The Favorites - Annie Hall (#58)

After a five-month hiatus, THE FAVORITES will now run daily until it concludes with the #1 entry on November 6, nearly four years to the day after the series began.

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Annie Hall (1977/USA/dir. Woody Allen) appeared at #58 on my original list.

What it is • After about a decade crafting his "early funny ones" - light-hearted but socially-savvy comedies with as much desire to be "realistic" as a Chaplin fantasy and as much room for sentiment as a Marx Brothers farce - Woody Allen...matured. I use that word hesitatingly, but as an artist there can be no doubt Annie Hall develops his early themes in new, fascinating directions, both narratively and stylistically. Despite its bouts of whimsy, the comedy is very much anchored in the real world, specifically the relationship travails of hip, youngish New Yorkers in the mid-seventies, a distinct, unusual, and - let's face it - attractive milieu and zeitgeist. Alvy Singer (Allen) is a neurotic, wisecracking, Jewish comedian dating the eccentric, wacky, WASPy Annie Hall (Diane Keaton). A podcast I was listening to recently dismissed her as "the first manic pixie dream girl" but I'd more charitably note that Annie Hall subverts and reverses many of those tropes even as it establishes them (in some ways, the film is more about the life-altering intervention of a "neurotic leprechaun nightmare boy"). The presentation of this story is both more disciplined and more in step with Allen's creative early work; despite the naturalistic setting, he isn't afraid to deploy many of the same devices and self-referential gags he featured in the sci-fi dystopia of Sleeper or the cartoon communist dictatorship of Bananas. But these frequent departures from reality are much more than non sequiturs. They build character and expand the narrative. See the interactive split-screen therapy sessions; the subtitles showing embarrassed thoughts behind sophisticated chatter; an out-of-body spectral Annie rising from the bed to coldly observe herself having boring sex; an animated Snow White pastiche with Annie as the Evil Queen and Allen as a hectoring dwarf; Marshall McLuhan stepping into a movie theater to correct an obnoxious theatergoer (okay, maybe that one's just a one-off gag but I love how it anticipates the advent of Twitter celebrity tag-ins). The film beat Star Wars (among others) for Best Picture, and while Oscar's yearly selections often miss the forest for the trees, Annie Hall still feels fresh and original (but also a wistful time capsule) nearly forty years later.

Why I like it •

Talkin' WA ... a conversation on art, criticism & Woody Allen w/ Alex Sheremet, author of Woody Allen: Reel to Real

A year ago, writer and critic Alex Sheremet contacted me about his newest project. After editing the Take 2 guide to Woody Allen's work, which included some of my reviews (as did its predecessor, the Take 2 guide on Steven Spielberg), Alex had immediately followed up with another e-book for the same publisher, Woody Allen: Reel to Real. In this work, the author guides the reader through every single one of Allen's films, his work as an actor, and also the critical engagement with his work as represented - or misrepresented - by six critics: Roger Ebert, Dan Schneider, James Berardinelli, Pauline Kael, Ray Carney, and Jonathan Rosenbaum (whose subsequent exchange with Alex concludes this section). Alex wanted to discuss the book with me, and I agreed, but the book is long (627 pages according to Amazon), I had some major projects and so the conversation kept getting postponed. He was very patient, and when I was finally able to tackle the work I discovered it was worth the wait: despite its length, I read the entire text in a few days, glued to the screen by the author's passion and rigor. (My review of Reel to Real has just been posted on Amazon, where you can purchase a Kindle version.)

Throughout the book, Alex keeps his eye on both the particular - the specific Allen film in question - and the general - not just Allen's entire body of work, but the operation of art and criticism as a whole. I found myself both frustrated and fascinated by Alex's assertions of objectivity, his frequently casual dismissals of celebrated works by other artists, and his implicit (and, by the end of the book, explicit) privileging of intellectual over intuitive appreciation. I agreed with a great many of his conclusions, possibly the majority, yet often questioned his overarching philosophy. As such, I couldn't wait to talk with him. The following conversation was conducted via email, and actually represents only half of our correspondence. The other half centered around meta-issues of criticism and art, featured much longer individual responses from each of us, and will be presented in an upcoming update of Alex's book (in its "DigiDialogue" capacity, the e-book is continually revised as new readers engage with the text and its author over the years; if you buy it now, future updates will be free). To engage with Alex's work yourself, or read the surrounding discussions, you can visit his website. Although Woody Allen's work provides our premise, the resulting conversation wanders far afield...something the prodigious and eclectic auteur would, himself, undoubtedly appreciate.

• • •

'Neath the Marquee Moon 1976 - 1980 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 23

Twenty-third chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films
(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)

View "Chapter 23: 'Neath the Marquee Moon"

'Neath the Marquee Moon

A decadent chapter for a decadent decade, but whereas disco, leisure suits, and cocaine excess dominated late seventies pop culture, these clips have a bit more class. Okay, coke features a couple times, but so do lush color (and even lusher black-and-white), artfully nightmarish imagery, and killer music. There's an otherworldly feel to today's selections, from the blue lasers of a final concert to the surreal, almost lunar landscapes of two different warzones to the Manhattan skyline twinkling like an earthbound Milky Way...indeed the (original, thank you) scene with an actual alien may be the least far-out of all. Though we only see the Moon once (or twice, if you want to be clever about it), it seems to exert a tidal pull on the zeitgeist, at least as represented here.

(continued below, along with NSFW & spoiler warnings)

Annie Hall

(Another day, another delay. But not to fear, there's more where yesterday's Manhattan came from: here's a passage on Annie Hall from that same essay. Hopefully tomorrow, or the day after, I'll discuss a film mentioned by characters in both movies.

Incidentally, I don't think I can stand by the claim that Annie Hall, Interiors, Manhattan, and Stardust Memories represented the "high point" of the Woodster's career, except perhaps on the strength of the two most popular films. However, I do still think this period may have been the most interesting point in Allen's development as an artist and entertainer.)