Annie Hall 1977

1
Annie Hall 1977

• A film written and directed by
• Woody Allen

2
Technical Strategies for Comedy

• Direct address to the camera
• Vignettes
• Split screens
• Conversation across split screens
• Transformations

• The sudden production of an author
• Double exposures
• Animation
• Subtitles

3
Themes of Annie Hall

• Anti-Semitism
• Life/death
• Romantic angst
• Drugs
• East Coast/West Coast
• Obsessive love for New York vs strong distaste
  for California

4
The Woody Allen Persona
Allen encourages us to think of his persona as
him and vice versa. How does he demonstrate this
desire to blend the two personalities?
5
The Persona

• Persona literally means mask
• A second self created by an author of a text (or
  film)
• Allen is able to present a public self to the
  world, and still able to secure a private self
  for his personal life

6
How do we describe this persona?

• Hypochondria
• Battle with despair
• Victimization
• Jewish guilt
• Neurosis

• General displacement
• Shaky relationships with women
• Physical dishevelment

7
The Little Man Persona
8
The Little Man

• The little Man shows us snippets about the
  quality of contemporary life
• Making a critique shuffling through life but
  never really fitting in
• How do we describe these characters physically?
• Physically unimposing
• Tend to flee from physical confrontation

9
How do these little men address the world?

• Tramp comes from lower class background
• struggles for work
• dresses in a manner that raises him from his
  class (hat and suit, cane)
• Chaplin is making a claim about class relations

10
Addressing the world

• Allens persona comes from an upper class
  perspective
• slumps down
• dresses in a manner that defies his speech
  patterns (stereotypically)

11
Chaplin and Allen

• Relates to the world through pantomime and motion

• Creates his world through words, speech and sound

• The Little Man is always lonely and unable to
  communicate. Alvy speaks, but never seems to get
  the point across.
• Both personae are outsiders, on the fringes of
  banal society.

12
The Title Annie Hall

• The title suggests that this film is about Annie
• It is a film about Alvy and his relationship with
  Annie
• Opening jokes reflect how Alvy sees life and how
  he understands relationships
• This is one possible theme life and relationships

13
Annie and Alvy
All the books about death and dying are yours,
and all the poetry books are mine.

• Alvy is obsessed with death Annie is optimistic
• Annie is neurotic too
• Babbling
• Making silly sounds (La-Dee-Da)
• Laughing out of context
• The story about Uncle George
• Is she an alternate persona for Alvy?

14
Opposites Attract

• Their inability to relate within the subtitle
  sequence
• Vitality created by this dissimilarity
• The Lobster scene handheld camera with Annie
• Re-enactment later in the film stationary camera

15
Opposites Dont Attract?

• Split screens
• Alvy eating Easter Ham in the guise of a Hasidic
  Jew
• The two families, Alvy tells us, are like oil and
  water
• These two families cannot relate to one another
• Accentuates the differences between the two
  characters
• Annie has to smoke pot to feel an attraction for
  Alvy

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The Therapist Scene

• Uses this technique to show the widening gap
  between Alvy and Annie
• Sex Issue Three times a week
• Alvy cannot control Annie, but does his best by
  stereotyping her with gender roles
• Singers play at the end of the film

17
Polymorphism and Alvy

• Freud proposed the theory of polymorphous
  perversity what Freud thought of as perverse,
  is now seen as normal Freud believed children
  are born open and that society shapes their
  sexual preferences, sometimes perversely.
• In Ive Heard the Mermaids Singing, a film by
  Patricia Rozema, the main character, Polly
  (Sheila McCarthy), deconstructs Freudian theory
  gender is irrelevant in matters of the heart.
• Note how Alvy uses this phrase.

18
Polymorphism continued

• Polly (Poly) means many in Rozemas film,
  Polly is open to many different ways of
  experiencing lifeshe is an amateur photographer
  and her photos are about everyday people and
  their activities.
• Alvy considers the possibility of polymorphism,
  but hes afraid of experiencing life. Hes caught
  in eternal dilemmas and self-debates (the
  quietist of existentialism who never makes a
  decision).

19
The End of Alvy