An Ode to ‘Annie Hall’

During my freshman year at Rhodes College, my financial aid package required me to participate in a “work-study” program, meaning I had to hold down a campus job for 10 hours each week.

I lucked out and landed at the library’s Media Center, where I helped students check out VHS tapes—yes, kids, everything was on tape back then—they could take back to their dorm rooms. The Media Center offered documentaries and educational offerings that students had to watch for classes, but it also stocked feature films. We were the campus Blockbuster.

By design, the job was cushy. Work-study allowed students some time to, you know, study while performing a needed service. But with a collection of classic and contemporary titles at my fingertips and several small viewing rooms where I could watch movies while keeping an eye on the checkout desk, I spent many shifts in front of a screen instead of being buried in a book. I have the GPA to prove it.

Of all the tapes I watched that year, one stands out—“Annie Hall,” the 1977 film by Woody Allen starring Diane Keaton in the title role and Allen as her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Alvy Singer. It won four Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actress (Keaton), Best Director (Allen) and Best Screenplay (Allen and Marshall Brickman). Fans and critics regard it as Allen’s best and most beloved work alongside “Manhattan.”

Once I popped it into a Media Center VCR, hit play and heard Allen’s opening monologue, I was hooked. I watched “Annie Hall” perhaps a dozen times that year and many more times in the decades that followed. Having recently bought a digital copy of the film, I figured it was time for “A Fan’s Notes” to explore how I became—and why I remain—an unabashed fan of “Annie Hall.”

At age 18, I knew almost nothing of cinema and not much about Allen except for his 1972 comedy, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask).” That was enough for me to give “Annie Hall” a shot.

Immediately, I knew this was no ordinary film because it opens with Allen breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the viewer. Here’s how it begins (clip below):

There’s an old joke. Two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of them says: “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know, and such small portions.” Well, that’s essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly.

The other important joke for me is one that’s usually attributed to Groucho Marx, but I think it appears originally in Freud’s “Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious.” And it goes like this—I’m paraphrasing: “I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.” 

The movie continues from there as more stream of consciousness than storyline, a mixture of flashbacks and flash-forwards of Alvy’s childhood and adulthood, hookups and breakups. Heavy on dialog and light on plot, the film is filled with intelligent jokes, witty situational comedy and even animation. Unlike anything I had seen.

While “Annie Hall” delves into several themes—Alvy’s burgeoning career as a stand-up comic, his complicated upbringing in Brooklyn, his weird family, his Jewishness, his love of New York and hatred of LA, his psychoanalysis, and much more—it’s primarily about Alvy’s and Annie’s up-and-down, back-and-forth relationship.

It’s steeped in high-brow, academic and literary references yet never takes itself too seriously. That’s partly because Allen routinely breaks the fourth wall but also because of his trademark self-deprecating humor and the digs he takes at the very intellectuals who are likely the film’s target audience.

There are too many funny scenes to recount. Instead, I’ll link to an article that ranked the movie’s “40 top moments of hilarity” in honor of the 40th anniversary a few years ago. All good choices—and there are more not on this list—but my No. 1 is where Annie and Alvy are about to try cocaine, and there’s a bit of, um, let’s call it a dust-up.

Members of the Writers Guild of America in 2015 named “Annie Hall” the funniest screenplay ever written. Thanks to scenes like that (and many, many more), it would undoubtedly get this fan’s vote.

Another fan of “Annie Hall” was the late movie critic Roger Ebert, who noted in his four-star review that the film mainly “consists of people talking, simply talking. They walk and talk, sit and talk, go to shrinks, go to lunch, make love and talk, talk to the camera, or launch into inspired monologues.”

All that talking delivered some truly memorable quotes. Here are just a few of my favorites among dozens of choices:

“Sun is bad for you. Everything our parents said was good is bad—sun, milk, red meat … college.”

“Just don’t take any course where they make you read ‘Beowulf.’”

“Don’t you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we’re left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here.”

“I can't get with any religion that advertises in ‘Popular Mechanics.’”

“I forgot my mantra.”

“You’re always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because it’s real difficult in life.”

Another delight is the film’s cast of A-listers who appear in supporting roles and cameos. They include celebrities from film, music and letters, such as Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum, Paul Simon, Shelly Duvall, Carol Kane, Sigourney Weaver, Tony Roberts and more. Even Truman Capote appears briefly as someone Alvy jokes from afar was the “winner of the Truman Capote lookalike contest.” It’s perfection.

A particularly great scene occurs when Alvy and Annie wait on line at a movie theater. Behind them, an annoying professor puffs a cigarette and “pontificates” about one of Alvy’s favorite filmmakers (Federico Fellini) and modern thinkers (Marshall McLuhan, who makes a brief but hilarious cameo). Alvy again breaks the fourth wall.

But “Annie Hall” was more than just laughs. It spoke to me as an aspiring writer trying to find my place in the world but not sure where to look or who to be.

Consider that line from the film’s opening scene about never wanting to “belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.” As an 18-year-old struggling to discover myself, I often wondered why anyone would or could want me around. Suddenly, thanks to Woody Allen, my neuroses no longer seemed problematic, and I no longer seemed alone. Still not sure if that was good or bad.

It’s not easy these days to talk or write about Woody Allen. I’m not sure he was officially “canceled,” but abuse accusations against him over the years—from both his ex-partner Mia Farrow and the son they had together, Ronan Farrow—and marrying his stepdaughter put Allen in a bad light.

Allen has denied any wrongdoing, and I have no idea if he’s the creep his detractors claim he is. He also has defenders, including several of his other children.

Despite the controversy, I still watch his movies. “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan” are not only two of my favorite films of all time, they are cinema classics. (His more recent “Midnight in Paris” is another brilliant film.)

It leads to a bigger discussion that my wife, Sandy, and I have had many times: Should we, or can we, separate the art from the artist, or must they always go hand in hand? I’m not alone in worrying about how this question concerns Allen specifically, as evidenced by a 2023 article in the Observer.

There are many problematic musicians and actors, but we still love their work. If we throw out the art made by terrible people, we’d be deprived of some great music, film and television.

And yes, I understand that buying the records or watching the movies of such artists only pads their bank account and perhaps enables them, yet I can’t help but view their contributions as standalone creations.

Do I empathize with someone who refuses to separate the art from the artist on moral grounds? Sure. Do I think “Annie Hall” is worth watching no matter what one thinks or believes about Woody Allen? A resounding yes.

I have certainly given my fair share of money to Allen. I’ve paid to see his films in the theater. I bought the DVD of “Annie Hall” years ago. And just a few weeks ago, I purchased the digital version to download on my devices, ensuring I could always cue up the movie if the mood struck. And it does often.

That’s because I consider “Annie Hall” an old friend. The smart dialogue, the timeless humor, the honesty, the depth of the characters—all of it provides great comfort that’s sometimes unexplainable.

With that thought, perhaps nothing in the film sums up my fandom more than the final scene when Annie and Alvy, after they’ve broken up for the final time, meet for lunch to “kick over some old times” (as the song “Seems Like Old Times” plays in the background).

The scene includes a montage of Annie’s and Alvy’s times together before they part ways and walk in different directions back to their new lives. The movie ends with Alvy, during a voice-over coda of his relationship with Annie, likening their relationship to an old joke. Here are Alvy’s final words (clip below):

This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken.” And the doctor says, “Well, why don't you turn him in?” And the guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.”

Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships. They’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd, but I guess we keep going through it because most of us … need the eggs.

That ending embodies how I feel about being a fan of “Annie Hall” all these years—decades, actually—since I first saw it my freshman year.

Yes, it’s totally irrational and crazy and absurd to watch the same movie so many times, but I keep returning to it, keep hitting play, keep laughing at the same jokes because ... well ... I need the eggs.