Annie Hall (1977)
Film overview
Love, memory and the impossibility of making sense of either
Annie Hall follows comedian Alvy Singer as he looks back on his relationship with Annie Hall, trying to understand how two people who seemed so well matched could gradually move apart.
Told through memories, direct addresses to the audience, split screens, animation, subtitles and sudden jumps through time, the film constantly plays with the way we remember relationships rather than presenting their story in a straightforward chronology.
At its centre are Woody Allen and Diane Keaton as Alvy and Annie. Their contrasting personalities give the film both its comedy and its sadness: Alvy endlessly analyses what is happening while Annie gradually discovers a life and confidence beyond the relationship.
The result became a defining film of the 1970s and a major turning point in Allen's work, combining the comic invention of his earlier films with a more personal interest in relationships, character, memory and regret.
Watch Annie Hall
My review
Trying to understand why love doesn't last
Annie Hall is a film about a relationship that has already ended. That matters, because almost everything we see is filtered through Alvy Singer's memory of it. He isn't simply telling us what happened; he is going back over it, rearranging it, questioning it and trying to work out where something that once seemed so important went wrong.
I think that's one of the reasons the film remains so involving. Relationships rarely survive in our memories as neat chronological stories. We remember fragments: a particular conversation, an argument, a joke, an awkward dinner, a journey, the way somebody looked at us at one particular moment. Annie Hall understands that instinctively, and its structure feels remarkably natural because of it.
Woody Allen's Alvy is constantly analysing himself and everybody around him. He is funny, intelligent and frequently exhausting. Diane Keaton's Annie initially seems less certain of herself, but the film gradually reverses that balance. She begins to discover what she wants, while Alvy becomes increasingly determined to preserve the relationship in the form that makes sense to him.
Keaton is wonderful because Annie never feels like a collection of eccentricities. The clothes, the nervous phrases, the slightly uncertain way she carries herself early in the film are memorable, but there is a real emotional progression underneath them. By the time Annie begins building a life beyond Alvy, the change feels completely believable.
The film is also astonishingly inventive without ever feeling as though it is showing off. Alvy turns to the camera and speaks directly to us. Characters step into their own childhood memories. A split screen allows two families to occupy the frame at once. During one conversation between Alvy and Annie, subtitles reveal the thoughts neither of them is actually saying.
These devices could easily have made the film feel fragmented, yet they do the opposite. They bring us closer to the characters because they reproduce the way Alvy thinks. Reality, fantasy, memory and commentary are allowed to exist together.
Some of the comedy is beautifully simple. The lobster sequence works because it feels like something that could genuinely become one of those private memories shared by two people. Later, when Alvy tries to recreate the same experience with somebody else, the joke becomes unexpectedly sad. The circumstances can be repeated; the relationship cannot.
New York is crucial to the film too. Alvy belongs there so completely that Los Angeles almost seems to offend him on principle. Annie's willingness to imagine another kind of life becomes another sign of the distance developing between them. Geography becomes part of the relationship: New York represents the world Alvy understands, while California suggests possibilities he cannot control.
Gordon Willis photographs the film without turning Manhattan into the grand romantic spectacle it would become two years later. The city feels lived in rather than monumental. Apartments, pavements, cinemas, restaurants and queues become spaces where conversations unfold. The visual style allows the performances and the writing to stay at the centre.
I also love how willing the film is to interrupt itself. The famous cinema queue sequence, including the sudden appearance of Marshall McLuhan, is a perfect example. It takes an everyday irritation and gives Alvy the fantasy response most of us have probably imagined: being able to produce the ultimate authority and prove somebody wrong on the spot.
What finally gives Annie Hall its weight, though, is that it refuses to turn the relationship into a simple story about who was right and who was wrong. Alvy and Annie were happy together. They also frustrated each other. They helped each other change, and some of those changes ultimately made it harder for them to remain together.
The ending is beautifully judged. Alvy encounters Annie again after their lives have moved on, and the film looks back at the relationship without pretending that its failure made it meaningless. That idea seems central to everything that came before it.
We often want relationships to justify themselves by lasting. The film suggests something more complicated: two people can matter enormously to each other even if they eventually separate. What survives is memory — edited, unreliable, sometimes funny and sometimes painful.
That mixture of comedy, affection and regret is what makes Annie Hall so distinctive for me. It can be very funny from one scene to the next, yet underneath the jokes is somebody trying to understand why happiness disappears even when both people once seemed certain it was there.
Alvy never really solves the puzzle. Neither does the film. I think that's exactly why it works.
Cast and characters
The people around Alvy and Annie
A remarkable ensemble surrounds the central relationship, from old friends and former partners to Annie's family and the people who briefly pass through Alvy's increasingly complicated romantic life.
Alvy Singer
Woody Allen
A New York comedian who endlessly analyses relationships, mortality, culture and almost everything else. The film unfolds largely through his memories of Annie and his attempts to understand why their relationship ended.
Annie Hall
Diane Keaton
Warm, funny and initially uncertain of herself, Annie gradually grows in confidence and independence. Keaton gives the character an individuality that extends far beyond Alvy's recollection of their relationship.
Rob
Tony Roberts
Alvy's longtime friend and frequent sounding board, whose enthusiasm for California provides a comic contrast to Alvy's devotion to New York.
Allison
Carol Kane
One of Alvy's earlier relationships, glimpsed as the film moves through his romantic history and his tendency to undermine his own happiness.
Tony Lacey
Paul Simon
A successful record producer in Los Angeles whose relaxed world represents a very different possibility for Annie.
Pam
Shelley Duvall
A Rolling Stone reporter whom Alvy dates, memorably describing a concert experience in language that leaves him distinctly unconvinced.
Robin
Janet Margolin
Another of Alvy's former partners, whose intellectual social world provides one more glimpse of his difficulty finding lasting contentment.
Duane Hall
Christopher Walken
Annie's quietly unsettling brother, whose extraordinary confession to Alvy leads to one of the film's most perfectly timed visual jokes.
Mrs Hall
Colleen Dewhurst
Annie's mother, encountered during Alvy's visit to the Hall family home and the film's wonderfully contrasting portrait of their two families.
Himself
Marshall McLuhan
Appearing as himself in the famous cinema queue sequence, McLuhan materialises to give Alvy the argument-winning intervention most frustrated filmgoers could only dream of.
Music and soundtrack
Annie's voice and the sound of memory
Music is used sparingly throughout Annie Hall, which makes the moments when it does appear feel especially important. At the centre are Annie's nightclub performances, where Diane Keaton's voice becomes inseparable from the character and from Alvy's memories of her.
Signature song
AFI 100 Years…100 Songs · No. 90
Seems Like
Old Times
Annie's performance of the song captures something essential about the film: affection transformed by memory. Its wistful quality perfectly suits a story being remembered after the relationship itself has ended.
- Music
- Carmen Lombardo
- Lyrics
- John Jacob Loeb
- Performed by
- Diane Keaton
- Accompaniment
- Artie Butler
Annie at the nightclub
It Had to Be You
Annie also performs the 1920s standard It Had to Be You. Her singing scenes are important because they allow us to see her developing confidence outside the relationship and give the film some of its most intimate moments.
- Music
- Isham Jones
- Lyrics
- Gus Kahn
- Performed by
- Diane Keaton
- Accompaniment
- Artie Butler
Also heard in the film
Recorded music
Recording
A Hard Way to Go
Performed by Tim Weisberg
Recording
Sleepy Lagoon
Performed by Tommy Dorsey
Seasonal music
Christmas Medley
Performed by the Do-Re-Mi Children's Chorus
The effect
The film doesn't need music constantly telling us how to feel. When Annie sings, the music becomes part of who she is.
New York and beyond
From Coney Island to California
New York is more than a backdrop in Annie Hall. It is Alvy's natural habitat, woven into his memories, routines and identity. As Annie begins imagining a life beyond the city, Los Angeles becomes a geographical expression of the distance growing between them.
The central location
Alvy's
New York
Cinemas, apartments, parks, streets and restaurants create a New York that feels lived in rather than monumental. It is a city of conversation — the place where Alvy feels most comfortable and the world against which almost every alternative is measured.
The Thunderbolt
Alvy remembers growing up in a house beneath the Thunderbolt roller coaster at Coney Island, an absurd childhood detail that perfectly introduces the mixture of memory and exaggeration running through the film.
Former landmarkEast 68th Street
The street used for Annie's apartment places her firmly within Alvy's Manhattan world. The apartment and its terrace become the setting for some of the film's most intimate conversations.
Annie's apartmentBeekman Cinema
Alvy waits outside the Beekman while Annie is late for a screening of Ingmar Bergman's Face to Face. The cinema was one of several real New York picture houses woven into the film.
ClosedCentral Park Zoo
Alvy and Annie sit together observing passing strangers and inventing stories about them — a wonderfully simple scene built around the pleasure of the two characters talking and watching New York go by.
Central ParkWall Street Racquet Club
Alvy and Annie first meet after playing tennis at the Wall Street Racquet Club on the East River. Their awkward journey home begins the relationship around which the film will eventually revolve.
Former clubGrand Finale
The nightclub where Annie performs becomes one of the places in which we see her confidence developing independently of Alvy. Her singing gives these scenes a particularly intimate quality.
NightclubThe Hamptons
The beach house provides the setting for the famous lobster sequence. What begins as physical comedy becomes one of the memories Alvy later discovers cannot simply be recreated with somebody else.
Lobster sceneThe Source
The California health-food restaurant gives Alvy a setting almost designed to make him uncomfortable. Los Angeles represents the life Annie is increasingly willing to consider and Alvy cannot imagine embracing.
Former restaurantPlace and character
New York is where Alvy knows who he is. California matters because Annie discovers that she doesn't have to remain there with him.
Awards and recognition
The film that swept the major awards
Annie Hall became one of the most celebrated films of 1977, winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards alongside major honours for Diane Keaton, Woody Allen and the screenplay by Allen and Marshall Brickman.
50th Academy Awards · 1978
5 nominations · 4 wins
Academy Award winner
Best Picture
Charles H. Joffe · Producer
Academy Award wins
Four major honours
Best Picture
Annie Hall
Charles H. Joffe
Producer
Actress in a Leading Role
Diane Keaton
Annie Hall
Directing
Woody Allen
Annie Hall
Original Screenplay
Woody Allen
& Marshall Brickman
Screenplay written directly for the screen
Academy Awards
Best Actor nomination
Allen's performance as Alvy Singer completed the film's five Academy Award nominations.
BAFTA Film Awards · 1978
Five wins
- Film Winner
- Direction · Woody Allen Winner
- Actress · Diane Keaton Winner
- Screenplay · Woody Allen & Marshall Brickman Winner
- Film Editing · Ralph Rosenblum & Wendy Greene Bricmont Winner
BAFTA Film Awards
Six nominations in total
In addition to the film's five BAFTA wins, Allen was nominated for Actor for his performance as Alvy Singer.
Golden Globe Awards · 1978
Diane Keaton wins
- Actress · Musical or Comedy Winner
- Motion Picture · Musical or Comedy Nominee
- Director · Woody Allen Nominee
- Screenplay · Woody Allen Nominee
- Actor · Musical or Comedy · Woody Allen Nominee
A landmark success
Few romantic comedies have combined popular affection, critical acclaim and major awards recognition quite as completely as Annie Hall.