Annie Hall

From pondering why Diane Keaton wants to have intercourse with him only under the influence of marijuana to the super humorous scene in the queue, I was amazed at Woody Allen's intellect. This is the biography that the Master wrote for us ordinary guys. Thank you. (2005.12.12)

Woody Allen's apt, fresh, funny, soulful, sophisticated relationship film in a phase of his life, spouting one morsel of wisdom after another, and with a distance of about 50 years, with a unique social-aesthetic retro patina. Even after all this time, it's still to the point and 90 percent relevant. (2024.08.17)

An unusual film about usual stuff, but I can’t say I’m very thrilled about it. Even ignoring my slight personal antipathy towards Allen, I feel that this film wants to appear very original and smart, but it’s just ordinary and unsilly. Sure, writing and directing a film about traditional and unoriginal stuff in a way that a lot of people will see as a treat for the intellectual elite must be quite hard work, but Annie Hall is only pretending. It’s artificially interesting and, for me, unpleasant. (2009.09.23)

The Allen movies about relationships are all the same. There are heaps of intellectual references everywhere, sharp humor, multiple layers of emotion, your favorite actors, and your favorite topics for conversation and reflection. I often feel like these are not individual films, but episodes of "Woody and his views on women." You have to be in the right mood and have insight into your own relationships in order to be able to follow it. In addition, it features all the "funny" formal tweaks and speeches to the viewer and once again the endless pile of references to Bergman, Fellini, McLuhan, Chaplin, Groucho Marx, Freud, Visconti/Mann... Commenting on these films is more like a sport, and the one who scores the most points is the one who made a mark every time he was supposed to laugh, be moved, or say "aha, I got that too." Menstruation in conversation is also the absolute pinnacle. Every time. Always. (2017.05.30)

In the majority of his films, Woody Allen leaves an imprint of himself. It is not just that he has played the lead roles in them for a long time. We can clearly read his views on the world, political preferences, value hierarchy, and especially snippets of his own life experiences from them. Annie Hall, however, goes much further. Woody Allen decided to basically make an autobiographical film about himself and his relationship with Diane Keaton. Intriguingly, both former partners act alongside each other, portraying themselves, and they worked together on the script and dialogues. In the film, Woody speaks to the audience, thinks out loud, comments on his life so far, and satirizes his weaknesses, failures, and mistakes. It is a chronicle of a relationship from which one can still draw because it has to a large extent a universal character. Both partners are quite different and, as is usually the case, it is precisely their differences that attract them the most to each other. On the other hand, the same contributes to the breakdown of their coexistence, especially when neither of them is patient or tolerant enough. Woody, in the form of his alter ego Alvy Singer, cannot get rid of his desire to re-educate his partner and reshape her in his own image, and Annie Hall, alias Diane Keaton, cannot get rid of her bohemian lifestyle and flighty nature. Woody Allen attached great importance to this film and did not just try to stuff it with enough suitable jokes and gags, but had ambitions for a deeper artistic statement about a particular partnership and life in general. This film is definitely at the above-average level within his body of work, although it is not his complete artistic peak because the screenplay is not completely coherent, as the film is just not quite compact enough. That's just how it goes when there is a lot of effort put into something. Whatever the case may be, Woody managed to make a film that is one of the most famous among his fans and the broader audience. Overall impression: 85%. (2014.02.24)