Annie Hall

1977 was a good year for sci-fi movies (also for me because it was the year I was born) with the release of both Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But it was the romantic comedy Annie Hall that ended up winning Best Picture that year becoming one of the few romantic comedies to win.  Beating the massively commercially successful Star Wars which was the highest grossing movie of all time at that point. 

Annie Hall is about a Jewish comedian Alvy Singer who falls in love with a naive Midwestern girl Annie Hall.  Their relationship start off promising but it goes through a lot of turmoil as time goes on. Alvy who has been married twice and been in therapy for 15 years has a lot of neurosis which eventually drives Annie away.  The movie is semi autobiographical about Woody Allens relationship with Diane Keaton. 

The movie is a funny and heartfelt tale about love and how things don't always go as we want them to.  Both Woody Allen and Diane Keaton give great performances and there are great supporting casts like Paul Simon and  Christopher Walken in one of his earliest roles.  No one does neurotic Jew like Woody Allen and this is him at his best. The only reason I have mixed feelings about this movie is that it seems like once you have seen one Woody Allen movie you have seen them all.  The story is usually the same. But you can't argue that the jokes are hilarious. There are some great one liners and Allen is a great writer as evident by his 13 Oscar Nominations for writing.  The movie was innovative for the time with the main character speaking directly to the audience and even having a little animation bit in the middle.  The movie was nominated for 5 awards and won 4. It was the third movie in a row to be nominated for the 5 top Oscars only losing the Best Actor.

But an even more innovative film was Star Wars which was nominated for 10 awards and won 6. This breakthrough movie combined a classical hero story and placed it in a futuristic world. It was an instant success and was the highest grossing film of the year. The movie lost the major awards(including Best Supporting Actor for Alec Guinness) but racked up tons of technical awards including Best Editing, Best Visual Effects and Best Sound. It also won a special Academy Award for it's creature creations. 

Winning his third Academy Award was John Williams with his amazing score for Star Wars.  Williams had previously won for Jaws and Fiddler on the Roof. He beat himself in 1977 for another sci-fi masterpiece Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  Creating some of the most memorable scores in movie history it is amazing that he has only won a total of 5 Academy Awards but has been nominated 43 times and a number of those times he was nominated against himself as was the case in 1977.  He was also nominated 8 years in a row between 1996 and 2003.


Oscar Facts:
Woody Allen became the 4th person to be nominated for screenplay and actor for the same movie and only the second person to be nominated for screenplay, acting, and director.  Orson Welles was the only other person to do that in 1941 with Citizen Kane.
Annie Hall is the second shortest movie to win best picture at only 93 minutes(originally it was over 2 hours long the major editing done you would think would have earned it at least a nomination for Best Editing)
The Turning Point became the most nominated film without winning any awards with 11 nominations. The Color Purple would tie it for the record in 1985.
Biggest Snub of the year goes to the Bee Gees not getting any nominations for Best Song from the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack.
1977 was the 50th anniversary of the Academy Awards

By the Numbers
Annie Hall was ranked on AFI Top 100 list at #31 in 1997 and #35 in 2007 and is currently ranked #134 on IMDB Top 250.
Star Wars was ranked at #15 in 1997 and #13 in 2007 and is currently #16 on IMDB Top 250
Close Encounters of the Third Kind was ranked #64 in 1997 and didn't make the list in 2007