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Rating: 
Summary: Brief but excellent + informative study of a major U.S. film
Review: Peter Cowie's monograph is the perfect companion to Woody Allen's first masterpiece, and one of the best in the BFI Classics series. 'Annie Hall' is the film that marked Allen's transition from a sketch-based, spoof/parody comedian, to the sardonic romantic comic with pretensions to seriousness that has divided critics ever since. Cowie explains the various elements of this development: Allen's confidence, perhaps on turning 40, to rework autobiography; the absorbing and rethinking, rather than jokey ticking off, of influences (literary - Kafka, Dostoevsky, Max Shulman; European cinema - Bergman (whose confessional, intimate aesthetic Allen is credited with importing to the American cinema), Fellini, Godard; American silent comedy, especially Chaplin; the Jewish stand-up tradition); the crystallising of major themes (Jewish identity in a WASP culture; the romanticising of New York and the denigration of culturally braindead L.A.; the fragility of relationships and the debilitating effects of excessive self-consciousness etc.). Most valuably, Cowie shows how Allen, beloved for his verbal dexterity, is actually a restlessly inventive and visual film-maker: 'Annie Hall' is his most tricksy and experimental film, playing with time, narration, gags, visual effects like his previous films, but here channelled into deepening the film's central relationship and surrounding ideas. The major chapter, 'Inside Annie Hall' is a masterly mix of synopsis and insightful commentary, as alive to the lovable throwaway details as the resonant Big Themes and complex narrative structure. An appendix offers an invaluable glossary of the film's profuse cultural references, many of which now only survive thanks to 'Annie Hall'.
Rating:
Summary: Brief but excellent + informative study of a major U.S. film
Review: Peter Cowie's monograph is the perfect companion to Woody Allen's first masterpiece, and one of the best in the BFI Classics series. 'Annie Hall' is the film that marked Allen's transition from a sketch-based, spoof/parody comedian, to the sardonic romantic comic with pretensions to seriousness that has divided critics ever since. Cowie explains the various elements of this development: Allen's confidence, perhaps on turning 40, to rework autobiography; the absorbing and rethinking, rather than jokey ticking off, of influences (literary - Kafka, Dostoevsky, Max Shulman; European cinema - Bergman (whose confessional, intimate aesthetic Allen is credited with importing to the American cinema), Fellini, Godard; American silent comedy, especially Chaplin; the Jewish stand-up tradition); the crystallising of major themes (Jewish identity in a WASP culture; the romanticising of New York and the denigration of culturally braindead L.A.; the fragility of relationships and the debilitating effects of excessive self-consciousness etc.). Most valuably, Cowie shows how Allen, beloved for his verbal dexterity, is actually a restlessly inventive and visual film-maker: 'Annie Hall' is his most tricksy and experimental film, playing with time, narration, gags, visual effects like his previous films, but here channelled into deepening the film's central relationship and surrounding ideas. The major chapter, 'Inside Annie Hall' is a masterly mix of synopsis and insightful commentary, as alive to the lovable throwaway details as the resonant Big Themes and complex narrative structure. An appendix offers an invaluable glossary of the film's profuse cultural references, many of which now only survive thanks to 'Annie Hall'.
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