Annie Hall to the camera, or launch into inspired monologues like Annie's free-association as she describes her family to Alvy. This speech by Diane Keaton is as close to perfect as such a speech can likely be ... all done in one take of brilliant brinksmanship." He cites a study that calculated the average shot length of "Annie Hall" to be 14.5 seconds, while other films made in 1977 had an average shot length of 4–7 seconds. Peter Cowie suggests that "Allen breaks up his extended shots with more orthodox cutting back and forth in conversation pieces, so that the forward momentum
The Sorrow and the Pity director was "too close to the events portrayed to provide an objective study of the period." In 2001, Richard Trank, a documentarian of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, described it as "a film about morality that explores the role of ordinary people." It was nominated for an Academy Award in 1971 for Best Documentary Feature. It won "the Grand Prize of the ". It received "a special award by the National Society of Film Critics, which called it 'a film of extraordinary public interest and distinction.'" Woody Allen's film "Annie Hall" (1977) makes two references to "The Sorrow and the Pity"