“I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.” One of the greatest neurotics ever put on screen came with Woody Allen’s perpetual outsider Alvy Singer, a New York comic whose uneasy relationship with his WASP girlfriend (the incomparable Diane Keaton) are matched by a general uneasiness with life—and, as he might put it, belonging to a club that would have him as a member. Borrowing from Bergman and Fellini, this hilarious, fractured film reconstructs Alvy’s life story, with commentary and moviemaking invention, and the result is an Oscar-winning romantic comedy classic that pulls out all the stops, but also one that, opening and closing with philosophical jokes, amounts to an extended questing monologue on belonging and identity.

Image courtesy of the Kobal Collection.