Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1449 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-07-10
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English, German
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, Polish, Dutch, Finnish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 89 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Annie Hall is one of the truest, most bittersweet romances on film. In it, Allen plays a thinly disguised version of himself: Alvy Singer, a successful--if neurotic--television comedian living in Manhattan. Annie (the wholesomely luminous Dianne Keaton) is a Midwestern transplant who dabbles in photography and sings in small clubs. When the two meet, the sparks are immediate--if repressed. Alone in her apartment for the first time, Alvy and Annie navigate a minefield of self-conscious "is-this-person-someone-I'd-want-to-get-involved-with?" conversation. As they speak, subtitles flash their unspoken thoughts: the likes of "I'm not smart enough for him" and "I sound like a jerk". Despite all their caution, they connect, and we're swept up in the flush of their new romance. Allen's antic sensibility shines here in a series of flashbacks to Alvy's childhood, growing up, quite literally, under a rumbling roller coaster. His boisterous Jewish family's dinner table shares a split screen with the WASP-y Hall's tight-lipped holiday table, one Alvy has joined for the first time. His position as outsider is incontestable when he looks down the table and sizes up Annie's "Grammy Hall" as "a classic Jew-hater".

The relationship arcs, as does Annie's growing desire for independence. It quickly becomes clear that the two are on separate tracks, as what was once endearing becomes annoying. Annie Hall embraces Allen's central themes--his love affair with New York (and hatred of Los Angeles), how impossible relationships are, and his fear of death. But their balance is just right, the chemistry between Allen's worry-wart Alvy and Keaton's gangly, loopy Annie is one of the screen's best pairings. It couldn't be more engaging. --Susan Benson

Special Features
1.85 Wide Screen
16:9 Wide Screen
French\German\Italian\Spanish
English\German
English
Region 2
Mono English French German Italian Spanish
Mono
Original Theatrical Trailer
Booklet

Synopsis
Woody Allen cowrote, directed, and stars in this award-winning film as a kvetchy Brooklyn comedian wistfully recalling his bygone relationship with flighty, adorable, and irrepressibly midwestern (read: not Jewish) Annie Hall. The film marked a transition from Allen's earlier absurdist comedies to a richer vein of thoughtful consideration of relationships. The gentle narrative revolutionized the urban romantic-comedy genre, while Keaton's hip, man-tailored wardrobe set the 1977 fashion standard. The film is filled with memorable scenes and oft-quoted lines and features Allen talking right into the camera, a technique that was not commonplace at the time. Allen, playing comedian Alvy Singer, uses many of his stand-up comedy routines in the film as he woos the wonderful Diane Keaton, playing the title character, Annie Hall. As Alvy helps Annie mature, she grows apart from him, choosing to live in Southern California, which is the antithesis of his deep love for New York. The film features fabulous visual and verbal gags, a propensity for food scenes, and memorable cameos by the likes of Marshall McLuhan, Paul Simon, Christopher Walken, Truman Capote, Shelley Duvall, and others.

Customer Reviews

SO HOW MUCH IS HERE? OH THAT'S ABOUT 2 GRAND PER OUNCE.'
Interesting film. Complex, if slightly annoying characters who tend to either argue, produce witty anecdotes or whine about how the sex in their relationship is non exsistant. Woody Allen gets on my nerves but I knew this was a film I had to watch as I slowly worked my way through the latest 'hundred greatest films' list, put together no doubt by a group of people who all know each other. I'm not sure why this is on the list but there are some comic moments and yes, although aggrivating, Woody Allen is strangly loveable by the end of the film, although his attitude to women is weirdly uncomfortable and stifling to watch, moving from break up to break up to marriage proposals within an hour and a half. One to watch, but I'm sure his genius is more widely enjoyed in other films.

The work of a complete self obsessive
Cleverly assembled montage of a film, shows some craft, but his material hadn't evolved one day, from the time he first put a pen to paper. The jokes are someimes very funny, but just as often rather strained. They are all basically on the same theme. He always delivers them as though he's just written a little masterpiece but you get the idea you've heard him tell the same joke, put differently, a hundred times before. What he is really good at is the visual gag, and it's this he should have concentrated more on in movies in place of the old stand-up's one liners. That said, he is naturally a funny bloke, and must be one of the original alternative comedians, as he was always a Liberal and PC long before it became compulsory in mainstream comedy. However, what gets my goat about many of his films, and this one in particular is the subject of them. It never changes, it's about HIM, HIM, HIM. Manhattan was much the same, but you could really see him trying to get away from himself at last there, and expanding to include other things. Here, he's having a self indulgent convulsion. 'Okay we know who you are now Woody, MOVE ON!'

Woody's first great film
This is the first Woody Allen film (1977) to be more than just an outright wacky comedy, because although this has great comedy moments throughout, it also has a lot to say about relationships.

Allen plays a successful stand-up comedian Alvy Singer, who falls in love with night club singer the Annie Hall of the title. The few stand-up scenes are great, because ten years earlier Woody Allen was a stand-up comedian and he makes it seem so natural.

"I...interestingly had, uh, dated...a woman in the Eisenhower Administration...briefly...and, uh, it was ironic to me 'cause, uh ... tsch ... 'cause I was trying to do to her what Eisenhower has been doing to the country for the last eight years"

Surreal moments occur in which little frustrations of Allens's come out. Such as when waiting in the queue at the cinema. A man is giving his slightly pretentious opinion to his girlfriend about Marshall McLuhan, and rather loudly. Alvy gets annoyed and introduces the man to Marshall McLuhan who promptly tells the man "you know nothing of my work....".

In perhaps the most famous scene in the film Alvy and Annie go back to her apartment and standing on the balcony they talk awkardly. We hear them talk but see what they are think in subtitles:

Alvy: Photography's interesting, 'cause, you know, it's-it's a new art form, and a, uh, a set of aesthetic criteria have not emereged yet. (subtitled - I wonder what she looks like naked?)

In many ways this is Woody Allens perfect film. It still has a huge comedic element to it, but under the comedy there are some serious points made. Overall I probably would choose Manhattan over this, but whilst Manhattan is cinematically a greater film, crucially it probably isn't as entertaining. You should own both!