Annie Hall, directed in 1977 by Woody Allen is about the up and down Romance between Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) and Annie Hall (Diane Keaton). The film is set mainly in New York with references to Alvy’s childhood in Brooklyn and Annie’s future in Los Angeles.

Although the film is quite slow moving compared to more recent films, I actually prefer this as it means the contents of the scenes are shown in more detail.
For example for a lot of the scenes long flashbacks are used to show the memories of the main characters. This gives the audience a better insight into the characters’ past.
I would say however that at some points of the film this made the order of the scenes slightly confusing but this could have been deliberate to represent the slightly random order of when Annie and Alvy were and weren’t together.

Woody Allen used quite a lot of unusual techniques in this film such as showing Alvy talking directly to the camera as if he were addressing the audience. For example in one scene he talks to the camera about a man behind him in a queue who is annoying him. The man then joins him in talking to the camera and they have an argument about their views on Marshal Mcluhen. The scene becomes even more surreal when Marshal Mchluhen joins them in their conversation.
This is a reference to earlier on in the film when Alvy mentions having a problem between fantasy and reality.
Similarly in a lot of the flashbacks Alvy and Annie enter the scenes and watch themselves as if they are reminiscing. This is quite a clever use of stylisation which I haven’t ever seen before in other films.

Overall I found Annie Hall enjoyable and funny with a witty edge and clever use of filming techniques, which probably reflect the character of Woody Allen.
The romance between Alvy and Annie is shown as comic but moving and often up and down. It reminded me of the beginning of the film when Alvy describes living under a rollercoaster as a child having an effect on the way he is when he’s older. I think this might have been a comparison to the relationship between Annie and Alvy.
The last scene of the film is my favourite, in which Alvy is reminded of a joke he knows about a man whose brother thinks he’s a chicken. He uses the joke to sum up relationships as ‘totally irrational and crazy and absurd but I guess we keep going through it because we need the eggs’.