#35 ‘Annie Hall’
Neurotic Men, Disposable Women, and the Audacity of Tweed
Annie Hall (1977) is often hailed as the film that redefined romantic comedy—clever, self-aware, groundbreaking. And yes, it’s all those things. It’s also a 90-minute ode to a man’s ego, wrapped in quips, psychoanalysis, and enough turtlenecks to smother a therapist. It doesn’t so much explore relationships as it dissects them—on her body, through his lens, and entirely on his terms.
Woody Allen plays Alvy Singer, a walking monologue with abandonment issues and a superiority complex, who spends the entire film trying to figure out why the radiant, charming, alive woman who once loved him dared to grow beyond his control. Diane Keaton’s Annie Hall isn’t just the titular character—she’s the film’s sacrificial muse. Her quirks, her style, her energy? All adored, imitated, commodified. Until, of course, she starts wanting things of her own. Then she becomes a project. Then she becomes the problem.
The film pretends to be about love, but it’s really about authorship. Alvy casts himself as the misunderstood genius, the emotionally available intellectual allergic to happiness. Annie is his stage, his mirror, his punchline. We watch their romance in fragmented flashbacks and direct addresses to camera, and through it all, the message is clear: her feelings are subject to his interpretation.
And let’s talk about the power imbalance, shall we? Alvy lectures Annie about art, about therapy, about her taste in music, her vocabulary, her subconscious. He pathologizes her joy and intellectualizes her pain. When she’s high, he mocks her. When she’s sober, he interrogates her. He is the kind of man who brings Marshall McLuhan into a movie theater argument because he can’t bear not being right. It’s iconic. It’s clever. It’s deeply exhausting.
Annie, to her credit, starts to evolve. She sings. She writes. She grows. And the film treats this as a tragedy. Not because she leaves him, but because she stops being knowable. She moves to L.A. She embraces optimism. And in the film’s final moments, Alvy—nostalgic, self-pitying, still incapable of change—rewrites their story as a stage play where she takes him back. Because of course he does. When real women walk away, men make movies where they don't.
Yes, the editing is inventive. Yes, the structure is novel. Yes, Keaton is incandescent. But Annie Hall isn’t a romance. It’s a eulogy for the kind of woman men like Alvy think they deserve: one who is interesting but manageable, luminous but dependent, original but ultimately willing to become a footnote in his memoir.
2.5 out of 5 oversized neckties
(One for Keaton. One for formal innovation. Half a star for the lobster scene. The rest got left behind in Alvy’s rearview mirror, along with his capacity for actual intimacy.)
