The film, Annie Hall, released in 1977, written by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman, and directed by Woody Allen, was reflective of the radical romantic comedy of the postmodern era, and a break from the past. The movie took Academy Awards prizes for Best Picture and Best Actress—Diane Keaton. The comedy is a departure from the traditional romantic comedy in a lot of ways. Allen innovates new methods or devices to American filmmaking with this comedy, innovations which he borrows in large part from European filmmakers, a postmodern process known as pastiche. These devices included Allen’s character, Alvy Singer, facing the camera and talking to the movie audience, giving it a surrealistic element, putting a caricature of himself and a lover in a cartoon for humorous hyperbole, splitting the screen and showing the two main characters, Alvy Singer and Annie Hall, having simultaneous psychotherapy session (with Allen’s session getting more prominent coverage with 2/3 of the screen), subtitles during a flirting scene between Alvy and Annie, cutting through the ostensible polite conversation by revealing their most intimate thoughts.
In addition to those innovative devices, Allen incorporates some magic realism when he meets Annie’s Midwestern gentile family and is having dinner with them. Alvy, who is Jewish, perceives them as anti-Semitic and as the stern appearing grandmother looks at him unsmilingly, Alvy turns into an Orthodox bearded Jew with a large hat on the screen. It’s quite humorous. This is consistent with Alvy’s self-deprecating nature as reflected earlier when he says “Don’t you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we’re left wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here.”
Tamar Jeffers McDonald, author of Romantic Comedy, explains that the “film taps into the zeitgeist [the spirit of the times] through its insistence on the pitfalls of romantic love, sexual attraction and marriage” (74). He is referring to Alvy’s two failed marriages, one of Alvy’s ex-wife, Allison , craving for sex with a turned-off Alvy, Annie needing to smoke marijuana to relax and becoming turned-off to having sex with Alvy, and most importantly, the sober ending of Alvy not being able to get Annie interested in him romantically anymore; hence: their final (?) split. McDonald further illustrates “within the film’s three fold exploration of self-reflexivity, this ending is as resolutely appropriate to the realistic portrayal of modern love, and to the film’s acknowledgement of itself as a film text within certain traditions, as it is in conscious opposition to the usual generic ending” (74). Yes their relationship ends unresolved; however, the film audience can envision better times for the forlorn Alvy Singer, perhaps with other romantic relationships, and who knows, maybe he and Annie may wind up with each other again.
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