ANNIE HALL
Ah Annie Hall…my second favorite Woody Allen film after Deconstructing Harry. Not only does it feature a bit of Paul Simon, but it explored the nervous and neurotic ins and outs of relationships in a way that is affecting and witty…insightful…it’s not like the slapstick more physical comedies but a thinking person’s film.
Here’s some of my favorite quotes right off the bat with Woody Allen “acting” as the neurotic Alvy Singer:
Annie Hall: Oh, you see an analyst?
Alvy Singer: Yeah, just for fifteen years.
Annie Hall: Fifteen years?
Alvy Singer: Yeah, I’m gonna give him one more year, and then I’m goin’ to Lourdes.
Alvy Singer: Love is too weak a word for what I feel – I luuurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you, two F’s, yes I have to invent, of course I – I do, don’t you think I do?
(when in California:)
Annie Hall: It’s so clean out here.
Alvy Singer: That’s because they don’t throw their garbage away, they turn it into television shows
Alvy Singer: I was thrown out of N.Y.U. my freshman year for cheating on my metaphysics final, you know. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me. When I was thrown out, my mother, who was an emotionally high-strung woman, locked herself in the bathroom and took an overdose of Mah-Jongg tiles. I was depressed at that time. I was in analysis. I was suicidal as a matter of fact and would have killed myself, but I was in analysis with a strict Freudian, and, if you kill yourself, they make you pay for the sessions you miss.
Alvy Singer: Hey, don’t knock m——n. It’s sex with someone I love.
Pam: Sex with you is really a Kafka-esque experience.
Alvy Singer: Oh. Thank you.
Pam: I mean that as a compliment.
Annie Hall: Alvy, you’re incapable of enjoying life, you know that? I mean you’re like New York City. You’re just this person. You’re like this island unto yourself.
Alvy Singer: I can’t enjoy anything unless everybody is. If one guy is starving someplace, that puts a crimp in my evening.
Alvy Singer: I’m so tired of spending evenings making fake insights with people who work for “Dysentery.”
Robin: “Commentary.”
Alvy Singer: Oh really? I had heard that “Commentary” and “Dissent” had merged and formed “Dysentery.”
Alvy Singer: You’re an actor Max, you should be doing Shakespeare in the park.
Rob: Oh I did Shakespeare in the park Max, I got mugged. I was playing Richard II and two guys in leather jackets stole my leotard.
(teacher at his elementary school):
In this great scene, Alvy/Woody and Annie Hall are talking to eachother for one of the first times and words scroll across the screen of what they are thinking as they are speaking (brilliant technique imo)
On the screen, the words flashing are: “God, I hope he doesn’t turn out to be a shmuck like the others”
Annie and Woody/Alvy as two sillouettes in bed at night…it’s so delicate the way this scene is shot.
Annie and Alvy are in a bookstore. Alvy insists Annie read books about death as it is an important subject matter. Later on, in a subtly heart breaking scene, as they split up and take back their own books, Annie makes a comment to suggest it will be easy-all of the poetry books are hers and all of the books about death are his.
[Alvy and Annie are seeing their therapists at the same time on a split screen]
Alvy Singer’s Therapist: How often do you sleep together?
Annie Hall’s Therapist: Do you have sex often?
Alvy Singer: [lamenting] Hardly ever. Maybe three times a week.
Annie Hall: [annoyed] Constantly. I’d say three times a week.
Alvy Singer: Here, you look like a very happy couple, um, are you?
Female street stranger: Yeah.
Alvy Singer: Yeah? So, so, how do you account for it?
Female street stranger: Uh, I’m very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.
Male street stranger: And I’m exactly the same way.