Anne Hall is the first film in Woody Allen's career to win an award, winning four Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actress. The novel shooting methods in the film are endless, and the discussion of gender relations and the film language with philosophical implications have made the film a classic in the hearts of fans.
A talented director, Woody Allen, born in 1935, began his filmmaking career in 1969. In most of his films, elaborate plots, seemingly random laughs, and unexpected endings strike at the beautiful and dark side of human nature. For this reason, Woody Allen has been called the most outstanding comedic genius since Chaplin.
Anne Hall is self-directed and self-starred by Woody Allen and can also be seen as a semi-autobiographical film by Woody Allen. In this classic film, Woody Allen's exploration of the complexity and tearing of human nature, the truth and elegance of love can be shown.
Therefore, I will combine the storyline of this movie today, and combine it with Woody Allen's portrayal of the character, to further interpret his philosophy and emotions behind the creation of the film. In the third part of the article, I will combine my own understanding of the film and share three ways to understand the emotions hidden in the film by the director.
Anne Hall is a typical American light comedy. Woody Allen plays Ivey, a somewhat neurotic TV actor who is sensitive and cowardly. He can't ask for it in his feelings, but he can't get rid of his yearning for love. Woody Allen uses Ivey's view of love to embody the "Woody Allen" character philosophy. Present your understanding of love and human nature to the audience without reservation.
So how does the "Woody Allen" character philosophy in the film reflect? I will analyze from the following two aspects:
(1) The influence of Ivey's growth experience on his character
Woody Allen has a certain pessimism about Ive's character setting, and through the description of Ivey's growth experience, the viewer can further understand the reasons why Ivey has a pessimistic attitude towards the things around him.
At the beginning of "Annie Hall", Woody Allen did not go directly to the main topic and tell the love story of Ivey and Annie, but turned the camera to Ivey as a child. In the shot, young Ivey bows his head and sits sadly on the sofa, as if out of place with the world.
Woody Allen uses Ivey's discussion with her mother and doctor about the explosion of the universe to show Ive's views on the world and the universe. Here Woody Allen has laid the main atmosphere of the film, the protagonist is full of pessimistic attitudes towards the world and life, and gradually strengthens the portrayal of this character in the subsequent plot development.
With the sound of the film's voiceover, the picture changes to the noisier growing environment of Ivey's childhood, in which Ive becomes more and more uneasy and insecure about everything around him. In this uneasy environment, Ive has a vague expectation of love when he is a child.
Woody Allen presents a specific Ivy to the viewer through his story of Ivey's childhood, Ivey is a pessimistic, insecure, yearning for love. And these characters will continue to be strengthened in the later storylines, becoming a catalyst for him to part ways with Annie.
In my opinion, Woody Allen started with the character of the character, using microscopic film strokes to portray Ivey's character, so that he put forward his own insights on the philosophy of the character.
Woody Allen added Ivey's childhood experience at the beginning of the film to illustrate that psychological problems in childhood have an impact on Ive's behavior patterns in adulthood. Because of Ivey's pessimistic attitude in childhood, he lost the ability to be happy as an adult, so that his love was doomed to end in tragedy.
(2) The influence of Ivey's character on his relationship with his lover
In the second half of the film, Ivey and Annie's relationship gradually cracks, because Ivey's negative personality in adulthood is not alleviated, but is reinforced by his mother's frequent numbers and two failed marriages.
Although Ivey and Annie fell in love at first, through Ivey's constant "transformation" of Annie, Anne is no longer a little girl who once had no thoughts, she has her own way of thinking. For example, in the process of queuing up Ive and Annie, Ive complained because she could not stand the "big show of knowledge" of others, which caused Annie's dissatisfaction. When Annie and Ivey were late for the movie, they still had a thick book in their hands.
During this relationship, Ive is still immersed in her own world, and Anne has grown herself in the process of love. Anne understood the feelings and future she really wanted in her heart, and Ive's negative character made the two go farther and farther. At the end of the movie, Anne's fading back draws a tragic end to Ivey's emotional world.
In my opinion, Woody Allen's nuanced grasp of human nature is fully integrated into the film. The various weaknesses in human nature are reflected in Ivey one by one, but they cannot make the audience hate Ivey, but they are distressed by his life experience and emotional setbacks.
This is the brilliance of Woody Allen, discussing human nature with the audience at the same time, but also passing on his own values to the audience, narrowing the psychological distance with the audience.
In "Annie Hall", Ive fell in love with the lively and charming Annie at first sight and fell in love with her involuntarily, and the plot of the movie also revolved around the development of the love between the two people. From the initial acquaintance, falling in love, to the final breakup, Woody Allen portrays Ive's emotional world to the fullest. Although this is a love movie that ends with a breakup, under the slightly humorous language of Woody Allen, Ivey's human weaknesses are told.
The film begins with a scene in which Ive talks to himself, illustrating his relationship with women. As the plot progresses, it will be found that this is Ive's summary of his two failed marriages and the loss of his love Annie. This design, on the surface, is for the needs of the development of the plot; in fact, it is Ivey's ridicule and abuse of himself, he longs for love, but feels that he does not deserve love.
Ive is a contradictory middle-aged man whose requirements for his significant other are simple and complex. In fact, this stems from the vanity and cowardice in Ive's human nature, he hopes that his other half will have knowledge and culture, but he cannot surpass him. This can be seen in Ive's relationship with his second wife.
Ivey's second wife was a high-class female intellectual, and almost all the people she knew were well-known people in The New York academic community at the time. But Ive couldn't stand his wife's fellowship with them because he felt they were "showing off" knowledge. But as an intellectual, it is actually the most normal to talk about academic knowledge in the process of conversation.
Therefore, from this emotional experience, it can be seen that Ive does not want his wife to be more cultured than himself, which is also the concentrated embodiment of the inferiority factor in Ive's personality. But does Ive really hate to talk about knowledge, as he says? I don't think so, for example, in her interactions with Annie, Ivy has repeatedly hoped that Annie can be more cultured, recommending Annie to go to adult night school and recommending her to read books.
Therefore, Woody Allen's film is not simply to bring a romantic comedy to the audience, but to dissect human nature through the film. The nuanced portrayal of Ivey's failed love reveals Woody Allen's struggle between love and pessimistic humanity.
Woody Allen uses a large number of detailed scenes to reproduce the true thoughts of the protagonist's heart, and there is no twist deliberately set by the director in the film, no deliberately designed laugh points, only the real emotions of ordinary characters in the real state. I think that's what Woody Allen wants to express in his films the truth that characterizes light comedy love.
Let's talk about "Annie Hall" in the movie Woody Allen through Ivey's emotional experience to create Ivey's character, the most prominent picture is that he and his ex-wife Alison get along.
The acquaintance between Ivey and Alison is that Ivey used his own words to set out the title of Alison's thesis in order to show his charm. After Ivey shows off her masculine charm, the camera shifts to Ivey and Alison in bed, where Ivey rejects Alison's courtship.
This scene is undoubtedly carefully designed by Woody Allen, because in the following episodes, Anne rejects Ivey's courtship. Comparing Ive's rejection of Alison with Anne's rejection of Ivey, it can be seen that Ivey shows his pessimistic personality through nagging preaching.
Therefore, the tragic ending of Anne and Ive can be seen as a concrete representation of Ivey's pessimistic way of looking at the world. In Ivey's emotions, pessimism and escape are the main themes of his life. Even if the film has a slight humorous effect, this humor is also slightly sad. The presentation of pessimistic human nature is never easy and pleasant.
Looking at Woody Allen's films, his creative scope always revolves around the spiritual world of contemporary intellectuals, and shows the struggle of contemporary intellectuals' human nature, watching Woody Allen's films, in a way, is to understand the inner world of Woody Allen.
But in the short two-hour film plot, it is actually difficult for us who have not received professional guidance to grasp the emotions hidden in the film plot of the director, which will not only weaken our understanding of the really valuable content of the film, but also fail to understand the philosophy that the director really wants to pass on to us when he created this movie.
Therefore, I will combine my own understanding of the film and the plot of "Annie Hall" to talk about how to understand the emotions hidden in the film by the director:
(1) Understand the director's life experience and career
First of all, let us think about a question, why is it that the same storytelling, some movies have a mediocre reputation, and some movies have won many international awards?
The reason is actually very simple, whether the director integrates personal characteristics into the film. As the soul of the whole film, the director is the presentation of all the scenes and all the shots that are the director's personal ideas. Woody Allen is to integrate his pessimistic character into the elements of light comedy, making his style unique.
Therefore, if you want to understand the emotions hidden in a director's film, you must first understand the director's life experience and career career, and when we know everything we have experienced in him, we will better understand the embodiment of his personal characteristics in the film.
(2) Pay close attention to the narration and voiceover in the movie
When watching a movie, many people will be immersed in the collision of the protagonist's emotions in the movie. With such emotions, we will reduce the sensitivity to the emotions hidden in the film by the director. Therefore, we need to pay close attention to the narration and voiceover that appear in the film to help us "cool" some emotions.
Narration in the film is relatively easy to identify, and in some cases there will be a change of footage. The voiceover of the film requires us to understand it from the before and after comparison of the character and development of the situation, and the undertaking and turning point of the plot.
For example, if we are immersed in the emotional struggle between Ive and Anne in "Anne Hall", we will be infected by the pessimism created by the director, then it is difficult for us to see the tragic love in Ivey because of the stagnation of his life steps. But if we can see the director's good intentions from the voiceover of the film, we will understand that the emotions hidden in the film by the director of the plot are regrets for Ivey's life of stagnation.
(3) Use story thinking to understand the emotions that the director wants to hide
Imagine what we would do in life if we wanted to tell a story in a short period of time and let the people around us be infected by this story?
Is it not to follow the basic mode of storytelling, when telling the experiences and changes of a certain person or certain things, use some reversal plot to touch the softest place in people's hearts? For example, in "Anne Hall" Ive, many people are angry that he is "harsh" on his lover, but when he makes a reservation for the departure of his lover, we will be sad for such a person.
Such a plot arrangement is actually the use of story thinking, with the perspective of looking at the story, along the director's emotional vein, we will find the director's hidden traces of emotions in the movie. And the emotions hidden in the film by these directors are actually the presentation of the directors' own hidden emotions in the depths of their hearts.
To truly understand Annie Hall, you can't just analyze the story of the movie. If we only see the picture that the director wants us to see from the content analysis alone, then the truly valuable philosophies and emotions hidden in the film will often be ignored by us.
Therefore, today's article introduces some of my thoughts outside the story of "Annie Hall", and in the third part of the article, I also combined with the film and shared three ways to understand the director's hidden emotions in the film.