Annie Hall (1977), directed by Woody Allen

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune - "It Seems Like Old Times" by Diane Keaton

       This is a blog dedicated to genre films. Sci-fi, horror, westerns, animation, if it barely made back its budget and has never been within spitting distance of any Oscar that doesn’t have the word Special Effects engraved on it, then in its in my wheelhouse. Still there comes a time in any Z-list movie blogger's life when they need a shakeup. A change of pace to avoid falling into a rut and suffering that most dreaded of all conditions: burnout. It’s something I’ve been all too familiar with over the years, and it’s why the Marathon has taken on so many quirks and gimmicks. Keep yourself engaged and your readers will follow, or they would if I had any readers.

       So if you’re looking for a change of pace from genre films, which by their nature are a niche field, then you go for the most mainstream of all styles of cinema: the romantic comedy. And if you’re going to do a romantic comedy, you can’t just start trawling through the Hallmark Channel like a barbarian, you gotta go for the primo shit. Which is exactly what we’re doing today, as I cross another film off the old bucket list. At this rate I might even cover a Christmas movie this year, the sky's the limit.

       Released in 1977, Annie Hall was written and directed by Woody Allen, and produced by Jack Rollins and Charles H. Joffe as A Jack Rollins and Charles H. Joffe Production. Allen plays Alvy Singer, a neurotic comedian (naturally) whose major passions, or rather obsessions in life are death and misery. It comes as no surprise that such a guy hasn’t had the best luck in romance; Married twice, divorced twice, and a sex life that reads like a Bergman film plays. Alvy’s last relationship with a woman named Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) didn’t end up much better, but over the course of the film we see the relationship play out. We see the initial meeting and the awkward first steps, the ups and downs, and ultimately the dissolution. Throw in a couple of jokes here and there and you’ve got yourself a movie, or at least a very long commercial for therapy.

       The 70’s were a period of experimentation and maturation for Woody Allen as a filmmaker. His singular attempt at the science fiction genre, Sleeper, came out during this time, as well as films built around the works of Shakespeare and Tolstoy. From my description it all seems rather straightforward, but in practice Annie Hall is a lot more metatextual. The opening of the film is Alvy breaking the 4th wall to address the audience, and throughout the film he acts as both character and chorus, existing within and outside the story being told. Rather than just tell other characters about his childhood he just brings them into the flashback to see it, and when a noisy guy behind him at the theater starts going on about being an expert on a writer’s work, Alvy literally pulls the writer from offscreen to tell the guy how wrong he was. Allen is no stranger to zany comedy, he built his career on it, and it’s interesting to see this sorts of crossroads between that and this more grounded, realist depiction of relationships. Alvy namedrops Groucho Marx at the film’s opening, and it does feel a bit as if the mustachioed Mar brother somehow wandered into a Fellini film.

       That idea also comes into play in regards to the nonlinear way that Allen depicts the relationship. We start the film with Alvy stating he and Annie have already broken up, then jumping to a point when their relationship was dissolving, then to their early days and so on and on. If we consider the 4th wall breaks as Alvy the storyteller injecting himself into the story to go off on tangents, the way the story is structured is similar to how we as people remember past relationships. The bad times might resurface sooner, especially if you’re someone like Alvy who revels in misery, but as you delve deeper the good times start to shine through as well. We get to see things as Alvy likes to remember them and the way things really were, which can and are two separate things when dealing with romance.

        Annie Hall has a couple of faces you might recognize, Paul Simon, Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum, but of course the most important are its main actors, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. Alvy Singer is exactly how most people imagine every Woody Allen character is like; A man permanently locked inside his own head. Someone supremely confident in his own intelligence, that he’s the smartest guy in the room, but completely unable to confront his own problems. Completely incapable of enjoying life, but addicted with letting people know how much he doesn’t enjoy it. It’s a type of character that can be both exhausting and irritating, and I would be inclined to agree except that we know that this about a relationship failing. This is not a Adam Sandler movie where the main character acts like a screaming toddler for 90 minutes and still ends up with the girl in the end, Alvy’s behavior leads him to taking certain actions and those actions have real consequences. And it’s those real consequences that lead to real growth.  While I wouldn’t say Allen is stepping out of his comfort zone, cue him making a joke about how comfort zones have always made him feel uncomfortable, he obviously knows what he’s trying to get out of the material.

       Then we have Diane Keaton as the titular Annie Hall, and where Allen feels very calculated, very controlled, Keaton instead feels completely natural, as if she had thrown away the script and was just being herself. Annie undergoes the most amount of growth over the course of the film, makes sense, and yet it’s not a radical departure either. Annie is still Annie, just with the confidence to be herself, which is the most engaging part to the audience, while Alvy is stuck largely on the physical and sexual. I believe this was the breakout role for Diane Keaton, and it was a success well earned.

       The moral of Annie Hall then is that things change. People change, feelings change, and therefore relationships change, or in this case end. A relationship doesn’t have to end in hate, or spite, or recriminations, or lying in a dark room listening to Morrissey albums (perish the thought), it can simply be the recognition of change. That you are the same people that you were before, that your feelings aren’t the same as before, that what you need from a relationship is something the other person can’t or won’t provide. So rather than trying to force feelings you don’t have, or clam up and let things fester, it’s okay to just end things as they are. Remember the good times, try to learn from the bad times, and see where the future takes us. Which all seems like a healthy way of looking at it to me, and if it means you’re listening to less Morissey than I’m all for it.

       Annie Hall gets an easy recommendation. While Allen had been a successful filmmaker for a decade at this point, it was the release of Annie Hall that kickstarted a particularly fruitful period of his career. Manhattan, Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Radio Days and so on and on, the kind of output to success ratio that other creative types dream of having. So if you are looking for a way into his filmography, this is the film to watch. Of if you’re not looking for an excuse to watch a dozen or so movies and just feel like watching one interesting movie that works too, I mean I won’t judge. Someone asked me to judge a cutest baby contest and by the time I was ready to decide instead of ribbons they asked to pass out social security checks, so believe me when I tell you about judging.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), directed by Woody Allen

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Guilty", by Al Bowlly

      Cinema might be the most adaptable form of art ever created by man. No other medium, except perhaps video games, can so easily run the gamut between the provocative and thought-provoking and cynical, money-grubbing trash. A badly-written book or painting reveals itself almost immediately, a bad video game might malfunction as soon as you put your hands on the controller, but cinema as a medium is such that even a poorly made movie can be beloved more so than a well-polished, more expensive one. I mean look at the enduring popularity of a film like Carnival of Souls over a multi-million dollar blockbuster like 2012, or Rocky Horror Picture Show becoming an entire party experience. That’s the real ‘movie magic’ in my schmaltzy, Hallmark Original Movie kind of opinion, not special effects or cinematography, but the way it can grab hold of you in such a powerful way. It’s probably why I’m still kicking around here today instead of killing myself years ago.

      Stepping on through, we are led to today’s film: The Purple Rose of Cairo, released in 1985, written and directed by Woody Allen, who last appeared on the blog several years ago with Sleeper and Play It Again, Sam. Mia Farrow plays Cecelia, an absent-minded woman with a penchant for breaking dishes at her waitressing job and an alcoholic, abusive husband at home (played by Danny Aiello). Also it’s the Great Depression, in case you thought things were too happy. Her biggest joy in life is going to the cinema, and her current obsession is the hot new flick The Purple Rose of Cairo, a story of ribald hijinks and the idle rich. So often does she come to see this picture that eventually explorer Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), one of the minor characters of the film, takes notice and walks out of the film to meet her. It seems that Tom has gotten tired of playing the same role over and over and wants to explore life on the other side of the silver screen, and he wants to do it with Cecelia as it seems that he’s fallen head over heels for her. Cecelia is thrown for a loop, but she can’t say she’s not interested. Can love blossom between a real person and a fictional one? What does it mean for the movie industry when characters can just up and leave the movie they’re in? Why is the movie called The Purple Rose of Cairo when the titular rose seems to have barely anything to do with the film’s plot? Watch and see.

      Stories where women fall in love with weird creatures aren’t exactly uncommon; and that’s certainly true in the world of film. Beauty & The Beast, Starman, the Twilight films, Austin Powers, get a girl and some guy with a gimmick and some emotional baggage and you’ve got yourself a movie. The Purple Rose of Cairo, then, works as something of an inverse. Baxter is fictional, a minor character in a movie, and so he can only be as he is written; simple, forthright, uncomplicated. Cecelia however is nothing but complications and hesitations, and unlike the common thread of some of those other films the solution is not love. Rather it could be love, but whether we in the real world can recognize it or act upon it is another matter entirely. I don’t wish to say much more than that, but it’s a much more sobering depiction of romance than one might expect. More a tragedy than a romantic comedy, in some respect.

      The cast is what really gives that idea life. Jeff Daniels is young as hell in this movie, his third ever at this point, and so that vitality really shines through in his performance as Tom Baxter and which is later mirrored as Gill Shepherd, the actor who played Baxter in the movie. Mia Farrow still has this meek, waifish quality that she had in Rosemary’s Baby, which I did not care for at the time, but she’s managed to temper it in a way that really works; Cecelia as the faded beauty, the girl that had to grow up too quick. Too very distinct people which contrast well on screen together. You’ve also got Danny Aiello doing some easy lifting as the dickhead husband Monk and a generally solid cast beyond that.   

      Man, not really the best headspace to be writing reviews right now. Anyway, while the basis for a lot of the well-regarded Allen films is the dialogue, I thought at times the dialogue felt a little awkward, and not quite as naturally as it may have been intended. I liked the scenes in the theater, where the rest of the characters are stuck in the scene where Baxter left and they’re growing increasingly agitated, but I wish the whole ‘fictional character in real life’ angle had been played around with a bit more; It doesn’t have to be Last Action Hero but it also seems like we don’t get that much of Baxter challenging the real world or rather it challenging him. Also while I generally enjoy Dick Hyman’s score, I wonder if it's a bit too jaunty and pleasant for a movie that throws things like domestic violence around casually. As if it were for a film much more screwball than this turned out to be, like if Mr. Bean was a depressed housewife.

      Would I recommend the film though? Yeah, I suppose. It’s a very second gear kind of movie, very low-energy, but I think by the end it really manages to wrap things up in a very poignant way. If you’re the kind of guy who can only stomach the hard stuff on Halloween then this is not the film for you, but if you’re down for a quiet night in with your significant other then you might get some mileage out of The Purple Rose of Cairo. If Jeff Daniels starts making eyes at your spouse, you might want to consider turning off the TV.

Double Feature: Play It Again, Sam (1972) & Sleeper (1973), directed by Woody Allen

Originally written for the Tricycle Offense

This here is a little thing I’m calling the Thunderbird on Cinema Double Feature, as you might be able to tell from the title, which may show up now from time to time. The premise is, essentially, that I take two film which are connected in some way and write about both of them, in an unprecedented bit of film criticism the likes of which has never been seen before. Rather than try to dig deep and really delve into the core of the film, as real film critics you see, I’ll just be throwing together two small articles I managed to crap out and charging double the price. That’s called economics kids, read a book once in a while.

This first edition of this subfeature concerns a couple films I’ve already seen and written down notes for months ago, which means my impressions will be fresh and perfectly valid. It also deals with a director I haven’t really talked about yet, which I’m sure no one actually wanted to hear. Enjoy.

Play It Again, Sam (1972)

Actor. Writer. Comedian. Director. Playwright. Clarinetist. Although his star has certainly dimmed, it'd be pretty hard for it not to considering, when it comes to American filmmakers there aren’t many that have done so well for so long as one Mr. Woody Allen. Going back all the way to his debut film (What’s New Pussycat?, released in 1965), Woody Allen has been able to sit down at his typewriter and crank out a new movie almost every year since, a grand total of 40+ plus movies under his belt. Although starting off in straight, full-fledged comedies, Allen is likely most well-regarded for his string of films in the 1970s (in particular Annie Hall, which won 4 Academy Awards), which helped to redefine and reestablish the romantic comedy genre, not to mention helping to bolster the careers of both Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow. Whether or not that’s a bad thing is up for you to decide, and whether you think the world needs so many rom coms about a neurotic Jewish man having sex with a woman out of his league is another issue, but you can’t deny the man’s work ethic. He’s worked with science-fiction, film-noir, animation, 19th century Russian prose, murder mysteries, mockumentaries...even if he does repeat himself at least he mixes it up a little sometimes, you know?

Based on the play of the same name, which was also written by Woody Allen, Play It Again, Sam stars Woody Allen as the standard Woody Allen character: A neurotic east-coast Jewish writer who somehow has tremendous luck with women despite looking like a broom with male pattern baldness. In this particular case he plays the role of Allen Felix, a critic obsessed with the 1942 film classic Casablanca to the point that Humphrey Bogart’s character appears to him to give him some hard boiled advice from time to time, like Ben Kenobi from the Bronx. Felix is recently divorced, his wife citing a lack of excitement in their relationship as reason enough for the split, and he’s understandably a little bummed out. His friends, Dick and Linda (played by Allen regular Diane Keaton) decide it would be for the best if Felix got back on the saddle and set him up with a couple of new women and test the waters, to use dissimilar turns of phrase.

However, Dick and Linda’s relationship is far from perfect itself, and as Felix and Linda spend more and more time together, a spark of attraction threatens to grow into the flames of passion. Could Felix, would Felix betray the trust of his friend and step into the world of adultery? Is he even ready for such a commitment, or is his mind still in rebound mode from the departure of his wife Nancy? And where exactly does Casablanca fit into all of this? That’s for you to find out, in case you decide to watch it for yourself.

Woody Allen is a man who loves his romantic comedies, or at least he’s been cursed by a witch to write so many, and going by critical opinion he’s pretty good at it. Since the very idea of romance fills me with deep-seated feelings of shame and regret, I tend not to go much for the rom-coms, but I found myself enjoying Play It Again, Sam. Not so much for the general setup, which has been done in many films before (even the ‘main character obsessed with Casablanca which which eventually helps to show his evolution as character’ thing has been done), but because the romance element feels more or less like a natural buildup. Not so much for Allen’s bizarre rape comments (you’ll know it when you come to it), more so it’s that when Felix and Diane talking with each other it feels like two real people having a conversation. Much like how actual human beings form relationships, or so I’m told. Allen and Keaton have great chemistry together, and if it didn’t seem like Allen was the type of writer that planned out scenes point by point, I’d think that he just improv-ed the whole thing. Which is something I tend to enjoy in films actually, the dissolution of the barrier separating real and directed action. It’d explain my love of Spinal Tap at least.

Aside from some cartoonish Jerry Lewis-style antics which I don’t much care for (don’t ask how I know what a Jerry Lewis-style antic is when I haven’t seen a Jerry Lewis film), and the aforementioned weird ‘women like rape’ line, I found myself enjoying Play It Again, Sam. I haven’t seen enough of his filmography to determine whether this is one of his best movies, but I do think this could make for a great introduction to his other work, either to his early comedic works or his later more dramatic projects. Of course my introduction to Woody Allen was Antz, which might explain why it took me so long to watch another one.

RESULT: RECOMMENDED

Sleeper (1973)

Love him or hate him, the one thing you have to concede about Woody Allen is that the man is one of those tirelessly prolific kinds of writer that always pisses me off. Coming one year after Play It Again, Sam (and Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex* (But Were Afraid to Ask), by the by), Allen wrote, acted in and directed Sleeper, his one and only foray in the genre of science fiction. This film was yet another to feature the Woody Allen/Diane Keaton billing by the way, which seems to have been the partnership connected to his better films. Is Sleeper indeed one of those gems of the 70s, as were the likes of Annie Hall and Manhattan, or is it a dud? Does even bringing up the question cast perceptions of doubt on its potential quality or lack thereof? Read on and find out.

In the sci-fi romcom Sleeper, Woody Allen stars as Miles Munroe, a 35 year old clarinet player and former health food restaurateur who is definitely not Allen playing himself as he does in all his films (dude writes what he knows). After being cryogenically frozen back in 1973, Miles is revived 200 years later by renegade scientists in a dystopic utopian future that looks a lot like someone’s backyard in Southern California. It seems that in the subsequent 2 centuries the United States of America has given way to the despotic and dictatorial American Federation, and society has entered into a Huxley-esque state of hedonistic yet sterile complacency. Androids now act as manservants, tobacco and junk food is actually better for you than fruits and vegetables, and people have sex by machines. Not the worst place to end up in, but the brutal tyranny does put a little damper on things.

Miles Munroe is a neurotic, cowardly schlemiel of a man,who happens to be a fugitive now that he’s been unfrozen, so of course he gets roped into the underground resistance movement to discover and stop the Federation’s secretive Aries Project. During his escape he decides to disguise himself as the android servant of Luna (Keaton), the yuppie poet laureate of the future. After abducting Luna (more or less), the two wacky weirdos decide to go on a journey to discover just what that whole Aries Project thing is all about. Which will probably lead to the dissolution of aforementioned despotic and dictatorial American Federation, because this is a light-hearted romantic comedy and not Brazil. Not saying that Sleeper ending with a lobotomized Miles glorifying the Federation ala George Orwell’s 1984 wouldn’t have had its own charms in a lot of ways, but I don’t think twist endings like that are really Allen’s style.

Sleeper is far more a work of comedy than of science-fiction, a Spaceballs or Galaxy Quest rather than a Planet of the Apes or Soylent Green, and any radical ideas about the future and technology takes a back seat to the comedy. Like a bus in Montgomery Alabama in the 1960s, that’s how far back that seat is in this analogy. I imagine the budget for this couldn’t have been too large, but I’ve seen episodes of Star Trek and Doctor Who from this era that had better sense of setting and special effects than what one sees in Sleeper, and if your Hollywood movie has worse special effects than Doctor Who then that’s just fucking embarrassing. You could perhaps explain away by reiterating the point about it being a comedy and that it isn’t necessary, but it still doesn’t keep the film from looking like an Ed Wood original. Dude may have been pumping a movie a year, but if what he is putting out feels half-assed it doesn’t really mean much, does it?

So if sci-fi wasn’t the primary objective, then that means the focus is on the comedy and the romance, but I don’t think Sleeper really excels in those cases either. The goofball comedy is in full-force when compared to PIAS, and it just falls flat for me just as it did then. It’s not that I don’t think Allen is funny, because I do, it’s more that I find him at his funniest when he’s talking and telling jokes and when he tries to be wacky it comes across as someone trying to do Blake Edwards or Mel Brooks (both Allen and Brooks wrote for Your Show of Shows, so there’s that connection). The romance might be even worse, as it seems thrown in because the story needed to have a romance and not because a romance added to the story, which wouldn’t really be much at all if the romantic elements were removed. I didn’t really like Luna or Miles as characters (especially Keaton’s character), and that chemistry that worked out so well in PIAS almost seems nonexistent here. Or rather the actor chemistry is there, but the character chemistry isn’t there. By the end of the movie and you get the heartfelt ending I couldn't bring myself to care whether Luna and Miles reconciled their love or not, because I couldn't bring myself to care about the characters at all. The tagline for the poster does indeed say ‘A Love Story About Two People Who Hate Each Other’, but there’s a long-ass distance between that and 10 Things I Hate About You, if you catch my drift.

Obviously I didn't care for Sleeper all that much, but I wouldn't say I hated it either. It was average I could you say, a C to C+, enjoyable enough to watch at the time. It’s just doesn’t have anything that would make me want to go back, and it’s not a film I would’ve regretted not seeing. If you’re way too into romantic comedies or you’re working your way through Woody Allen then yeah, sure, but if you’re not? Eh, I’d say you’re better off elsewhere.

RESULT: NOT RECOMMENDED