Dear reader,
The clock in the kitchen says it is now 17:04 on Saturday the thirteenth of March 2004, I am typing into my computer the very words that you are reading…

I appreciate that this is a rather unconventional way to begin an undergraduate essay. Nevertheless it illustrates the principle of reflexivity in action. Reflexivity is another word for self-consciousness, that is to say, a consciousness that is directed towards examining its own operations, rather than external phenomena.

Introduction
Reflexivity is found in many contexts, in philosophy for example, it is in Descarte's famous cogito, "I think, therefore I am" (Stam, 1992, xiii). In a more everyday setting, "I help myself" is a reflexive pronoun. The "I" or "myself" in these examples connotes a person who is both the instigator and the recipient of her actions: a subject and an object. This 'self-referentially' is a defining characteristic of reflexivity in all its manifestations, for instance, reflexivity in language can be described as "talk about talk" and in philosophy as "thinking about thinking.

Reflexivity in art describes an artwork that flaunts its status as an artwork. For example the playwright and theorist Bertolt Brecht produced theatre that was purely 'theatrical,' in the sense that audiences could not help but be aware of the mechanics of theatre when they watched one of his plays. Brechtian theatre is characterised as having no sets, no costumes and actors who would drop in and out of their characters as soon as they entered or left the area designated as the 'stage' (Esslin: 1985, 115).

Semiotically speaking, a reflexive artwork is a text that openly displays the codes of its construction. A prerequisite for an artwork to be interpreted as reflexive, is that its spectators must also share an awareness of the codes. For instance, if a spectator had no awareness of theatrical codes, she would not consider a Brechtian drama to be either unconventional or conventional, conversely we might imagine another spectator, who had only seen Brechtian dramas, regarding a play with sets, costumes and traditional acting a radically reflexive experience. There is nothing inherently ‘reflexive’ in reflexive art. Reflexivity merely opposes the dominant conventions of illusionist art.

Not only do audiences have to possess prior knowledge of the codes to appreciate reflexivity, but they also have to be prepared to interpret them. Post structuralists, notably Roland Barthes, have argued that the meaning of all artworks (be they reflexive or illusionist) can be said to be dormant until activated in the process of interpretation by the spectator. It is a quirk of language that we attribute 'things' with 'intentions' and a quirk of history (Romanticism) that we attribute them also with authorial intentions. It is therefore the attitude of the spectator towards the artwork that determines the 'attitude' of the artwork towards the spectator: whether that attitude be governed, in Paul Ricoeur's words, by the "hermeneutics of suspicion" or, in Coleridge’s words, by the "willing suspension of disbelief" (Coleridge: 1971, 2).

In cinema, a reflexive film employs cinematic devices that make its audience aware of the fact that they are watching a film. In my examination of the uses of cinematic reflexivity I will discuss Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977) from a number of vantage points: 1/ playing with real fictions, 2/ mise-en-abyme, 3/ shifting modalities, 4/ intertextuality, 5/ screen-time versus narrative-time, 6/ editing and 7/ non-alienating romantic comedy. Explanation of these titles is contained within the sections.

1/ Playing with real fictions
Annie Hall is a hybrid of genres: part stand-up comic routine, part romantic comedy, part fictionalised autobiography and even part animated cartoon. It is constructed around the recollections of a fictional comic, Alvy Singer, played by Woody Allen. Alvy Singer seems to resemble Woody Allen in many biographical details. Both live in New York, both are famous comics and both went out with Diane Keaton, except in the film she is fictional woman called Annie Hall, or perhaps it is the other way around, since Keaton is really Diane Hall’s stage name (Watson: www). This blurring of boundaries between the 'fictional' and the 'real' characters and situations is one of the crucial ways that the film plays with the modalities of film itself. There is very little to distinguish between the signifiers of the comic persona of Woody Allen and his fictional alter ego Alvy Singer. On the surface Woody Allen seems to be saying "Alvy is me and this is a true story," but if this supposition is correct he could equally be saying "I am Alvy and this is a false story." When people say that Annie Hall is autobiographical, they are making the category mistake that the Woody Allen text they are familiar with equates with Woody Allen the real person, whose name is actually Allan Stewart Konigsberg (Littleman.com). The Allen/Singer character is like the Cretan who declared "all Cretan's are liars" in Epimenides' paradox (C2.com). The paradox of Annie Hall is that, by adopting a deliberately autobiographical strategy, Allen problematises the notion of authorship.

2/ Mise-en-abyme
Mise-en-abyme is arguably the most denotative form of reflexivity, for instance in film theory it means literally a film within a film. The term often likened to the effect achieved by holding a mirror in front of another mirror, so that the reflected image is duplicated upon itself, forming in a seemingly endless tunnel of mirror reflections. However, Christian Metz conceived of it in a slightly different way, as inescutcheon, the heraldic term for a small shield placed at the centre of a larger identical one (Metz, 1991, 228). This conception de-emphasises the tendency of en-abyme to take on some of the connotations of its etymological cousin - an abyss.

In Annie Hall the idea of a film within a film is illustrated in three instances. At the beginning of the film when a television interview with Alvy Singer is shown, the film becomes a television image; when Alvy takes Annie to the cinema to watch The Sorrow and the Pity (1969), the film becomes the opening titles of The Sorrow and the Pity; and near the end of the film, when we are shown an excerpt from a play Alvy Singer has written about their relationship, the film becomes the play.

Mise-en-abyme is also present in the split screen effects, for example when Alvy's family meal is juxtaposed with Annie's. In this instance, both sites of the screen divide comment on each other, both figuratively and literally, as the characters on either side of the screen interact with one another. The second use of split screen is invisible, where Annie and Alvy eavesdrop on the conversation a younger Annie is having with her actor boyfriend. A variation on this happens while Annie and Alvy are making love. Annie's ‘soul,’ depicted as a double exposure, gets up from the bed and sits on a chair.

3/ Shifting modalities
By modalities I mean a very general way of distinguishing between modes, or qualities in general concepts. For example Robert Stam’s distinguishes three modes of reflexivity--Ludic (playful), Aggressive (alienating) and Didactic (Brechtian) (Stam. 1992, xvi, xvii). The only one that concerns me in examining Annie Hall is ludic. Ludic, from the Latin Ludere (play), is the linguistic root of both illusion and ludicrous (Ayto: 1991, 294). It suggests a mode of reflexivity that makes fun of the narrative and stylistic conventions of illusionist art.

Alvy Singer talks directly to the camera, as if he is doing a stand-up routine. The free-form structure of most of the film allows him to juxtapose incidents and ideas in a stream-of-consciousness manner. The most well known cinematic precursors of the direct mode of address used in Annie Hall were the picaresque heroes of Tom Jones (1963) and Alfie (1966). In these film the contrast between the narrator's version of events and those of the actual film narrative identified the protagonists as unreliable narrators. The same judgements are made in Annie Hall, the name Alvy might even have been chosen because it sounds like a Jewish Alfie.

Annie Hall also allows Alvy to interact with his memories. This device is used in his school class, where the young Alvy is hauled up in front of the class for kissing a girl and the adult Alvy intercedes in his defence. The flashback sequences that make up the fictional biography are unusual in that Allen does not treat them with the reverence that the device normally demands. Past time in the cinema is often analogous to historical time in life, in that both cannot be interfered with by the conscious interntions of characters in the present. But Alvy enters into his own history and interacts with the characters from his past (although notably he does not have a conversation with himself). The flashback sequences are associatively (not chronologically) ordered and are modified like memories rather than respected as historical facts.

The film shifts between different stylistic modalities from documentary to animated cartoon. It begins in faux documentary fashion with Allen/Singer’s opening monologue, then gear-changes into period drama. Once we are in fiction mode, there is no strict pattern to the shifting modalities. Sometimes characters in the scene respect the dramatic ‘fourth wall,’ sometimes they step out of the diagesis to interact with Alvy. On other occasions characters are allowed to address the audience directly. For example when Alvy steps out of the cinema queue, to protest at the pretentious ramblings of a university lecturer, the lecturer also steps out to challenge Alvy's authorial authority. Pointedly, the lecturer's criticism had been directed at reflexive directors, particularly Fellini, faulted for his formalism (the lecturer says that he is really a technical filmmaker) and his self-indulgence, which can of course be read as a criticism of reflexive films per se.

There are some notable cameos of real people in Annie Hall. The most well known is Marshal McLuhan appearing in the cinema lobby to settle the argument with the lecturer. Alvy remarks, "if only life were like this!" In addition, the US talk-show host Dick Cavett interviews Alvy on his TV show and the real Truman Capote (allegedly) appears as the winner of a Truman Capote look-a-like contest. (Watson, www).

4/ Intertextuality
The notion of intertextuality heralded a break with the traditional stucturalist supposition: that all texts could be analysed as closed systems. Intertextuality emphasises that all texts are related to other texts. It imagines them situated within a cultural nexus from which they can not be separated. Homage, pastiche and parody are all reflexive intertextual strategies, differing only in the reverence they show toward other texts.

Annie Hall references so many texts it would be too impractical to attempt to name them all. Alvy Singer cites references as diverse as Freud and Leopold and Loeb. Visually the film pays homage to the quirky romantic comedy of films like The Philadelphia Story (1940), the fairground scenes from Alvy's childhood resemble On the Town (1949), in its use of reflexive devices it references Fellini's 8 1/2 (1963) and there is a Bergmanesque feel to the mise-en-scène of the Hall family dinner - a poster for Bergman's Face to Face (1976) is also seen in the cinema lobby.

Notable parodies, in the form of caricatures, are: Jewish immigrant families (the Singers), WASPish families (the Halls), the New York public school system, New York intellectuals (Alison and Robin, Alvy's first wives), Californians, Rock journalists and self-styled religious gurus.

Filmic and theatrical references include Disney’s Snow White (1939), Shaw’s Pygmalion (Annie plays Eliza Doolittle to Singer’s Henry Higgins), and the biographical structure of Well's Citizen Kane (1941).

5/ Screen-time versus narrative-time
Annie Hall utilises several reflexive narrative strategies. The whole film is framed, as it were from the perspective of hindsight. At the start of the film Alvy tells us his intention to examine the reasons for his break up with Annie. The flashback narrative is itself disrupted by the inclusion of additional flashbacks, that provide an associative and often ironic commentary on the other events in the film, and vice versa.

The structure of the romance that forms the spine of the film is itself fragmented and associatively ordered at times which illustrated the discontinuities between screen-time and narrative-time. The first time Annie appears if after eight minutes of screen-time have elapsed. If we were to place the scene in a narrative-time context, that is to say within the timeline of Alvy and Annie's two year relationship, it presumably occurred towards the end as Alvy and Annie are shown bickering constantly. Nine minutes of screen-time later, Annie makes her second appearance in a famous scene where the couple try to cook live lobsters. It is hard to judge where this event happens in narrative-time, although their good rapport with each other would suggest that it is near the beginning of their relationship. Six minutes later, that is after twenty three minutes of screen-time, we get to see Annie and Alvy first meeting. It is interesting to note here that for a while the narrative structure of the film reverts to telling a linear story. In the following nine scenes (seventeen minutes of screen time) we watch their relationship develop. This section is also characterised by the withdrawal of other reflexive devices (with the exception of the subtitling of Annie and Alvy's thoughts, during their conversation on the balcony).

6/ Editing
The majority of the editing in Annie Hall, apart from its non-linear structure, is traditional invisible editing. The exception is that the shifting modalities of content are sometimes heightened through pictorial juxtapositions that recall Eisenstein's dialectical montage (although not with the frequency of cuts).

On several occasions there is a discontinuity between picture and sound. For example, near the beginning of the film Alvy and his friend Rob are discussing anti-Semitism on the sound track, but the visual is of a pavement with an unknown woman walking along it. It is only as the scene plays out in a single shot, that we notice Alvy and Rob, in the distance, walking towards us.

7/ Non-alienating romantic comedy
In contrast to the rest of the film, the sections that fall into the romantic comedy genre respect the conventions of illusionist cinema. Robert Stam notes that reflexive strategies can often be alienating to audiences. Bertolt Brecht exploited this aspect of reflexivity in his verfremdungseffekten (alienation effects) (Esslin: 1985, 110). Some reflexive films that Stam categorised as 'aggressively reflexive' (Stam; 1992, 1) can be so provocative that audiences have reacted with violence: Buñuel's L'Age d'or (1930) is an example of this type, where its first performances resulted in a riot (Buñuel: 1983, 118). This is not the case with Annie Hall. The combination of Allen's humour and the commitment the film shows to its central romance, have the effect of drawing-out of much of the sting of reflexivity's alienating tendency.

Conclusion
Allen’s film is about memory. How the representations of the remembered past, which after all are images, are open to intrusions alterations and rewritings by the interventions of consciousness. But the function of memory (to record) and of consciousness (to revise) is what also creates our sense of personal identity. From this perspective, 'the self' can be seen as a textual construction, which the author is the worst judge of, precisely of a lack of objectivity, an inability to step outside of herself as a subject: "see ourselves as others see us," as Joyce wrote in Ulysses (Joyce: 1984, 373).

Allen ironically comments upon his own identity as a textural construct through his cinematic alter ego Alvy Singer. Alvy's commentary on his life is full of omissions, revisions, evasions and self-deceptions, which, as a reflexive subject, he is unable to objectify. At one point he comments that "intellectuals prove that you can be absolutely brilliant and have no idea what's going on," without seeing that the judgement could very well apply to himself.

The Minotaur in the Hall of Mirrors
The Hall of mirrors created in endless reflexive examinations is not infinite, but dissolves into a kind of green blur - an intrinsic property of the glass with which the mirror is made. In this way, the reflexive journey that was Modernism, characterised by a rigorous formalism and a perennial search for new beginnings finally "gave way to a sense of ending" (Best: 1997), in the all but blank canvass of Kasmir Malevich’s White on White (ibid) and the silent music of John Cage's 4'33". These nihilistic gestures ultimately signalled the end of the road for formalism by amplifying and amplifying that which was intrinsic to its form (though initially overlooked) namely nihilism. Postmodernism mode of reflexivity, in "playing with the debris of the cultural past" (ibid), takes reflexivity back to its etymological origins, the Latin verbs reflexio/reflecter - meaning literally 'to bend back on.' Such art as Auden remarked "echoes in the valley of their own playing, signifying nothing" (Stam: 1992, 165). It is worth noting, in this context that Alvy's commitment to Annie is expressed in filmic terms by the withdrawal of reflexive devices.

References

Alfie (Dir: Lewis Gilbert) British Film Institute, 1966

Annie Hall (Dir: Woody Allen) United Artists, 1977

Ayto, John, Dictionary of Word Origins, London: Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd, 1991

Best, Steven & Douglas Kellner (1997) 'Postmodernism in the Arts: Pastiche, Implosion, and the Popular' (accessed, 1/3/04)
URL: http://www.guilford.com/excerpts/best3EX.html

Buñuel, Luis, My Last Breath, London: Fontana Paperbacks, 1985

Chandler, Daniel, Semiotics the Basics, London: Routledge, 2002

Citizen Kane (Dir: Orson Welles) RKO Radio Pictures, 1941

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Biographia Literaria, Volume II, Menston: The Scholar Press, 1971

8 1/2 (Dir: Frederico Fellini) Criterion Collection, 1963

Esslin, Martin, Brecht: A Choice of Evils, London: Methuen, 1985

Face to Face (Dir: Ingmar Bergman) Paramount, 1976

Joyce James, Ulysses, London, Penguin books, 1984

L'Age d'or (Dir: Luis Buñuel) Image Entertainment Inc, 1930

Littleman.com Allan Stewart Konigsberg's Filmography (accessed 14/3/04)
URL: http://www.littleman.com/movies/people/2/000000262-Allan-Stewart-Konigsberg.html

Metz, Christian, Film Language, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991

On the Town, (Dir: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelley) MGM/UA, 1949

The Philadelphia Story (Dir: George Cukor) MGM, 1940

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Prod: Walt Disney) Walt Disney Pictures, 1939

The Sorrow and the Pity, (Dir; Marcel Ophüls) Cinema 5 Distribution, 1969

Stam, Robert, Reflexivity in Film and Literature (Morningside Edition), New York: Columbia University Press, 1992

Tom Jones (Dir: Tony Richarson) United Artists, 1963

Watson, Nigel, Annie Hall(accessed 13/3/04)
URL: www.talkingpix.co.uk/Annie%20Hall.html

C2.com, Cretan Paradox (accessed 13/3/04)
URL http://c2.com/cgi/quickDiff?CretanParadox