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April 20, 1977

'ANNIE HALL'

Woody Allen Fights Anhedonia

By MEL GUSSOW

Walking along the streets of New York, Woody Allen, Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts run into the Devil - robust, bearded and wearing a red tie - who invites them to accompany him on a guided tour of hell. The four enter an elevator, which goes down. At each level, some of Mr. Allen's favorite enemies get on: C.I.A. assassins, F.B.I. informers, fast-food servers. At the sixth level, the door opens and - with flames leaping at their highest - Richard Nixon enters.

This scene was written, shot and edited, but it does not appear in Mr. Allen's new movie, ''Annie Hall,'' opening today.

Neither does a scene in which Mr. Allen, the ultimate basketball fan, fulfills a fantasy and plays ball with his idols on the New York Knicks - dribbling with Earl the Pearl, fighting for rebounds with Clyde.

In each case, Mr. Allen felt that the scenes detracted from the final film, what could be described as his first serious comedy. This time out, the 41-year-old Mr. Allen would allow for no digressions, no matter how hilarious. ''I've always been able to get laughs,'' he said recently. ''I wanted to move on. This is not a quantum leap, but at least it's a couple of inches in the right direction.''

When it was suggested to the occasionally secretive Mr. Allen that his movie was an invasion of his own privacy, he categorically denied the charge. ''It's really a work of fiction,'' he said. Then he proceeded to confirm at least the outline of the characters.

''Details are picked from life,'' he said. ''I'm a comedian. Diane sings, and I'm friends with Tony Roberts, and almost everybody I know has moved out to California.'' Both the author and his character were married twice, but, said Mr. Allen, ``I was not married to a New York intellectual nor to anyone politically committed - as in the movie. I lived with Diane for a year when we were doing 'Play It Again, Sam' on Broadway, but'' - in contrast to the characters in the movie - ''we're still the best of friends.''

The script was written by Mr. Allen and Marshall Brickman as a comic, Bergmanesque ''stream of consciousness showing one individual's state of mind, in which conversations and events constantly trigger dreams, fantasies and recollections.'' As the movie developed, the mind of the man, Alvy Singer, played by Mr. Allen, made less of an impact than the character's involvement with a woman, Annie Hall, played by Diane Keaton. Generously, Mr. Allen decied to name the movie for her. ''Annie Hall'' became the story of their relationship, which, parallels the real-life relationship of Mr. Allen and Miss Keaton.

Mr. Allen's character was born in an apartment under a roller coaster in Coney Island, a definite departure from reality. Originally, Mr. Allen was going to use his own birthplace in Flatbush as the setting for his hero's childhood but, while scouting the locations for other scenes, he discovered the house under the roller coaster, and decided on the spot that that was where Woody-Alvy had been born. Because he is both the writer and director, he simply said to the art director, ''I want to get that house,'' and changed the script - and Alvy's father was transformed from a cab driver in Flatbush to the man who runs the bumper-car concession at Coney.

Then Mr. Allen admitted, ''There's one clear autobiographical fact in the picture: I've thought about sex since my first intimation of consciousness.''

There is also a clear line of fact in Miss Keaton's role. Her real name is Diane Hall. In common with her character, she calls her grandmothers Grammy, uses expressions like ''la-dee-dah'' and ''Oh, gee, its a wacky old world,'' and orders pastrami and white bread with mayo.

''I remember having Thanksgiving dinner at one of her Grammy's houses. A beautiful American family. I felt I was an alien or exotic object to them, a nervous, anxiety-ridden, suspicious, wise-cracking kind of strange bird. Actually, that wasn't so far off from what I was. After dinner, all these grammys sat around playing penny poker. I couldn't believe it. My family would have been exchanging gunfire.''

Inspired by these facts, the movie of ''Annie Hall'' began to evolve - from concept to script, through casting, finding locations, shooting and editing - each step leaving its imprint on the final product. Mr. Allen creates as he films.

This is his sixth feature and he feels that he has greater control of technique, such as in the case of the camera and of color. For example, in ''Annie Hall,'' there is a deliberate ''three-color scheme.'' The New York scenes, Annie and Alvy's love story, were filmed only on gray, overcast days or at sundown, ''the most romantic light.'' Alvy's past, at home and in school, is ''very yellow and golden,'' the hue of nostalgia. California, which Alvy-Woody hates, is shot ``right into the sun. Everybody is so white that they seem to vaporize.''

As usual, when he had prepared a very rough cut, Mr. Allen screened it for groups of 40 to 50 anonymous people. He stood in the back of the screening room, lurking, tuning his extrasensory perception into the reactions of his audience. Scenes that didn't work, he dropped, recut or reshot.

Until it was finished, ''Annie Hall'' was hush-hush. Nobody knew where the shooting was going on in New York or even what the name of the movie was. Mr. Allen didn't know the name either. He and Mr. Brickman considered 100 possibilities. Right up until the end, the favored title was ''Anhedonia.'' But hardly anyone knew what the word meant, so it was jettisoned.

''Anhedonia is a psychological state where nothing gives a person pleasure,'' he explained. ``The word hedonism is in it. We diagnosed that as Alvy's problem; nothing gives him any pleasure.''

Asked if that were his problem as well as his hero's, he said, ''I think everyone suffers from it, just as everyone is a little paranoid. I don't develop big enthusiasms. I find filmmaking laborious and tedious. I try to mitigate it by working with Diane, who I like a lot. This time I gave myself a very big treat by working in New York. I think I will try to make off my films here.''

What does he take pleasure in? ''Meaningless stuff. I get fun out of a few diversions. Basketball. Playing the clarinet. And other foolish things, like going for walks, drifting in and out of revival houses, buying records, sitting on park benches. I like to stand in line for movies, though not for more than 10 minutes. I'd make a good drugstore cowboy.''

But isn't he recognized and mobbed by his adoring public? ''I'm unobtrusive,'' he said. ''I can move around the city very well without being noticed. I switch my hat. I have three hats. I even bought dark glasses.'' He paused and thought about that disguise. ''Keaton tells me that with the hat and dark glasses, I look like Peter Sellers with hat and dark glasses, which is not much help.''

Though his films may become even more serious, Mr. Allen's life continues to be an absurd comedy. Things happen to Woody Allen. One evening he walked to the bank on his corner to get some cash from the money machine. He put his money credit card into the slot - and the machine ate up the card. On another occasion he was sitting in his Fifth Avenue penthouse apartment when lightning struck his terrace, smashing a gargoyle. Is Somebody trying to tell him something?




Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in a scene from "Annie Hall." (United Artists)

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