Boy Meets Shiksa

Woody Allen’s new film, Annie Hall, concerns a young man who has his heart broken by a girl named Annie Hall, which probably has something to do with the title. The lad’s name is Alvy Singer: he’s a standup comedian who makes a career of exploiting his New York Jewish intellectual neuroses. He meets a cute Midwestern shiksa (played by Allen’s own ex-shiksa, Diane Keaton), embraces her and initiates her into his little mysteries, finally loses her as her singing career advances.

It isn’t easy to disentangle the biographical publicity attending this autobiographical film from the film itself; probably it is wrong-headed to try. Woody Allen is not an actor but a movie star, just like Gable and Bogart, for whom the maintenance of a consistent persona from one film to the next is all in a day’s work. In Woody’s case the persona is even more enveloping than for the old-time stars, since he has always put his private life up front—as Groucho Marx and Jerry Lewis never did.

JS

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Joseph Sobran

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Woody Allen’s new film, Annie Hall, concerns a young man who has his heart broken by a girl named Annie Hall, which probably has something to do with the title. The lad’s name is Alvy Singer: he’s a standup comedian who makes a career of exploiting his New York Jewish intellectual neuroses. He meets a cute Midwestern shiksa (played by Allen’s own ex-shiksa, Diane Keaton), embraces her and initiates her into his little mysteries, finally loses her as her singing career advances.

It isn’t easy to disentangle the biographical publicity attending this autobiographical film from the film itself; probably it is wrong-headed to try. Woody Allen is not an actor but a movie star, just like Gable and Bogart, for whom the maintenance of a consistent persona from one film to the next is all in a day’s work. In Woody’s case the persona is even more enveloping than for the old-time stars, since he has always put his private life up front—as Groucho Marx and Jerry Lewis never did.