Annie Hall

After a series of successful comedies that combined spoof, farce, and satire, Woody Allen delivered his first personal film and most sophisticated to date: Annie Hall. Like his earlier works, this now-classic 1977 film features memories seen through the lens of a comedian's exaggerated perspective, coupled with wish-fulfillment fantasy, and even an animated sequence, but in this case ties them all to a love affair viewed from the perspective of a New York comic not unlike Allen himself (intellectual, neurotic, socially clumsy). Writer-director Allen stars as Alvy Singer, and Diane Keaton—Allen's then real-life paramour—is Annie Hall, a free-spirited singer who is equally anxious and endearingly kooky in her own right. The two are introduced by Alvy's best friend, Rob (Tony Roberts), and the storyline follows their relationship from that first meeting to their (inevitable?) break-up, with Allen tossing out the usual rom-com conventions for his own brand of humor. But under the gags and self-effacing jokes is an affecting portrait of two people who fall in love but then, as they grow and follow their own careers and desires, go their separate ways. Annie Hall won four Academy Awards—Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Original Screenplay—and announced to the world that Allen was a filmmaker with greater ambitions than spoofing foreign movies, Russian literature, and Jewish neuroses. Handsomely remastered for Blu-ray, this is highly recommended. (S. Axmaker)