Annie Hall

Released by: MGM
Released on: January 24, 2012.
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton
Year: 1977
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The Movie:

"Don't knock masturbation, it's sex with someone I love."

The winner of four Oscars in 1977, including Best Picture, Woody Allen's Annie Hall is the film that put him on the map as a 'serious' filmmaker and saw him start to move away from his background in his earlier and more absurdist comedies and his background as a stand-up comic.

The film follows a forty year old comedian named Alvy Singer who is paranoid that everyone around him is an anti-Semite and who spends far too much of his time at the movies, particularly any time The Sorrow And The Pity comes around. After a face to face intro with just Alvy and the camera gives us a bit of background info and a few funny flashbacks show us what it was like for Alvy growing up in Brooklyn in a house underneath a Coney Island rollercoaster, he winds up meeting and hitting it off with a pretty woman named Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) who he meets through a mutual friend at a tennis game. She drives him home and, after almost killing him en route, they hit it off in spite of, or possibly because, they're very much polar opposites.

Annie's a bit of a free spirit, and occasional nightclub chanteuse prone to smoking pot and hoping to make something out of her photography career, Alvy is paranoid, neurotic, and not particularly open to trying new things - a creature of nervous habit, if you will. She thinks, if he'd let her, she could help him to have more fun, while he insists she read numerous books on death because it's an important subject. Eventually Annie's career gets some attention by way of a big time record producer (Paul Simon) and she moves to California, the same state Alvy's manager (Tony Roberts) has been trying to get him to move to for some time now. They both care for one another, but they grow more distant over time, each one seeing a psychiatrist and getting different results, to the point where their sex life wanes and they just don't know if their relationship is meant to be or not.

Annie Hall, while maybe not romantic sounding on paper, turns out to be an effectively sweet movie that approaches the ups and downs and harsh realities of relationships with surprisingly realism. In between these fairly brilliant observations on the human condition, we're treated to some of Allen's more madcap humor, be it a scene where Annie's 'Grammy Hall' sees him in full Hasidic garb or a scene where Alvy pulls Marshall McLuhan out of a line up to settle and argument for him with a blowhard movie buff in line at the theater. Alvy is constantly going up to complete strangers on the street and asking for advice and opinions on his relationship, the results always delivered in completely deadpan style, even when they turn to 'large vibrating eggs' and other more personal matters, collide with scenes that demonstrate the differences between Alvy's New York City Jewish upbringing and Annie's white suburban milquetoast family background with frequently hilarious results.

Allen and Keaton are both at the top of their game here, and while Allen is, for all intents and purposes, simply playing himself he does show some emotional range here. Diane Keaton took home the Best Actress Oscar for her work here, and rightly so as she's completely believable in the part - and fairly adorable at that. Supporting efforts from Tony Roberts and Paul Simon are fun, as are cameos from Carol Kane, Shelly Duvall (whose goofball Rolling Stone journalist character describes sex with Alvy as 'Kafka-esque!'), a young Christopher Walker and blink and you'll miss it bits from Sigourney Weaver, Jeff Goldblum and a very young Beverly D'Angelo. Proof that romantic comedies can be done well (though they rarely are), the film has gone on to be widely influential and has surprisingly lost none of its charm.

Video/Audio/Extras:

MGM's AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer presents Manhattan in its proper 1.85.1 widescreen aspect ratio and by and large it looks very good. The image shows pretty much perfect color reproduction and plenty of nice, natural film grain but this all works in the film's favor, it helps create that atmosphere that it's known for and presents the mix of California and New York City backdrops in strong and impressive clarity. Black levels are nice and strong and detail is strong throughout - there are no issues with any noise reduction or edge enhancement, and just overall looking very much like film, just the way that it should be. The picture won't blow you away the way a newer film transfer might, and some scenes look a bit soft (intentionally so) but those used to seeing the film on DVD will definitely notice that upgrade here.

The main audio track on this disc is an English language DTS-HD 2.0 Mono track, though Dolby Digital Mono tracks are available in Spanish, Portuguese, German, Catalan, Italian, and French with optional subtitles available in English SDH, French, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Italian, Catalan, Dutch and Polish. The audio here is fine. This isn't a particularly complex track but the dialogue is always crystal clear and balanced nicely against the score, which sounds really good here. The mix, for an older mono track, sounds quite full, you'll even notice some nice low end rumble in the mix when the rollercoaster zips over Alvy's childhood home at Coney Island.

Extras are slim (not surprisingly given Allan's dislike of extra features and commentary tracks), all that's here, aside from chapter stops and basic menus, is the film's theatrical trailer.

The Final Word:

Widely considered Woody Allen's best film and very likely the picture he'll always be most closely associated with, Annie Hall holds up very well and if, like most Woody Allen releases, this disc is devoid of any substantial extras, the improved audio and video provided by the high definition treatment make this one an upgrade easy to recommend.

Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!