Annie Hall: Classic or Dud?

This is true of course! We shouldn't overanalyse but...

I think she saying that people (in the novel) are kind of oblivious to the dangers of the city (or they know about them but don't care) and Annie is saying but we're cleverer than they - we KNOW it's a dying city and we should get out and move to L.A.

And don't forget that later Alvy says "A relationship is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we have here is a dead shark" (I'm paraphrasing here). Which could also apply to, um, New York in the late 1970s, early 80s and so, er, is sub-consciously agreeing with Annie's earlier comment.

I think the "New York is dying, let's get out" meme was big in the seventies, as was Visconti's Death in Venice so it might have been a more obvious parallel then than it is now... Annie = realist, Woody = hopelessly morbid romantic, ie set-up of all Woody Allen films of the period...

They would make a great double bill.

New York (certainly Manhattan) is now essentially dead for anyone except the demographic that populates Woody's urban comedies.

also Aimless, yer a dope.

Aimless might be a lot of things but dope isn't one of them, I don't think.

However your first sentence is pretty OTM.

I love it when they go to L.A.

ok, Aimless' "remock" (as Woody wd say) was dopey.

I've still never been to LA, partly cuz AH warned me about it.

By the way, while I was googling that line from Annie Hall, I came across a great thing. The New Yorker digital reader gives you searchable access to every single issue of the New Yorker from 1925. While it's in beta, it's free - you just have to put in an email address. After beta they're charging but it's good for now.

http://archives.newyorker.com/

dayum

calling this movie hopelessly irrelevant is either dopey or just meaningless. it's not irrelevant, either as a love story or as a film... i mean, i guess if you're looking at it as a guide to new york city living, maybe!

influence in the genre, whether you feel it to be positive or negative, at least proves 'relevance'

also, asking the happy couple how they're doing so well is still A+

fuck a relevance.

and i always carry a sock o' manure in movie lines.

Anyone see it at the Brooklyn Bridge Park tonight? I have to admit there was something magical about seeing Allen and Keaton by the bridge and then looking to my right and seeing the bridge (from the other side obv)

The movie is visually gorgeous
― Sym (shmuel), Thursday, 25 March 2004 08:24 (7 years ago) Bookmark

I'm always cheerleading for how consistently good-to-great American cinematography was in the '70s. Gordon Willis, top tier.

yeah. i am not great with cinematographers but woody did pretty well - interiors is memorably beguiling, stardust memories really well done etc.

anyway i just rescreened this & was stunned; i wonder where i was at when i first saw it, as little of my idea of what it was like related to its emotional punch. as a portrait of the dynamics of their relationship it's incredible, catching how both their idiosyncrasies are at first endearing & attractive & vital, & then eventually the fuel for their downfall.

For me, Annie Hall holds up much better than Manhattan, even though the thing that most bothers me about Manhattan--anti-pretension masking wild pretensions--is just starting to creep in. (I realize Manhattan is a sacred film for many people, so I don't really want to start knocking it.)

i kind of can't remember manhattan that well at this moment, so would probably benefit from catching that again, also (i had a couple of years of telling everyone that stardust was his best movie, i guess pointedly on account of being some kind of connoisseurish b&w alternative to manhattan, though a rewatch convinced me otherwise - though i am very fond of it, particularly its precision meta-referential take on his career, & sequences of it in particular, it doesn't have the rhythm of his best, & ends a couple of times before ending, etc). what was interesting in annie hall, kinda prefiguring love & death, in which intellectual references are quoted for their absurd phonic qualities & for a humorous shift in register, was that to a more restrained degree he's still using those references kind of self-deprecatingly & to impugn others, always as a distancing, complicating thing in communication or relationships. i'm not sure how pretentious manhattan is; the parts that stick with me are those examples of wonderfully human and common reflexive bullshit - don't fall in love with me, i'm broken etc, which, like with annie hall, kinda resonate deeply whether you are woody or not. eesh anyway this slayed me.

also, just as an aside, woody looks so great in this film, outfits & everything - idk if elmo's reading this thread but there were some plaid shirt/herringbone jacket combos that i thought he'd be into

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lshlhnt4SG1qg7mglo1_500.png

Ralph Lauren, ya know

I can't defend Manhattan as anything other than an occasionally amusing film but I've made my peace with the thing.

I love Manhattan. You guys are loons.

Annie Hall is better but polyphonic otm

i love manhattan too but i haven't seen since i was a teenager and i'm reluctant to revisit it pretty much the same reasons i'm scared to revisit catcher in the rye. still it's showing in town soon on the big screen so i'll definitely check it out (if only for the opening monologue and the gershwin). if i can tolerate/borderline enjoy vicky cristina barcelona and pine for the relative quality of 90s woody allen i'm pretty sure manhattan will deliver just fine. do wish he'd make another movie w/ diane keaton. manhattan murder mystery really should be the template - small cast, alda-huston-keaton-allen, maybe switch up the other two parties (maybe throw tony roberts and dianne wiest in the mix) but a doddering nick and norah type series w/ allen and keaton is something i could actually imagine being entertained by, and there aren't alot of scenarios for 'future woody allen movies' i can say that about.

I could've seen Midnight in Paris for free last night and opted to pay to see 50/50 instead...

anyway my POV on Manhattan changed considerably from teendom to adulthood. I loved it 18 but I interpreted it completely differently than I do now

I love Manhattan. You guys are loons.

― polyphonic, Monday, October 3, 2011 3:47 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

Manhattan's philosophy is suspect, but that's not of paramount importance, is it?

anyway, I wish for a sock o' manure on a daily basis

Manhattan's philosophy is suspect, but that's not of paramount importance, is it?

I'm not sure what the overall "philosophy" of the film is.

I prefer to view Woody as the villain of the film, fwiw

manhattan still holds up for me, maybe even better than when i was 18. whatever happened to marshall brickman anyway

I've discussed this before: the ping-pong dialogue between Woody and Michael Murphy in the classroom condenses everything that's wrong about Allen in this period (characters defining themselves and others through psychoanalytic cliches, actors not given anything to do but embody those cliches). And I don't care for the clumsy way in which the movie tries to have it both ways: romanticism and sourness.

But I can still watch it and laugh.

Pretty much the same: looks fantastic, there's stuff that makes me laugh, and I can still appreciate why it was such a big deal at the time. But there are things that make me cringe, and that scene in the classroom is one of the worst offenders.

re: that scene, it's not particularly realistic dialogue but the one liners are all funny ("I have to model myself after someone!" lol)

The film becomes nostalgia in the act of its unfolding, so I've never considered it realistic.

Some of the throwaway stuff makes me laugh: Woody's reaction to Wallace Shawn, when he puts his hand in the water while rowboating, the brown water, etc.

there is a guy in my preschool co-op who, god help me, reminds me of Wallace Shawn every time I see him. He's like 2 ft taller than Shawn but he talks EXACTLY like him, the lisp, the diction everything. it's unnerving.

I like all the bits satirizing liberal fatuity.

Meryl Streep -- the role and the performance -- are unbearable though.

she gets what 5 minutes of screen time? I think she only has two scenes iirc

She makes sure we understand that her hair is doing all the work.

I'm wondering where the film stands in relation to Streep's marriage to Cazale--my guess is that she was making it either just before or just after he died.

this is the Annie Hall thread btw

Can we at least talk about how awful Barack Obama is?

We're reaffirming its goodness.

lol clemenza

i love that scene in the classroom, don't see what's wrong with Meryl Streep either but then i'm in love with Manhattan so any criticism is too much!

Streep's take by the way is interesting:
"I don't think Woody Allen even remembers me. I went to see Manhattan
and I felt like I wasn't even in it. I was pleased with the film because I
looked pretty in it and I thought it was entertaining. But I only worked on
the film for three days and I didn't get to know Woody. Who gets to know
Woody? He's very much of a womanizer; very self-involved. On a certain level,
the film offends me because it's about all these people whose sole concern
is discussing their emotional states or their neuroses. It's sad because
Woody has the potential to be America's Chekhov. But instead, he's still
caught up in the jet-set crowd type of life, trivializing his talent."

I'll remind Ms. Streep that Allen's stab at Chekhov in September was exactly that -- into his neck.

what year is that Streep quote from?