Here is one of the best (and most discomfiting) scenes from “Annie Hall” (1977) in which the funny conversation isn’t the one taking place between the two protagonists Alvy Singer and Annie Hall but rather the one that’s overheard between some holier-than-thou faux-cinephile who spends the whole scene shooting down Fellini and his companion.

Alvy and Annie are standing in line to go watch “The Sorrow and the Pity” at the New Yorker theater and the guy holding court behind them is a professor at Columbia University. The passive-aggressiveness, the sexually-centered dynamics and the spirit of Freud weighing heavily over the deliberations make this such a terrific scene of a great film (a film which is listed in our 100 Years of Must-See Movies available in the sidebar, in fact). And then, Marshall McLuhan in the flesh makes a cameo appearance which makes the moment of catharsis complete.

What was the moral of “Annie Hall”? Date your own kind?

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