Annie Hall is by far the most brilliant Woody Allen movie to date…. For the first time in his career Woody Allen has acknowledged his own power and eminence as a condition of his existence. The old Woody might have gone to a shrink, but he would not have had the wherewithal to pay for his girl friend's analysis. He would never have shown himself making hordes of people laugh. He would never have begun to reveal in himself all the ruthlessness any reasonably successful urban adult must exercise to survive. For the first time Woody Allen is telling it like it is—almost. And that almost seems to be the key to my persistent yes-but feelings about Allen.

It is nothing I can put my finger on exactly, and I have no advice to offer on the subject. It just strikes me from time to time that Allen is all nuance with very little substance, that much of what he says is not very original, and that he tries to play both ends against the middlebrow….

In years to come Annie Hall may be fondly remembered as the Romeo and Juliet of the analysands. Allen uses the most outrageously literal devices to distinguish the past from the present, the conscious from the unconscious, the physical from the spiritual, the id from the superego, the drama from the essay. He manages to be so boring on the subject of death that he makes Bergman seem lighthearted. Yet, the whole movie hangs together through the power of its reminiscence.