In Woody Allen’s 1977 film, "Annie Hall," he doesn’t follow the romantic-comedy genre conventions to tell his story like other films in the genre. Instead, he allows for a greater sense of realism in the construction of Alvy and Annie’s relationship. Unlike the traditional romantic comedy, Allen doesn’t follow the pattern of the boy and girl meeting, falling in love, fighting, eventually breaking up and then falling back in love again. Instead, he begins their relationship somewhere in the middle of their time together as they’re facing certain problems with each other; and the viewer, along with Alvy, tries to piece together his memories to find the source of the relationship problems.
In Tamar Jeffers McDonald’s book, “Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre,” she says, “The whole of the film’s narrative can be understood as Alvy’s attempt to sift ‘the pieces of the relationship’, working out where things went wrong through examining his life, trying to explain his actions,” (73-74). Through this narrative format, Allen uses a nonlinear structure and different methods of shot composition and mise-en-scene in each scene to tell the story as be goes back and forth from the present to the past to detail how the relationship started, what happened before and what happened along the way that caused their bond to become fragile. This back-and-forth allows for the viewer to make comparisons between Alvy’s girlfriends and how each situation played out.
The viewer is provided with a greater sense of Alvy and Annie’s relationship as they recount their previous romances that are broken up into several scenes. In Sam B. Girgus’ book, “The Films of Woody Allen,” he says, “The special relationship between desire and narrative, as described by de Lauretis, in which desire operates as a function of narrativity and narrativity in turn processes desire, can be found in 'Annie Hall'…,” (45). Alvy and Annie’s desire for companionship and a sexual relationship within each other help stimulate the flashbacks of when they tried to find those two things with other people. And, the narrative stimulates the desire because of how it recounts several of the two main characters’ relationships and their want for romance. The viewer first sees one of Alvy’s past relationships, one of which was with a girl named Allison. This starts in a scene where Alvy and Annie are in bed. Alvy is trying to encourage Annie to have sex with him, but she isn’t in the mood. In the scene with Allison and Alvy in bed together, the situation is reversed, with Alvy trying to avoid sex with Allison. Also, their positions in the bed heighten this sense of reversal. As the viewer is looking at Alvy and Annie as they’re in bed, Alvy is on the left side and Annie is on the right side. In Allison’s bedroom, she is on the left side and Alvy is on the right side. The switched positions of the characters’ in bed reflect the reversal of who wants sex and who’s avoiding it. With Alvy and Annie, the camera stays in one place and doesn’t move, keeping Alvy and Annie together in the frame the whole time. With Alvy and Allison, they are oftentimes separated from each other within the frame. As Alvy gets off the bed, he begins to walk around Allison’s room with only him in the frame as the camera follows him in a long take. This heightens the sense of detachment that Alvy had felt for Allison before Annie entered his life. There is also the factor of being distracted from sex. Annie is busy reading as Alvy is attempting to have sex with her, and Alvy is using a discussion of a JFK assassination conspiracy theory to avoid having sex with Allison. Alvy says, “I’m sorry, I can’t go through with this. Because I can’t get it off my mind, Allison! It’s obsessing me!” To which Allison replies, “I’m getting tired of it. I need your attention.” Even when the film just has him in the frame and he’s talking about the assassination, he is speaking in a way that makes it look and sound like he’s just talking to himself and ignoring Allison.
This scene then transitions to an early time in Annie and Alvy’s relationship. This scene involves Alvy and Annie cooking lobster in a house near the beach. The sequence is filmed in a long take with a documentary style, with the shakiness of the camera emphasizing the fun dynamic that the two used to share in their relationship, contrasting the still camera in their bedroom scene where they lack intimacy. During this scene, the two are almost always in the frame together, symbolizing how they were once inseparable, and how the viewer wishes for them to remain inseparable, even though their relationship is facing some turbulence. The smallness of the kitchen allows for the two to be closer together in this scene and for their intimacy to be shown as they share this little space together.
The scene that follows immediately after that now has Annie discussing her past romances. She briefly mentions Dennis, her high school boyfriend from back home in Chippawa Falls, Wisconsin. Then, she mentions one of her most recent boyfriends, Jerry, with more detail. The narrative structure of the film in this scene doesn’t just deal with time in a nonlinear sense, but also has Annie and Alvy literally walking into the past in this sequence. The two walk into a room where they find a past Annie with her then-boyfriend, Jerry. This is another scene that’s shot as a long take that keeps the four characters within the frame the whole time. There is a wall that Jerry is leaning against, and the way that the shot is composed makes it look as though the wall is dividing Jerry and past-Annie from present-Annie and Alvy. So, although the two time periods have come together, present-Annie and Alvy don’t interact with the other two, and are merely observers of Annie’s nostalgia.
The narrative then jumps further back to when Alvy was with his second wife, Robin. The two are attending a party for Robin’s book publisher, where she’s annoyed about Alvy’s hostility. He quickly retreats to a bedroom to watch a Knicks basketball game. The viewer gets a sense of disconnection between them because when Robin tells Alvy that she doesn’t understand the appeal of a basketball game, Alvy responds with, “That’s one thing about intellectuals. They’ve proven that you can be absolutely brilliant and have no idea what’s going on.” This scene then cuts to them having sex, only to be interrupted by a siren from outside. The camera films all of this in a long take from a distance from the bed to help the viewer continue to share with Alvy that feeling of disconnection that he feels when with Robin.
This is then followed by a scene at a tennis court where Alvy and Annie first meet. As the two are getting ready to leave, it’s noticeable that Annie’s dress is very different from Allison and Robin’s, and is more similar to Alvy’s style of clothing, hinting that the two are a match. While Allison and Robin wore clothing that was more dress-lie, Annie wears clothing that is more masculine, such as a button-down shirt, vest and dress pants. Alvy is wearing something similar, minus the vest. Annie is completely different from the other two women. While Allison and Robin can be considered intellectuals, Annie is more of a down-to-earth free spirit who is an aspiring actress. And, unlike Allison and Robin, Annie isn’t originally from New York. Once Alvy and Annie are in her apartment, Alvy finds a book of Sylvia Plath’s poems, and he says, “Sylvia Plath. Interesting poetess whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college-girl mentality.” To which Annie replies, “Right. I don’t know. I mean, some of her poems seem neat.” By merely calling them “neat,” the viewer can tell that she doesn’t have a strong insight into literature, but still feels comfortable around Alvy. This scene is shot in another long take. As Annie is talking to Alvy, although there are times when they aren’t in the frame together, the viewer can sense their connection, especially as the camera is focusing on Annie as she’s getting the wine and excitedly sharing family stories with Alvy, who is out of the frame.
Woody Allen’s use of an unconventional narrative structure is what brings the film its realism. Introducing the relationship as it’s in the middle of several problems presents a jarring departure from what the viewer is used to when watching a romantic comedy. It allows for the viewer to contemplate Alvy and Annie’s love lives along with them as they think about their pasts, and this provides a better understanding of their characters. "Annie Hall" isn’t just about what happens within the relationship between the two main characters, but is also about what happened beforehand and what events delivered them to each other.
Works Cited
McDonald, Tamar Jeffers. Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Girgus, Sam B. The Films of Woody Allen. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
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