Memoirs of a Hopeless Romantic: The Influence of Annie Hall

by Maressa Brown
Emerson College

I was not really supposed to watch a Woody Allen film. My mom had always said she did not like him as a person, so my parents never encouraged me to see his films. However, I had heard one particular movie title tossed around here and there for years.

The first time I became remotely familiar with Annie Hall was my junior year of high school, when on the speech team, two actors used a segment from the script as a dramatic duet perf-ormance. Intrigued by the honesty and humor of the script, I knew I should rent what many consider to be Woody Allen’s masterpiece. After all, I prided myself on being a romantic comedy aficionado. Unfortunately, I had become disillusioned with more recent movies that were supposedly love stories. These movies seemed to say nothing about the characters and failed to use perspective to assist the romance in its unfolding. Maybe I had to view something a bit more dated to see what I had been missing. When I first viewed Annie Hall, the film lived up to my every expectation. Instead of the typical tried and true yet boring and overdone “he loves her, she loves him, they break up, they get back together” storyline, Annie Hall was like a breath of fresh air for romantic comedy. The rough ups and downs of romance and relationships would never be approached on film the same way again. When Harry Met Sally and Clueless may have never stood a chance at being produced had Allen never broken ground with Annie Hall. This “nervous romance” won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1977 – deservingly so as it gave contemporary romance a new voice.

A standout technique Allen employed in the execution of his not-necessarily-autobiographical script is the first person point of view. When Alvy Singer opens the film talking to the camera in Annie Hall, we, the audience, are intro-duced to the characters as if they are our new best friends. Movies like Love Story and The Way We Were, both 1970s romances, are examples of films that do not delve as deeply beyond the surface as Annie Hall does, as far as character depth is concerned. Through Alvy’s narration, the audience is better able to understand the main characters’ thoughts. By hearing the story from Alvy’s perspective, the audience learns that maybe Alvy simply would rather not be “part of a club that would have someone like [him] as a member.” This personality quirk brings clarity to the eventual demise of the Alvy’s two relationships prior to Annie. Finally we see how this attitude will get the best of Alvy’s relationship with Annie as well.

Even though Allen claims Annie Hall only contains a slight element of autobiography, the script offers the audience a more meaningful glance at the leading lady by adding Allen’s real-life perspective to Alvy’s lines. As quoted in Diane Keaton: The Story of the Real Annie Hall by Jonathan Moor, Allen said, “I was trying to give the audience the view of Diane that I had – the feeling that if they could see her as I see her they will love her.” Not only does the first-person POV technique heighten the audience’s sense of Annie and Alvy, it works to further the storyline between the two. By following Alvy in his erratic walk down memory lane, the audience comes along for the roller coaster ride known as his relationship with Annie.

With Annie Hall having already set the basis for romantic comedies to take on a more personal tone, movies like When Harry Met Sally and Clueless were able to explore characterization and plot in a more conversational manner. The main characters of these modern romantic comedies could now act as storytellers and create a perspective as intimate as a glimpse into a their personal diaries. Director of When Harry Met Sally, Rob Reiner, and screenplay writer, Nora Ephron, followed Woody Allen’s lead when molding the storytelling of Harry and Sally’s friendship-turned-romance. While the film does not employ first person voice-overs like Annie Hall, the audience is savvy to both Harry and Sally’s points of view. The film opens by illustrating the circumstances under which the two met – on three separate occasions. First person narrations by anonymous couples are also dispersed throughout the film. In these narrations, the couples describe how they met and finally married. The last scene of the film features Harry and Sally telling their story to the camera. These personal perspectives allow for a more one on one mood to be set, thus pulling the audience into Harry and Sally’s continuously inter-secting lives. Had the film no character generated perspective, audiences may not have been able to read into the underlying emotions and backgrounds between the couple. By filming from both Harry and Sally’s viewpoints, Reiner and Ephron fill the audience in on a stream of consciousness and reminiscence that allows the characters to come more vividly to life. When Harry Met Sally is like Annie Hall in the ‘80s. A neurotic New York romance narrated by a neurotic Jewish comedian whose ex-wife (or wives) looks like a stick in the mud or bore next to the quirky, girlish and fun-loving beauty who now inhabits the pedestal. Yet, the story line works again and mostly for the same reason. We are enchanted by the romance between Harry and Sally just as much as Alvy and Annie, simply because there are actual human beings behind the frames of film.
Nearly twenty years after Annie Hall, Amy Heckerling’s Clueless proved also to be a colorful example of personal voice enhancing a modern romantic comedy. While Clueless takes place in Beverly Hills, as opposed to Allen’s beloved Big Apple, Cher Horowitz, played by Alicia Silverstone, lives up to the storytelling standards set by Alvy Singer. Unlike Annie Hall and When Harry Met Sally, Clueless, which is based on Jane Austen’s novel, Emma, isn’t based solely on Cher’s recollections of a relationship. It is nonetheless about love, friendship and self-discovery, much like the aforementioned films. Cher walks her audience on what feels like a campus tour of her “Noxema commercial”-esque life in La-La Land. She introduces us to a slew of high schoolers, her two hopeless teachers and her very frustrating older ex-step-brother. While a cast of so many characters could seem mind-boggling, seeing the story through Cher’s eyes brings it all together. Adopting a very clear characterization for Cher, the character’s voice is three-dimensional, genuine, and heart-warming. By creating a character like Cher for which the audience cannot help but care, Clueless reflects Woody Allen’s style of getting downright personal when it comes to love.

While America has always been in love with love at the movies, it took a film like Annie Hall for audiences to truly appreciate a funny and romantic session of storytelling. Before Annie Hall, the last comedy to win the Best Picture Oscar at the Academy Awards had been Tom Jones in 1963. While comedies continue to be nominated, it takes ground-breaking techniques and style for one to win. Allen had the winning ingredient in his intimate one on one cinematic style. The success of Annie Hall has been proven time and again with the release of countless new films hoping to follow in its footsteps—a romance that was not just neurotic or nervous, but revolutionary and real.

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