NEEDING THE EGS
by
Douglas Messerli
Woody
Allen and Marshall Brickman (writers), Woody Allen (director) Annie Hall / 1977
Although
Woody Allen had long played himself as a character in his stand-up comedian 
performances, Annie Hall was his
first foray into a version of self-representation on screen that would continue
throughout the rest of his directing career.
In this film his self-based
character—although Allen has long denied that the film was truly
autobiographical—is named Alvy Singer. Alvy is a true “insider” New Yorker
(born in Brooklyn who lived as a child under a Coney Island rollercoaster), who, yet, in his paranoia about being Jewish
in a world of gentiles, feels as a permanent “outsider” in the world. Although
one might easily perceive 
Annie Hall as
a valentine to Manhattan, it is also portrayed as a raucously annoying world of
imminent danger, wherein every query such as “Do you,” can be read as a racial
baiting of the world “Jew.” People in movie lines pontificate on Bergman,
Fellini, and Marshall McLuhan (the real man whom Alvy pulls from behind a
nearby poster-board to prove the loud smock behind him is mistaken in his views).
And almost everyone he meets talks, endlessly talks. In short, it’s lot the
family scenes that Allen portrays in Alvy’s childhood. Indeed, the movie was
originally titled Anhedonia, from
Greek word meaning the inability to experience joy.
Yet Alvy, much like Allen, is often
attracted to the “other,” something so very different from the world he has
embraced. At the center of this film, which was to be devoted simply to the
fragments of Alvy’s life, is Annie (perfectly personified by Diane Keaton, whose
childhood name was Diane “Annie” Hall, and who had a romantic relationship with
Allen), the polar opposite of Alvy. She is an insecure would-be singer, while
he writes jokes and does stand-up comedian gigs; she is totally curious and
committed to the new, while he is an opinionated pessimist fixated upon
death—after all, as a child he has discovered that the universe is forever
expanding, and human life is necessarily doomed.
Most importantly, Annie and her family are
near-Wasps whom Alvy imagines see him as a Hassid with Tallas and a tall
Russian hat on his head. The scene in
which he dines with Annie’s family, replete with Annie’s Jew-hating “grammy,”
her possibly suicidal brother Duane (Christopher Walken)—he confesses that he
often has a desire to turn his car into the headlights of passing autos—and an over-inquisitive
mother (Colleen Dewhurst), is certainly among one of the film’s best, reminding
one a bit of scenes from Allen’s later Hannah
and Her Sisters.
Annie
Hall, in its final version, centers upon Alvy’s attempt to comprehend why
these two opposites have fallen out of love, but we discover almost immediately
that, in fact, they were never truly compatible, he self-centered and
determined to keep his space, she far more easy-going and emotionally responsive.
Even their costumes, Annie dressed in casually chic male-female attire, he in
standard shirt, kakis, and loafers. Is it any wonder that, by film’s end, Annie
has drifted off to the antithesis of Alvy’s world, California? Perhaps the only
thing these two do share is a fear of
multi-legged
creatures, he of lobsters, she of spiders.
Calling up the major events of their
affair and his central character’s two previous marriages, Allen’s work is
squarely in the romantic movie genre, lacking great experimentation. Yet he
tricks his audience into believing that this work is someone adventurous by
throwing in what later will would be described as postmodern tropes such as the
scene described above with Marshall McLuhan, schoolroom children standing to
announce in what professions they were later employed, direct and sudden
questioning of passerbys on the New York streets, split-screens portraying
completely different realities, subtitles that express the real fears behind
the characters’ everyday dialogue, cross-cuts that break the somewhat realist
plotting, and, most importantly, the direct embracement of the audience-goers,
which force us to feel that this movie is truly engaging us. Allen also employs
the Robert Altman device of introducing real-life celebrities into his film,
including McLuhan, Truman Capote, Paul Simon, and others.
And then, the film has the major asset of
Diane Keaton, who, if she isn’t truly Annie Hall, is, even today, completely
comfortable in embracing that role. While Alvy/Allen is constantly whining,
she, in the old-fashioned meaning of the world, is constantly gay, “La-de-da,”
being her most common phrase. Clearly the sunshine she has brought into the
mostly gray skies of Alvy’s beloved New York not only charms us but warms
Allen’s diatribe against life with a kind a golden glow that he would return to
in later films such as Hannah and Her
Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Midnight in Paris, and Café Society.
And, in the end, it moderates Alvy’s incessant
howling with a warmer view of life and love. As one of the women he queries in
the street replies to his question about love: “It’s never something you do.
That’s how people are. Love fades.”
Or, as Alvy himself perceives by film’s
end:
Alvy
Singer: [narrating] After that it got pretty late, and we both had to go, but
it was great seeing Annie again. I... I realized what a terrific person she
was, and... and how much fun it was just knowing her; and I... I, I thought of
that old joke, y'know, the, this... this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says,
"Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the
doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I
would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I
feel about relationships; y'know, they're totally irrational, and crazy, and
absurd, and... but, uh, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of
us... need the eggs.
Yes, this film too reminds us of just how
much Allen, throughout his career, has portrayed himself as a proliferate
womanizer, and as a man who used others to get what he wanted, in most cases
sexual satisfaction. But history is filled with such sad stories. And the Gods
themselves, in nearly every mythology, suffered such desires. I know, given how
much women suffered in such pillages, it’s now very difficult to forgive such
actions. I do think men have to alter their ways forever. There’s something
even slightly slimy about some of Allen’s films, particularly his next, Manhattan. But I think Allen and
co-writer Marshall Brickman’s simple admiration for the Keaton character says a
lot. If nothing else, this film, dominated by Keaton’s version of “Seems Like
Old Times,” demonstrates that Allen, at heart, is a nostalgist, dedicated to a
past that perhaps never truly existed, a world which might wash away his innumerable
sins.
Los Angeles,
January 30, 2018