy, played by the film's director and writer Woody Allen, is a stand-up comedian living in New York with a kind of C-list celebrity status whose life is characterised by his comedic routines; games of tennis with his best friend Rob (Tony Roberts) and a persecution complex that all Gentiles secretly hate him (he mishears when someone asks him 'Did you...?' and 'Did Jew...?') He has already been married twice.
His story is one about a relationship with the eponymous Annie, played by Diane Keaton, who, just to complicate a film already dripping in postmodernism, happened to be Allen's partner at the time of the shoot; whose surname was originally Hall and whose real-life nickname was, indeed, 'Annie'. It cannot be a coincidence that, when they are first introduced to one another at a tennis club, they quite literally undertake this process of facing off over the net with one another, going head-to-head in what is a sport characterised by back-and-forths. Later, when they head back to hers for a drink and she serves wine, one of them must consume theirs out of a half-pint glass due to a lack of proper wine-glasses. It's a small detail but it cleverly infers Annie is not used to hosting.
The pleasure, in fact, from watching the film derives from the fact the subject matter is handled with a surprising amount of maturity, which clashes with the approach but never sees one overwhelm the other. It also derives from the fact the film, exemplified in the above, is made like a proper film: the camera is an active participant in the action and the message; the edits are rarely invisible; the approaches it takes to shooting specific scenes appear carefully chosen for specific reasons.
Take, for instance, the scene fairly early on, though deep into Alvy and Annie's tryst, whereby, in the dead of night, they lie in bed and talk over one another, unsure if they want to make love, and are shot from a perspective which is so far away, we are able to see the entire room and all its clutter. Eventually, a siren roars past outside and they call the whole thing off. The language of the scene infers degrees of chaos and mess in their relationship, a sharp contrast to an earlier scene under exactly the same circumstances when they are shot from a tighter angle, reflecting closeness, and in tones more synonymous with scenes of romance - low lighting and soft shadow.
But the film is more than a mere love story, the likes of which we may have seen a hundred times. It philosophises on relationships; concluding that while some are just doomed, irrespective of what is tried, you need them in the first place in order to move on to life's next stage. Alvy, for instance, encourages Annie to study an adult course in something, but this only pushes her closer to a lecturer. When he tells her to take her singing more seriously, this just pushes her into the eyes of a record producer, thus dooming the relationship. And yet, what would Annie really be if she'd never even met Alvy?

Dorling Kindersley's "Movie Book" of 2014 concludes that the film is, at its heart, an exploration of what makes a relationship successful, even resorting to asking people in a New York street what they think. But, the review concludes bleakly, there is no real answer: one couple remark that they're happy because they're shallow and don't have 'anything interesting to say' to one another. Compared to modern comedies about sex or relations or a combination of the two, this stands head and shoulders above most in the genre and is unsurprisingly looked upon as the springboard for Allen's fame.