If there’s one movie that director-writer-actor Woody Allen will always be remembered by, it would have to be Annie Hall – a seminal and incredibly witty deconstruction of an urban relationship… and a romantic comedy if you can really call it one. This was also perhaps the inimitable auteur’s most personal, even semi-autobiographical, film, something he made sure to poke fun at in the finale. The movie has Allen playing Alvy Singer, a New York-based neurotic, pessimistic, “hostile” and intellectual stand-up comedian, recounting his falling in and then out of relationship with Diane Keaton's shy and impulsive wannabe singer called Annie Hall, who’s everything that Alvy isn’t, and vice-versa. Contemporary, hilarious, intelligent, freewheeling and matured, brilliantly laced with wry and self-deprecating humour, punctuated throughout its length with immensely quotable one-liners and wisecracks that are so quintessentially Woody Allen, and filled to brim with cultural references ranging from Bergman to Capote to Freud to Groucho Marx, the film is the cinematic equivalent of a good wine – you need to allow it grow onto you, but once you do, you won’t be able to have enough of it. Interestingly, Allen also made heavy use of a host of filming techniques and gags, ranging from split screens, contradictory subtitles and adult time travels, to stuff like addressing the camera and even animes!
Director: Woody Allen
Genre: Comedy/Romantic Comedy/Satire/Urban Comedy
Language: English
Country: US
