Ok, ok....I'm not going to lie. Watching Annie Hall for the first time I couldn’t help but think; ‘this is the slowest, old people’s entertainment, not funny or realistic movie that I have ever been forced to sit through’. However, when I started to see that it could be considered a base for a lot of the movies I’ve seen today, it was fun to pick out themes and techniques that have been replicated today. It was also interesting to view it with the idea that the film could be argued either Modernism or Postmodernism. I saw the movie Annie Hall as a Postmodern film because while it was not necessarily the first film to ever break the forth wall, or “erase the boundaries between art and everyday life,” it was however a film that included both of those things along with taking the sex and rom-com style and themes and put them into a very real and relatable depiction of love and relationships. The movie in a sense has a very raw feeling to it that made me start linking it to all the other films i had seen that could be considered Postmodern.
I would like to talk about a film that is well know with today’s generation. I am totally and fully aware that I’m not the first to say it, the film 500 Days of Summer is a very reflective, and a very modern day Annie Hall. You wouldn’t believe (or maybe you will) the amounts of scrutiny that I get when I tell someone how much I despise the film 500 Days of Summer. And I literally can’t tell you how many discussions I have had with friends and even random strangers when they find out that I don’t like this movie. But when I told my (older) sister that I didn’t enjoy Annie Hall, she got on my case. and while I know that this seems totally unrelated, I just want to point out that my old fashion, realistic loving, relationship and love obsessed sister makes the same arguments in defending Annie Hall as those defending 500 Days of Summer do. And in both parties defense, I should give more respect to both films for doing what we rarely see today, and achiving what I always complain that there is not enough of...showcasing relationships in a realistic and highly relatable light, while still connecting to the audience and in some parts in Annie Hall, addressing the audience.
which brings me to my next point. Woody Allen was not the first to make a movie where a character addresses the camera and breaks that forth wall. However, the popularity of this now classic movie has inspired other movies to mimic the irony in a character breaking that barrier and addressing the audience as if they were their friends and either try to help the audience see their point, or inform them/catch them up on something that is going on. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Fight Club, Yours, Mine and Ours (1968), and even The Emperor’s New Groove, are all films that have either the main character, or the film’s narrator address the audience in a nonchalant manner.
Annie Hall is now a movie that we can look at and get a understanding for Allen’s style and ideas behind movies and see that he perhaps made this movie in hopes that it would spark the sort of thinking that it did for me while understanding that it was intended to have some sort of depth and meaning to it. We can also see that because of the captivity that it took it’s viewers by, other films have admired and ‘borrowed’ Allen’s classic style. Yet I still feel that as far as storyline/plot goes, 500 Days of Summer is a perfect example of, a real life situation, portrayed in a film, while depicting elements of Postmodernism, a modern day Annie Hall.
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