The Subversion of Marriage
Annie Hall represents a revolution in the romantic comedy primarily because it was the first big hit of the genre to suggest that sexuality existed before marriage and that marriage was not the only route to happily ever after. Prior to this film—which has its foundation in the Screwball Comedy genre—the narrative of romantic comedies always led to the same direction: the union of the two romantic leads in the holy state of matrimony. The primary reason for this was because marriage was the only relationship sanctioning sexual relations. Scenes and dialogue make it obvious that Alvy and Annie enjoyed a sexual relationship prior to the marriage and by virtue of that relationship the film asserts that marriage is no necessary for that particular purpose.
The Subversion of Happily Ever After
With marriage jettisoned as a necessity for enjoying sexual relations, the only reason to work toward it would be to establish the generic convention of the romantic comedy’s reason to exist: the confirmation that two leads are meant to live happily ever after. Instead, Annie Hall dares to do something that utterly undermines that conventional expectation of romantic comedies: that the two leads are soul mates who are destined to wind up together forever. This expectation engendered by decades of the same plot being successfully played out for audiences has, by extension, created a societal expectation that there is somewhere out there that one soul mate whom every individual is destined to be with forever. By breaking the most solidly constructed rule of romantic comedy, Annie Hall is not just subverting film tradition, but questioning one of the most fervently held beliefs of its audience: that happily ever after with a romantic partner is possible.
The Subversion of Romantic Comedy
That Annie Hall is a romantic comedy cannot be denied: it tells a humorous narrative about a man and woman falling in love. Nevertheless, as has already been demonstrated, the film subverts many societal expectations that romantic comedies have historically grounded their generic conventions upon. Woody Allen is not content with merely undermining outdated social constructions, however; he also wants to deconstruct the storytelling mythos of the rom-coms. From the 1930s Screwball Comedy era to the genre’s height of popularity in the 1990s and early 2000s the narrative of this type of comedy has almost always—and definitely more often than not—commenced with the romantic leads getting off to a bumpy start. Very often the two characters must work from a starting point of outright antagonistic feelings toward each other before they finally fall in love and work toward consummation. (Which only occurred after the closing credits before 1960s). By the end of the movie, all those feelings of antipathy have melted away and love reigns supreme. Annie Hall completely reverses this tradition: there is a spark of mutual attraction and chemistry from the first time Annie and Alvy set eyes on each other and the film gradually moves toward increasing feelings of bitterness and dislike. In this respect, the subversive qualities of Annie Hall are directed not toward the reality on the other side of the screen, but toward the unreal depiction of it on the screen by countless previous romantic comedies.
