This review first appeared in The Andersonstown News.
There are few pleasures to compare with meeting an old friend (ANNIE HALL, BBC FOUR), and it’s particularly sweet when you’re reminded of all the reasons why you liked/loved them in the first place.
From which you’ll gather that I like Woody Allen – and especially this 1978 masterpiece which was showered with Oscars.
You can see why. The dialogue bristles with wit. Here’s Woody on two Jewish women in a restaurant: Woman 1: “The food in this place is just awful!” . Woman 2: “Yeah, and such small portions too!”
And here’s the Woody character, insisting that a person he knows is anti-Semitic. “He keeps calling me ‘Jew’. I said to him, I said ‘Did you have anything to eat yet?’ and know what he said? ‘No, d’jou?”
And what about that surreal sequence in the movie queue where a loudmouth is insisting that Woody knows nothing about media culture in general and media guru Marshall McLuhan in particular. So Woody goes behind a partition and brings out – yep – Marshall McLuhan. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about’ McLuhan tells the loudmouth. ‘This man’ – pointing at Woody – is exactly right in in every word he says.’ Dreamland.
Much of Allen’s wise-cracking is against himself. “I’ve been seeing my psychoanalyst for fifteen years. I’m giving him one more year and then I’m going to Lourdes’. Or when he laments Annie’s lateness for their date “What did you do – come by way of the Panama Canal?’ Or when he talks of a country ‘whose only cultural advantage is that you can turn right on a red light.’
Yes, I know we’re supposed to distance ourselves from the work of people who allegedly are moral scoundrels. Kevin Spacey was a great actor until he was charged with sexual crimes, at which point the House of Cards folded. For some people the same applies to Woody Allen – he was wildly funny until it was found that he was marrying Soon-Yi Previn, one of Mia Farrow’s adopted children.
You don’t take a measuring tape to gauge your partner’s love, and there is no necessary link between how morally reprehensible someone’s life may or may not be, and the quality of the work they produce.
Finally, isn’t it ironic? You wait and wait for a decent Friday night film, then two come along in swift succession – ‘Annie Hall’ immediately followed on the same channel by ‘The Deer Hunter’. Keep them coming, guys.
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