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| Woody
Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Paul Simon, Carol Kane, Shelley Duvall,
Christopher Walken |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Duane:
Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist,I think you'll
understand. Sometimes when I'm driving... on the road at night... I
see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse
to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate
the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The... flames rising out
of the flowing gasoline.
Alvy: Right. Well, I have to-- I have to go now, Duane, because
I, I'm due back on the planet Earth.
The
ups and downs of the relationship between neurotic New Yorker Alvy Singer
and insecure out of towner Annie Hall.
 Unthinkable
for kids today, Annie Hall beat Star Wars at the Oscars
for best picture. Maybe no surprise (when do science fiction action
movies win an Oscar?) but more remarkable now is that where Star
Wars is touted for its universal themes and across-the-board appeal,
Annie Hall has proven to have those qualifications in spades.
It's a romantic comedy on one level and a bittersweet portrait of adult
relationships in the mid 1970s on the other. But in every frame there's
an emotional resonance from the film's honesty and unsentimentality,
which may account for its timeless appeal.
The original title for Annie Hall was 'Anhedonia', a pretentious
term that translates as 'the inability to love'. Allen decided in post-production
to change the title and the movie itself to focus on the relationship
between Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) and Annie Hall (Diane Keaton). The
murder mystery subplot was completely dropped from the movie (this was
later used as the basis for Manhattan Murder Mystery). What remains
is one of the best movies of all time and a milestone in contemporary
cinema. Allen's blend of high-brow jokes, visual gags and his blossoming
talents as a dramatic writer are perfectly balanced here. The jokes
and one-liners come so fast you're guaranteed to miss half of them the
first time round ("Don't you see? The rest of the country looks
upon New York like we're Left-Wing, Communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers.
I think of us that way sometimes and I live here!"). Fact
and fiction are mingled to a degree where it's impossible to see where
one begins and the other ends. It's clear that for Woody Allen this
movie has many autobiographical elements and it set the tone for the
rest of his movie career. Allen's obsessions are all here: New York,
sex, intellectuals, anti-Semitism, death, women and of course movies.
He uses a variety of innovative strategies and narrative techniques
including voice-over narration, subtitles and even animation, and as
Alvy Singer remarks towards the end of the movie: "You know how
you're always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because,
uh, it's real difficult in life". Annie Hall may be the
closest Woody Allen has come to perfection. |
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The
disc is available in both Region 1 and Region 2 but only the Region
2 release is anamorphically enhanced. This review refers to the Region
2 release.
The
anamorphic widescreen image is framed at 1.78:1. Annie Hall was
the first collaboration between Woody Allen and legendary cinematographer
Gordon Willis, and it constitutes a great leap forward for the director
from a visual point of view. Shots are carefully framed and lit with
the trademark Gordon Willis warm glow, and much thought has clearly
gone into the framing of each shot. The transfer is from an imperfect
source print and is therefore sometimes rather grainy and soft, but
colors and black levels are overall quite good, yielding a pleasing
image throughout.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 sound mix reproduces the original mono soundtrack.
To this day, all Woody Allen movies have mono soundtracks.
There
are no extras save for a theatrical trailer.  The
animated menu is nicely designed and features a clip from the movie but
oddly enough without any sound.
Gerard
Castelein
Reviewed: 2001
Click
here for IMDB info on Annie
Hall .
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