Annie Hall (1977)

There is a certain genius to all of Woody Allen's films, but "Annie Hall" is most obviously the most brilliant. This was the Woody film which signified the end of his "screwball" years, the last film of which was the almost-as-great "Love and Death" (1975). "Annie Hall" is funnier than any of his other comedies. The devices Woody uses to combine flashback with present-tense and the way he talks to the camera during scenes in which we don't think he knows we're there were groundbreaking, not to mention being extremely funny.

"Annie" starts off with the famous monologue by Alvy Singer (Allen). From this monologue, we get an instantaneous impression of the character: we realize him to be a nervous, somewhat strange intellectual standup comedian who likes to use fifty-cent words. He then proceeds to tell us about his childhood and his inability to distinguish fantasy from reality. These are some of the funniest scenes in the film, as Alvy describes his grade school, recalls his therapy, and informs us that he "never had a latency period."

This forms the setup of a film that is incessantly funny all the way through. Woody's classic one-liners and his well-done slapstick make for 93 minutes of pure comic genius. The one-liners are brilliant, as they always are with Woody, but one of the most memorable scenes involves an unscripted slapstick gag. A friend of Annie's is urging Alvy and Annie to try some of his cocaine (Alvy doesn't want to because he doesn't want to put powder in his nose, while Annie complains that he never tries new things). Since Alvy is going to California to appear at an awards show, his friend asks him if he can score some coke while he's there. When Alvy asks how much it usually costs, the guy tells him that it's usually around $2000 an ounce. Alvy proceeds to sneeze into the cocaine, blowing it into the air. This was not meant to be used in the final cut of the film, but Woody left it in when he saw how hard the audience laughed at it. He actually had to add more footage after the scene to make up for the jokes the audience missed because they were laughing so hard.

The performances in "Annie" are some of the best ever on screen by any actors. Diane Keaton won numerous awards for her outstanding portrayal of the ditsy title character, including the Academy Award, the British Academy Award, the Golden Globe, the National Board of Review, the National Society of Film Critics Award, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award. Oddly enough, however, Woody Allen received only three nominations for his performance as the neurotic Alvy Singer, none of which he won. Most of those awards went to Richard Dreyfuss for "The Goodbye Girl." But Woody's performance is really wonderful in this film. It's unfortunate that he is seen primarily as a writer-director by most people, and is never given the recognition he deserves as one of the best actors of the past century.

The movie also won Academy Awards that year for Allen's direction, Allen and Brickman's screenplay, and Best Picture of the Year. With those credits, it's hard to believe how little recognition it gets nowadays for being the comic masterpiece that it is. It ranked impressively on the American Film Institute's list of the funniest movies of all time (#4) and the best movies of all time (#31), but the popular media never really gives "Annie Hall" the praise it deserves for being a landmark film. Far lesser comedies of recent years such as "Happy Gilmore" and "Dumb and Dumber" are held up much higher on a comic level for some reason. "Dumb and Dumber" is a relatively funny movie, but in the case of "Happy Gilmore," I think it's safe to say that without the star power of Adam Sandler, the movie would have been deader than dead upon its box office arrival. Recently, the Entertainment Network (E!) ranked the 20 funniest movies ever made. "Annie Hall," shockingly, was nowhere in sight. "Happy Gilmore" and "Dumb and Dumber," on the other hand, were right up there with "Young Frankenstein" and "National Lampoon's Animal House." I was baffled by this, as you can imagine. During the course of the program, I realized that the people who ranked the films had an infatuation with gross-out comedies and "stupid-funny" movies (despite the fact that most of them weren't funny; just stupid). They didn't seem to care for intelligent verbal comedy, like that of Woody or Groucho, that actually had a brain in its head. Even the one Woody movie that actually ranked ("Bananas" from 1971) was a slapstick selection from his screwball years. There's nothing wrong with "Bananas," it's a very funny film, but anyone who knows anything about Woody can tell you that there is no film of his that is superior in any field to "Annie Hall." There are laughs all the way through, which is much more than you can say about most of the gross-out comedies on the E! list. Every scene in "Annie" gives us wonderful one-liners, clever camera tricks, and slapstick delivered with the comic grace only Woody could pull off. It is one of the funniest and best movies of all time and should never be pushed aside by brainless slapstick comedies by Adam Sandler and company.

Anyway, Woody is the Star of the Month of May on the Turner Classic Movie channel (TCM), and "Annie Hall" is the first of Woody's original films that will be shown (there will be a documentary on Woody called "Woody Allen: A Life in Film" preceding it, so watch for that as well). I urge anyone who hasn't seen it either to watch it or to tape it. They will be running 17 of Allen's other films during the course of the month. I've seen most of them and there isn't a single one that I can't recommend. As for the ones that I haven't seen, see "Annie Hall" first and if you liked it half as much as I did, you'll want to tune in for all the other Woody films that TCM will be running this month, as I will be doing the same.

Also be sure to check out Woody's new film "Hollywood Ending," in theaters Friday.

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