I personally believe that Woody Allen's style of comedy is succesful. I don't think that it is my favorite comedic style, but still very innovative and creative. There are a few techniques in particular that I believe really do a good job of making things funny.
The first technique that makes Allen's style succesful is the way that he sometimes addresses the audience directly during a scene. You don't see this often. If it is done right and the dialogue makes sense, it can be very funny. Two funny scenes come to mind with this technique; there is a scene where a man tells another man "how you got to teach anything at all is amazing" and Allen looks into the camera and says " Boy, if life were only like this". The other scene is when Annie mistakenly says the word "wife" instead of "life" and when Allen tries to correct her she swears up and down she said "life". Allen again looks at the audience for confirmation that he is not crazy.
The second technique is the side by side comparison of scenes. This scene is toward the end of the movie when Annie and Alvy are both at their analysts talking about their sex lives. They have similar stories, but different comments and feelings about them which seem to contradict what one another says. This is especially funny to me, and may be one of my favorite comedic techniques. This technique is widely used in comedy today.
Last, we have the technique where the actors can go back into their past memories with one another and seemingly interact with characters in the scenes.In this film, this technique was my least favorite but was still funny. I think that even though the scene in this film that contained this technique was not very funny (my personal opinion - everyone is different), I can see other directors taking it and making it hilarious. I think with a technique like this the possibilities are endless. It really is an innovative comedic style.
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