Anurag Jain's Blog
Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Annie Hall

Watched this 1977 Best Picture Oscar winner recently. Annie Hall is brilliantly funny. It's about relationships. The closing lines of the movie sums up the whole relationship issue.

Opening lines:
Alvy Singer: There's an old joke. Uh, two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know, and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.

Closing lines:
Alvy Singer: I though of that old joke, y'know, the, this, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy. He thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" And the guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much how I feel about relationships. Y'know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd and, but, uh, I guess we keep going through it because, uh, most of us need the eggs.
Essentially, what Woody Allen is saying is that hey we are all selfish in our relationships. Also, howsoever much problems, pain, hurt our relationships cause to us, we gotta live with them.

Some brilliant quotes from Annie Hall:
Annie Hall: Sometimes I ask myself how I'd stand up under torture.
Alvy Singer: You? You kiddin'? If the Gestapo would take away your Bloomingdale's charge card, you'd tell 'em everything.

Annie Hall: "Darling, I've been killing spiders since I was 30."

Alvy:
" I have a pessimistic view about life. I feel that life is divided up into horrible and the miserable. Those are the two categories. Horrible would be like terminal cases and blind people, cripples I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. The miserable is everyone else. So when you go through life, be thankful that your're miserable. "

Alvy Singer: Oh stop it, you're having an affair with your college professor, that jerk that teaches that incredible crap course, Contemporary Crisis in Western Man...
Annie Hall: Existential Motifs in Russian Literature. You're really close.
Alvy Singer: What's the difference? It's all mental masturbation.
Annie Hall: Oh, well, now we're finally getting to a subject you know something about.
Alvy Singer: Hey, don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love.

Annie Hall: So I told her about, about the family and about my feelings towards men and about my relationship with my brother. And then she mentioned penis envy. Do you know about that?
Alvy Singer: Me? I'm, I'm one of the few males who suffers from that.

Pam: Sex with you is really a Kafka-esque experience.
Alvy Singer: Oh. Thank you.
Pam: I mean that as a compliment.

Alvy Singer: I think, I think there's too much burden placed on the orgasm, you know, to make up for empty areas in life.
Pam: Who said that?
Alvy Singer: It may have been Leopold and Loeb.

[Alvy sees Rolling Stone and The National Review in Annie's apartment]
Alvy Singer: Are you going with a right-wing rock 'n roll star?

Alvy Singer: They did not take me in the Army. I was, um, interestingly enough, I was, I was 4-P. Yes. In the, in the event of war, I'm a hostage.

Alvy Singer: In 1942 I had already discovered women.
[Young Alvy kisses girl in school]
Alvy's Classmate: Yecch. He kissed me, he kissed me. Yecch.
Miss Reed: That's the second time this month. Step up here.
Alvy at 9: What'd I do?
Miss Reed: Step up here.
Alvy at 9: What did I do?
Miss Reed: You should be ashamed of yourself.
Alvy Singer: Why? I was just expressing a healthy sexual curiosity.
Miss Reed: Six year old boys don't have girls on their minds.
Alvy Singer: I did.
Alvy's Classmate: For God's sake, Alvy, even Freud speaks of a latency period.
Alvy Singer: Well, I never had a latency period. I can't help it.

Alvy Singer: I'm so tired of spending evenings making fake insights with people who work for "Dysentery."
Robin: "Commentary."
Alvy Singer: Oh really? I had heard that "Commentary" and "Dissent" had merged and formed "Dysentery."

[Alvy and Annie are seeing their therapists at the same time on a split screen]
Alvy Singer's Therapist: How often do you sleep together?
Annie Hall's Therapist: Do you have sex often?
Alvy Singer: [lamenting] Hardly ever. Maybe three times a week.
Annie Hall: [annoyed] Constantly. I'd say three times a week

Alvy Singer: Oh my God, she's right. Why did I turn off Allison Portchnik? She was beautiful, she was willing. She was real intelligent. Is it the old Groucho Marx joke that I'm - I just don't want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member?

Alvy Singer: Hey, Harvard makes mistakes too! Kissinger taught there!

[Rob has bailed Alvy out of jail]
Rob: Imagine my surprise when I got your call, Max.
Alvy: Yeah. I had the feeling that I got you at a bad moment. You know, I heard high-pitched squealing.
Rob: Twins, Max! 16 years-old. Can you imagine the mathematical possibilities?
Alvy: [glum] You're an actor, Max. You should be doing Shakespeare in the Park.
Rob: Oh, I did Shakespeare in the Park, Max. I got mugged. I was playing Richard the Second and two guys with leather jackets stole my leotard.
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