Around 1977, a wave—something— swept over American filmmaking. Some called it feminism and pointed with a weird mixture of pride and wonder at the new sensibility. Annie Hall won Best Picture—and seemingly that must be about a woman. Another nominated film was Julia— see the pattern? And then there was The Turning Point, which was susceptible to the label Can a woman enjoy career and life? Lurking, though less noticed, was one of the most profound of films: Three Women, an orgy of female consciousness, under the name of dream. Martin Scorsese even made a picture—New York, New York, perhaps his finest—in which a woman qualified as a leading character. In the next few years, there were other major American movies that in their titles and their selling lines seemed to stress this new deal for women: Coming Home, An Unmarried Woman, Norma Rae, Coal Miner’s Daughter, Tootsie . . . well, no, not exactly. It passed.
And really, Annie Hall is a misnomer. The film should be entitled How Alvy Singer Learned to Forget Annie Hall and Keep Worrying About Himself. Which is to say the film itself was a rotten trick. It won Best Picture, with Oscars for Woody as director and writer, and for Ms. Keaton. Now, I treasure Ms. K and would happily surround her with Oscars if it was in my doing—I would have given her one for Reds—but I have to say that the statuette for Annie Hall was a public love letter, a mash note. She is not actually allowed to act in the film, in part because she is not given a character, but chiefly because she is put in a weather system where her silky sails can only fill with the cold wind of Alvy Singer. After all, the song is his.
Ostensibly, it’s a film in which a twice-married, self-preoccupied neurotic sucks a sunny California girl into his gloomy orbit and sets her tasks in order to free him from the witch’s castle on which he holds—no, grasps—a 999-year lease. In other words, he is not letting go. The film is full of jokes and funny observations. It has great scenes. But it not a story or a drama. It is a comic’s sad monologue filled out to the dimensions of a movie (93 minutes) in which the impenetrable, impregnable self-regard of Alvy fends off a delightful woman. This is not quite feminism. Indeed, it is a kind of celebration of male infantilism (otherwise known as the movies).
Marshall Brickman and Woody Allen wrote it, Woody Allen directed it, and you can guess who plays Alvy Singer. The picture charmed the masses, for it seemed like a turning point at which Woody went from comic to comic artist. Events have proved otherwise. Gordon Willis shot the film. Ralph Rosenblum edited it. Mel Bourne did the art direction. The whole thing is very hip, very American New Wave, and disastrously empty. Diane Keaton sings “It Had to Be You,” and many filmmakers might see then and there the way the film had to go—into the Annie Hall Songbook. Also with Tony Roberts, Carol Kane, Paul Simon, Janet Margolin, Colleen Dewhurst, Christopher Walken (very good), and Marshall McLuhan (looking a bit like Gary Cooper as a professor).