Annie Hall

Annie Hall is a 1977 American feature film, written and directed by and starring Woody Allen in the lead role of writer Alvy Singer. The film's tag-line is “A Nervous Romance.” In the character of Alvy Singer, Annie Hall perfects the stumbling, neurotic New York Jew that Woody Allen had created as a character for delivering his stand-up comedy routines. The film served to maintain and perpetuate many of the stereotypes in liberal New York Jewish culture, and would become one of the key texts referenced by later Jewish comics and in television series, such as Seinfeld (1990–98) and Curb Your Enthusiasm, which began in 2000 and is still running.

Woody Allen was born Allan Stewart Konigsberg on December 1, 1935, in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Martin and Nettie Konigsberg. As a teenager he began writing jokes for a local newspaper and went on to write his own material to perform as a stand-up comic. He wrote his first screenplay What's New Pussycat in 1965 and directed his first film What's Up, Tiger Lily the following year. He has had a prolific career, achieving considerable success as a writer, director, playwright, and musician. Allen has been nominated for 18 Academy Awards and won four.

Annie Hall won four Academy Awards in the 1978 Oscar ceremony: Best Actress in a Leading Role (Diane Keaton), Best Director (Woody Allen), Best Picture (producer Charles H. Joffe), and Best Original Screenplay (Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman). Woody Allen was also nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Although Annie Hall is widely critically acclaimed, it is Allen's later film Manhattan (1979) that more often features in the canons of the greatest films ever made.