Annie Hall
アニー・ホール
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
The romcom in which a New York comedian works out why his love affair with Annie ended; its director is now the harder conversation.
Alvy Singer, a New York comedian, speaks straight to the camera: he is trying to understand why his relationship with Annie Hall ended a year ago. He looks back at his Brooklyn childhood, when he troubled his mother with questions about the emptiness of existence, and at his two marriages, the first to a woman he could not value because she was interested in him, the second to a New York writer who did not share his love of sport.
He met Annie at a game of tennis doubles with friends. Afterwards she gave him a lift uptown and a glass of wine on her balcony, where subtitles reveal what their awkward small talk really means. Their first date follows her audition as a nightclub singer. They cook lobsters together and cannot stop laughing. She tells him she loves him; he buys her books about death and says that what he feels is more than love. Once she moves in, things grow tense. When he finds her arm in arm with one of her adult-education professors, they argue about the freedom they had agreed on and split up. He stops strangers in the street to ask about love, and imagines himself as a cartoon, arguing with Annie as the wicked queen from Snow White.
His return to dating goes badly. When Annie rings in the middle of the night to ask him to kill a spider in her bathroom, they make up and promise to stay together. But their separate sessions with their therapists show a gap neither can cross. They fly to Los Angeles with Alvy's friend Rob, where Alvy is to present an award on television, and on the way home they agree it is not working. Annie leaves him for her record producer, Tony Lacey, in California. Alvy proposes to her; she turns him down. Back in New York he stages a play about the two of them and changes the ending, so that she says yes.
Later, each with someone new, they meet once more on the Upper West Side. Alvy concludes that relationships are irrational, crazy and absurd, and that people keep going through them because they need them.
Starring
Woody Allenas Alvy Singer
A neurotic New York comedian, twice divorced and preoccupied with death, trying to work out why his love affair with Annie ended.
Alvy Singer’s story
As a boy in Brooklyn Alvy would not do his homework because the universe was expanding, and two marriages have not made him happier. With Annie he is, for a while: he buys her books about death, pays for her analysis and pushes her to take college courses, then complains that her progress is killing his. He is jealous of her professor, then of Tony Lacey. In Los Angeles he falls ill and sneers at everything, and on the flight home they agree it is over. Missing her, he flies back to propose, is turned down, crashes his hired car and is locked up until Rob bails him out. He puts them into a play and gives it a happy ending. Later, meeting her again with someone new, he decides that people keep having relationships because they need them.
Diane Keatonas Annie Hall
An aspiring nightclub singer who falls for Alvy, grows beyond the life they share and leaves for California.
Annie Hall’s story
Annie is nervous and self-deprecating when Alvy meets her, making awkward small talk on her balcony and singing shakily at her first audition. He gives her books, pays for her analysis and pushes her towards college courses, and she changes: she sings with new confidence and wants to try new things. Her singing catches the ear of Tony Lacey, a record producer, and on a trip to Los Angeles she finds she likes it there. After she and Alvy agree it is over, she moves to California to live with Tony. When Alvy comes to propose, she turns him down, telling him he is the reason she was able to sing, and that he is incapable of enjoying life. Later, back in New York with someone else, she meets Alvy once more, and they talk over old times.
Tony Robertsas Rob
Alvy's closest friend, an actor with a television show in Los Angeles, who travels west with Alvy and Annie.
Paul Simonas Tony Lacey
A Los Angeles record producer who takes an interest in Annie, and for whom she leaves Alvy.
Why it matters
Annie Hall is a comedy about why a love ends, told by the man who lost it, and it is honest enough to show that much of the problem is him. Alvy cannot take pleasure in anything for long; the film's working title, Anhedonia, is the clinical term for exactly that. Annie, meanwhile, grows. She sings, studies, thinks for herself and in the end leaves for a life he cannot share, and the film lets her go without making her the villain of his story. It won four Academy Awards, including best picture and best actress for Diane Keaton.