"There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly. The... the other important joke, for me, is one that's usually attributed to Groucho Marx; but, I think it appears originally in Freud's "Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious," and it goes like this - I'm paraphrasing - um, "I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member." That's the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women." After hearing Woody Allen's opening monologue, there's nothing else you really need about his character that you haven't already discerned. His references to Groucho Marx and Freud indicate a tendency towards nostalgia and intellectualism. His jokes are less funny than they are darkly sardonic, which sort of sums up his sense of humor, but they also give us insight into his view on life. Allen's character is deeply insecure and self-deprecating from the very start. Normally we say "show us, don't tell us" when it comes to characterization, but Woody Allen has mastered the art of doing both, as evidenced in Annie Hall.
Audrey Fox is an ex-film student, which means that she prefers to spend her days in the dark, watching movies and pondering the director's use of diegetic sound. She currently works as an entertainment writer, joyfully rambling about all things film and television related. Add her on Twitter at @audonamission and check out her film blog at 1001moviesandbeyond.com.
