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James Clive Matthews is the author of two books of film criticism, a reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and blog editor for the BBC's Pocket Films site. Here he picks five romantic comedy films every home should have. Click to view Top 5 Best Romantic Comedies.
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Best Postmodern (Annie Hall) |
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 Yes, comedies are supposed to have happy endings – but you know from the start of Annie Hall that “Annie and I broke up”. It is the anatomy of a relationship from start to finish; the initial embarrassment and urge to impress, the comfort, the sex – then the arguments, jealousies, and affairs, the splintering and drifting apart. |
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Woody Allen is not everyone’s cup of tea, that much is undeniable – and what with his whining on-screen persona and dodgy real-world life full of running off with his step-daughter and suchlike, it’s also entirely understandable. But what should also be more widely considered to be undeniable is that he is one of the finest comic writers and most insightful analysts of the human condition of at least the last half-century.
In Annie Hall, all the best of Woody Allen’s genius comes together in a near-perfect whole, from the classic line (paraphrased slightly here) “I cheated in my metaphysics exam – I looked into the soul of the boy next to me” to his uncanny ability to blend an utterly serious examination of life and love with brilliantly absurdist humour.
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 It marked the moment when Allen was recognised as not merely a gifted comedian, but as a genuine master of storytelling. It remains, perhaps jointly with the darker Manhattan, the pinnacle of his career.
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The Shift to a New Order |
Annie Hall also marked a decided shift in the attitude of Hollywood towards how comedies could be made, a shift nearly as seismic as when 1930s producers realised that the advent of sound could let them make witty dialogue, rather than Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin-style slapstick, the centrepiece of their films. Experimenting with non-linear storytelling – working from the end of the relationship before leaping about all over the shop – it was a familiar genre in which the standard, familiar romantic comedy narrative may still largely have been there, but in a completely new order.
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Now, Hollywood realised, they could afford not only to have films that were funny and packed with the sort of lightning-fast dialogue that had been the comedic norm since the 1930s, but they could also be intelligent in their humour, and achieve commercial success even with jokes about Sigmund Freud and unusual structures. Of course, this didn’t last long – or else we wouldn’t have to put up with bland Jennifer Lopez comedy after bland Jennifer Lopez comedy these days, but still…
There may be the vaguest of hints that all is not lost as the curtain falls, the slight hope of a rekindling, but Allen has rarely been one for the glib happy ending. He’s far more interested in the journey – and, of course, the dry philosophical one-liners and long-winded observations that smatter the length of his best movies.
If only all our relationships were as witty as this, perhaps they’d last longer. Then again, we’d probably all just get on each other’s nerves and the human race would be doomed, like Allen’s character here, to a string of intense flings, followed by a sense of deep loss and regret. And therein lies one of the many aspects of Allen’s genius – he can make a comedy somehow depressing.
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