Annie Hall

Annie Hall tells the story of Alvy and Annie's relationship through the use of flashbacks of Alvy's life with Annie. In some of these memories, Alvy could either step out of the memory that really happened and talk directly to the audience or the real time Alvy could be inside the memory as an observer.

In this scene above, we are seeing one of Alvy's memories with Annie and to prove one of his points, he stops the memory and he and the professor step out of line to talk directly to the audience. Alvy also brings someone new into the scene just to prove his point to the audience. After the conversation outside of the memory, Alvy says, "boy, if life were only like this" to show how convenient this way of communication would be if he could do whatever he wanted in the real world.

This is also true when Alvy is on the street in a memory; he can just pull random people aside and talk to them, and nothing would be strange about it.

This scene also stuck out to me because it was Annie, Alvy, and Rob observing a memory in Alvy's parents house, and even though his parents will never hear or see him, he starts talking back to them and Rob has to tell him, "they can't hear you". I thought this was interesting because it is obvious that if Alvy is watching a memory of himself, that he thinks he can make people in the memory respond to him. It contrasts to in previous memories when he was able to make the people around him respond in a completely normal way, but now he is simply an observer in this memory. Did this experiment add to the comedic effect of the movie, or did it distract from the plot by adding to the memories?