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May 26, 2012 Web Exclusive By Mike Catalano

By now, virtually of the major directors recognized in the 20^th century pantheon have gotten the Blu-ray treatment, save for Jess Franco, an egregious oversight which is a topic for another day. But rather appropriately, given his downright bizarre career and legacy, the Blu-ray edition of Woody Allen’s Annie Hall has arrived casually late and in a carefree manner, like someone arriving hours late for their surprise birthday party. And now that it’s finally here, it, alongside the contemporaneously released Manhattan, is perhaps the most obvious candidate for an Allen directed Blu-ray release.

The areas in which Blu-ray transfers excel are quite abundant here, and the technical aspects of Annie Hall pay off as much as the jokes; the absolutely stunning quality of this transfer certainly deserves as much attention as the sublime quality of the film itself. It’s a Blu-ray you’ll put on merely to sample the transfer, and realize 90 minutes later you couldn’t bring yourself to look away.

As dialogue-based as most of Allen’s films are, he has an extremely impressive set of visually stunning films, Annie Hall being the one that really began the trend. It marks an important period in Allen’s career; and not because the film was a commercial and critical success either. Apart from the landmark, focused deviation from his earlier comedic style, which includes some irresistibly playful narrative sleight-of-hand, it was also his first collaboration with cinematographer Gordon Willis.

By 1976 Willis had lent his erudite cinematograph skills to not only a string of bigger studio films-frequently thrillers, including Parallax View, All the President’s Men, Drowning Pool and even Jules Feiffer and Alan Arkin’s morbid delight Little Murders-but also a lower-budget vertiginous light-and-dark style, most notably featured in The Godfather. It seemed an odd dichotomy at the time, but the passage of time reveals the two of their talents combined were a force to be reckoned with, engendering an unlikely yet palpable chemistry.

Allen’s strongest consecutive string of films, the spectacular run of Annie Hall, Interiors, Manhattan, Stardust Memories, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo, all have Willis’ unforgettable stamp on their photography, and Annie Hall is no exception. It displays an irresistible camerawork, one that translates superbly to the Blu-ray format.

A plethora of earthy tones are richly displayed with acute sharpness, while the lighting and set decoration are more engaging than ever, and the burnishing clarity illustrates a copious degree of overlooked, subliminal work in the film’s excellent production design.

The film’s focused deviation alludes to Allen’s desire to make Annie Hall a relatively more serious film. It’s not a full-on drama akin to Interiors, but rather a comedy where much of the humor derives from the sheer richness of the characters. With Allen’s portrayal of Alvy Singer, and his courtship and break-up with Diane Keaton’s titular Annie Hall, and the bittersweet nature of the respective characters’ “one that got away” cliché, Annie Hall still manages to tug ferociously at the heart strings.

But so much of what makes Annie Hall simultaneously poignant and hilarious is the attraction we have to its characters. In the hands of Allen and crew, the romantic comedy was redefined to the degree that filmmakers still attempt to mimic it. Given proper time and distance to evaluate its now formidable legacy, it can now be recognized as having invented its own distinctive genre, that of the idiosyncratic romantic comedy. And given this superbly conceived presentation, there’s never been a better excuse to revisit its off-kilter brilliance than now.

(www.woodyallen.com)

Author rating: 10/10