Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977)

In 1977 Woody Allen directed Annie Hall, winning four Academy Awards and over thousands of fans across the world. Annie Hall is a romantic comedy involving Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) and Annie Hall (Diane Keaton). Allen, who both acts and directs, produced many successful films prior to Annie Hall yet the 1977 romantic comedy is arguably his best. Allen followed this success with Manhattan (1979) and other films such as Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), which won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Allen’s success continued into the 21st century with his film Match Point’s nomination for an Academy Award (Best Original Screenplay).

One thing that makes Allen unique is that he is one of a small group of famous directors, such as Roman Polanski, Zach Braff, Quentin Tarantino, and Alfred Hitchcock, who have also acted in their own films.

Directors who appear in their own films will forever be related back to Sir Alfred Hitchcock from the United Kingdom, who made a cameo appearance in most of his films. For example, in his classic horror film The Birds, Hitchcock leaves a building with his two white terriers on leashes as the female lead enters. In Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train he is seen trying to carry a large bass fiddle onto a train car, the shape of which mirrors his own heavy set body.

Likewise, other directors have had small roles in their own films. Tarantino casts himself as minor roles throughout his films, including Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Death Proof and Inglourious Basterds. In Inglourious Basterds Tarantino plays a German soldier who awaits his scalping as well as an American soldier.

It is much more rare for a director to star in his or her own movie. Zach Braff actually starred as the lead male actor for his movie, Garden State, but that’s just one movie. Allen has directed almost 40 full-length feature films and starred in almost all of them. (Film Club will show the best Woody Allen film without Woody Allen in it, Bullets Over Broadway, next month.) While one can point to great actor-directors like Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, and Kenneth Branagh, none of them had near the body of work that Allen does.

So Allen’s starring as the lead male role, alongside three decades of famous actresses, including Diane Keaton, Mia Farrow, Helena Bonham Carter, and most recently Scarlett Johansson, makes him unique. And fortunately Allen has proved himself as a more-than-capable actor; his performance in Annie Hall is spectacular. He even received a nomination for an Academy Award for his performance.

Conor Dowdle
SPA Film Club

Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run (1998)

When most people talk about films and time loops, they refer to time loops as “a la Groundhog Day.” In Groundhog Day and many other films like it, time loops are a way for normal people to try everything again. Ultimately, time loops are seen as a sort of bad karma. But in tonight’s film, Run Lola Run, time loops are a chance for Lola (played by Franka Potente) to try things again in an attempt to save her boyfriend, Manni (Moritz Bleibtreau).

In Run Lola Run, both written and directed by Tom Tykwer, it appears that nobody is aware that they are in a time loop at all, unlike Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day who is completely aware of his repeating, so much so that he manipulates his experience to set up certain events, learn to play piano, and win the heart of a woman he’s smitten with. The plot of Run Lola Run rotates around Lola’s need for a large sum of money to save her Manni’s life. He owes a lot of money to a crime boss who will kill him if he doesn’t deliver. Lola chooses to try to steal money from the bank where her father works, then deliver the money to Manni, who’s trying to get the money himself by robbing a grocery story. Tykwer repeats the sequence three times. Each time Lola goes to the bank, she learns the same things. If she were aware that she had tried this before, she would have not gone back each time. However, notice that in the first sequence, Manni shows Lola how to load a gun. In the second sequence, she knows how to use a gun already.

So, a major theme in this film is the concept of chaos. The chaos theory states that small things that people do can (and often do) result in major changes. Notice that the only real difference between the three sequences is how Lola responds to the man on the stairwell during the animation sequence. Each response causes a slight change in timing, and therefore a totally different outcome. Also, each time Lola passes people on the street, a different future is shown for those people, though there are seemingly no differences within the context of the film.

One final theme in the film is futility. Lola seems to make quite a few decisions in each loop that result in the outcome. But did she ever decide how the sequence would end? Was there any great planning on her part? Or is fate simply in the hands of the man with the dog? Is Lola simply running around like a ball on a track, encountering whatever obstacles she will? Nobody, perhaps not even Tykwer himself, can know.

Noah Shavit-Lonstein
SPA Film Club