Would You Like a Glass of Chocolate Milk? (Appreciating Annie Hall)

"I had a mad impulse to throw you down on the lunar surface and commit interstellar perversion." - Manhattan

"I haven't seen my analyst in 200 years. He was a strict Freudian. If I'd been going all this time, I'd probably be cured by now." - Sleeper

"To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy, one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness." - Love and Death

While Woody Allen may not be the most influential director of his generation, his filmography features many gems of American cinema. He also got nods from his two biggest influences: Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini. Stanley Kubrick is also said to have liked Woody Allen's work. With all that said, let's take a look a particular scene from his career-defining Annie Hall. (Annie Hall was one of Akira Kurosawa's favorite pictures.)

Scene: "Would you like a glass of chocolate milk?"

Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in Annie Hall

Scene Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-5_kcs4p2Q 

The acting and the chemistry in this scene never ceases to enthrall me. Sometimes when I'm feeling down about something, I like to watch Alvy (Woody Allen) and Annie (Diane Keaton) bicker, reconcile, and reunite. It also helps that the writing is phenomenal. But this blog really isn't about acting or writing. Its focus is primarily on film as a visual medium performed by the director. 

Of course, the director does not and cannot perform on his own. He needs help from the actor, cinematographer, editor, score composer, and so on. But that's a topic for another day. 

So what exactly is Woody Allen performing in this scene as a director? Just like we did with Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, we'll take a look at the frames and what emotional reality they portray. But this time, we'll pay more attention to the film as a motion picture, a series of moving images before our eyes. 

This scene opens with a shot of Annie getting the door to let Alvy in. She had just called him to come over for an "emergency." Here's a still below:

Frame 1

When you shoot a character from the back, we experience what unfolds after from the character's perspective. That is of course if that shot has been set up for the audience to feel with the character instead of seeing or observing the character from another character's perspective. (Essentially, there aren't any hard and fast rules in blocking. It's all about piecing together the loose and contextual rules to echo off of each other, making filmmaking creatively infinite and at its core intuitive and instinctive.)

And this particular shot is set up to make the audience enter Annie's head space as she had just called Alvy to come over for an "emergency." Woody Allen's decision to shoot Annie from the back works beautifully since this "emergency" really turns out to be Annie missing Alvy; Woody Allen wants the audience to see that Annie's been missing Alvy ever since they broke up and wants Alvy back in her life. 

Annie's emotions in the shot strongly resonate with us because we've all been there. You meet someone who you soon fall for and intimately connect with. But for some reason, you lose them no matter how fair or unfair that reason may be. And in one heart rush of a moment, that person is knocking at your doorstep as you inch closer and closer to the door. The shot immediately puts us in that moment. (We'll be disregarding mise-en-scène entirely for the sake of "brevity." Otherwise, this entry will become too long.)

What follows is Annie telling Alvy that there's a spider in the bathroom and Alvy chiding Annie for calling him over for such a frivolous "emergency." 

Frame 2

From the dialogue and the acting, two things become evident. First, Annie has been missing Alvy but is afraid to tell him that. Second, Alvy is annoyed at Annie because he is oblivious to her true motive for calling him over. 

With Annie on the left and Alvy on the right, Frame 2 emphasizes Annie's yearning for Alvy over Alvy's annoyance at Annie. This emphasis works because the scene ends with them kissing; the key emotion for the audience to internalize is Annie's yearning, not Alvy's annoyance. 

Annie's direction also works to emphasize her yearning for Alvy. As I wrote in my post on Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, characters can come off as forward when they're facing to the right at something. It's because when they do, it underscores their agency and desire. And it is through this underlying principle that Woody Allen renders Annie's yearning for Alvy much more palpable with Annie looking to the right at Alvy.

Now let's jump to the moment in the scene where Annie enters the frame as Alvy and Annie are bickering. Alvy just discovered that Annie had gone to a rock concert with some guy. And he's not really happy about it as he still has feelings for her. Annie on the other hand is frustrated by Alvy's hostility and his failure to see why she really called him over. 

Frame 3

Frame 4

Frame 5

In Frame 3, we see Alvy to the left of center and looking to the right at Annie, who is off screen. The vacancy on the right serves as a visual representation of the wall Alvy just built; now that he knows there might be another guy, he's stonewalling and keeping her at bay. He's locking her out. 

Alvy and the empty space create this impression of stonewalling because as I've mentioned in my Moonrise post, we read images from left to right. So the empty space comes off as Alvy saying, "I'm not getting any closer to you. You see this space? Don't cross it." Paradoxically, the same blocking can be used to convey the opposite emotional reality of "You see this space? Come on in." What unites these contrasting emotional realities, however, is that they give agency and even authority to the character. In other words, if Frame 3 was flipped, the empty space on the left would be Alvy saying, "I'm getting away from you. You see this space? Please don't cross it." 

(It must also be noted that what I've described only applies when the the perspectives are even. It doesn't apply when you're only accepting one character's perspective and viewing the other character through the lens of the character of your choice. For example, an antagonist can appear the most potent when placed on the far right facing left if he is welcoming or perhaps belittling the protagonist's challenge.

Again, there are no hard and fast rules. At its heart, visual syntax is intuitive. Just like how with your mother tongue, the grammar doesn't confine your expression but only aides it naturally. Of course, this only holds if you're not one of those people who write "would of" and "can not." I've been told by girls I dated that texting with me is like texting with Noam Chomsky.)

After Alvy lashes out at Annie (Frame 3), we see Annie enter the frame and walk up to him from the right (Frame 4 & 5) saying, "I called you! You wanna help me or not? Huh?" as a response to Alvy having said, "Why don't you get the guy who took you to the rock concert, call him to come over and kill the spider?" What Annie truly means is: "Alvy, don't push me away. What do you think is the reason I called you and not him?" 

Annie entering the frame from the right softens up her reaction of walking up to Alvy, which works out neatly because then Annie comes off as more reconciliatory than confrontational and her subtext becomes more exposed. 

Now both on screen, Alvy mocks Annie, "What is this? What are you-since when do you read the National Review? What are you turning into?" This prompts Annie to walk away (Frame 6). But what we should notice is that the camera moves away from Alvy with her. Now why would Woody Allen do this? 

It's because Annie is replacing Alvy as the more vulnerable character in the scene. Just moments ago, Alvy was feeling vulnerable as Annie might have moved on from him and might be with the other guy. After Annie hints to Alvy that she doesn't really care about the other guy and hasn't moved on, she becomes the vulnerable character. In Frame 6, she's thinking: 'Oh god, was I just a little too transparent there? Alvy doesn't really seem to care that it was him that I called. He must have moved on probably. What am I even doing?' By moving the camera with Annie, Woody Allen prompts the audience to internalize these thoughts.

Frame 6

The camera in fact moves completely away from Alvy, having only Annie in the frame as we can see in Frame 7 & 8. 

Frame 7: "Alvy, you're a little hostile. You know that?!"

Frame 8: "Not only that, you look thin and tired."

Due to the acting and the writing, the empty space to the left of Annie behaves very differently in Frame 7 than in Frame 8. In Frame 7, it conveys the distance she's putting between herself and Alvy. However, it's different from the distance Alvy puts between himself and Annie in Frame 3. Whereas Alvy is pushing Annie away in Frame 3, Annie is pulling away from Alvy with the distance in Frame 7. In other words, Alvy is stonewalling whereas Annie is withdrawing. This juxtaposition fits because while Alvy is simply refusing to let his guard down in Frame 3, Annie is bringing her guard up in Frame 7 after letting it down.

The nature of the empty space changes in Frame 8 as Annie becomes reconciliatory again. With this new context, the empty space now shows Annie's desire to have Alvy back in her life; the empty space is the void in her life that she wants Alvy to fill. Moreover, with Annie right of center and facing to the left at Alvy, that desire comes off as more avid and wistful. 

Fortunately, Alvy does come through and enters the frame (Frame 9). Here, Woody Allen has Alvy walking into the frame from the left, creating a nice balance: Annie badly wanted Alvy back in her life in Frame 8 and now in Frame 9, Alvy shows a matching desire to come back in her life. (As I mentioned earlier in today's post, rightward motion brings more agency to the character.) 

Frame 9

All of this directorial performance by Woody Allen from Frame 3 to Frame 9 sets up a perfect stage for Diane Keaton to melt away all the tension with the line: "Would you like a glass of chocolate milk?" in Frame 10. Watch the scene again from the link I provided in the beginning. It's magical. 

Frame 10

Needless to say, Diane Keaton turns in a fantastic performance as Annie in Annie Hall, even winning Best Actress in a Leading Role at the 50th Academy Awards. But without Woody Allen sculpting out her acting with the camera so brilliantly, Diane Keaton's Annie would not have been as endearing and captivating. That's one power of the camera: to shape and elevate a performance. And equally important, all the interaction that follows would not have felt as sweet without the bitter that is the camera work from Frame 3 to Frame 9.  

I was originally going to cover the entire scene. But I think that'll make this post too long and neither of us wants that. If Midnight in Paris is the only Woody Allen movie you've seen, I strongly recommend that you check out Sleeper, Love and Death, Manhattan, and of course Annie Hall. 

Woody Allen and Diane Keaton on the set of Annie Hall