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Film

Jew know why we love Annie Hall?

Jason Solomons on the film with 'the funniest screenplay ever written'

February 18, 2016 12:24
Classic: Woody Allen and Diane Keaton star in Annie Hall

By

Jason Solomons,

Jason Solomons

4 min read

Late last year, Annie Hall was voted by the Writers Guild of America as the funniest screenplay ever written, calling it "modern cinema's greatest semi-autobiographical relationship story". I hesitate to call it a rom-com but it is, for me, the most romantic and most comic film I've ever seen. It is, of course, about a failed love story, and only a lifelong neurotic like Woody Allen could find that funny and somehow more fulfilling than a successful relationship.

But why, nearly 40 years on from its release, is it still so appealing? Why do we find such solace in its jokes, rhythms, beats and routines?

When you hear a line or see a scene from Annie Hall, it immediately sends your senses to the comfort food of American comedies that have sound-tracked your life. You think of Friends and of Seinfeld, of Sex and the City and of Girls. All those kooky heroines played by Jennifer Aniston, Kathryn Heigl, Zooey Deschanel, Kate Hudson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Greta Gerwig and Meg Ryan - they couldn't exist without Diane Keaton's Annie and her rejection of Woody Allen's Alvy.

Nora Ephron - whose own script to When Harry Met Sally came 15th on the Guild list - once put it to me thus: "Shakespeare invented the romcom with The Taming of the Shrew; then there was Jane Austen with Pride and Prejudice. After them, Woody changed everything in the movies with Annie Hall - those are the three beacons, and only those three. They're all you need."