Annie Hall is a well known film that has reached many people for many decades. Some say this is one of the best films of all time. Some people say that anybody who loves film should see this film at least once, and I think they are right. The thing about Annie Hall is that you have to separate Woody Allen the actor and writer from Woody Allen the creepy man. Despite the life outside of his films, his early films such as this one show sheer genius before everything went down. I will give you examples as to why this film is a classic and a goldmine for classic movie buffs.

This film is a romantic comedy and the man Alvy falls for Annie Hall. He was a neurotic writer and she was in the entertainment industry as a singer. In this film, both struggle to figure out how they feel about each other and just life in general as they grow through the years. The film broke the barrier in many ways and one was Woody Allen talking to the camera. This technique wasn’t seen in movies a lot until he decided to do it when time would sometimes freeze around him in this movie while he rambled on to us about something that bothered him. He also had many other techniques that challenged the norm for romantic comedies at the time.

Woody Allen used flashbacks with dialogue for us to read while he had characters talk into the camera at the future or us as an audience. He even used a part in the film to satirize himself as a neurotic person romanticizing somebody by making him a cartoon in his imagination to show the irrational side of his thinking. No other film has done anything like this before. He knew how to bring the new techniques in and mix things up in a way with his movies that didn’t feel forced. It’s like he broke many dimensions by mixing all of these together.

He most notably broke dimensions on the rooftop scene in Annie Hall when the two characters were talking, but they showed their true thoughts in their honest subtitles while they try to impress each other. No other romantic comedies have broken this many barriers and tried so many different techniques to make a romantic comedy. Some people that have seen this will argue it isn’t a romantic comedy because it doesn’t follow the old rules that everyone gets a happy ending, but those who have seen this film will know that it doesn’t fit the usual criteria for a romantic comedy because of its ending, but will still enjoy all of the barriers Woody Allen broke in the film world with just one film: Annie Hall.