Crimes and Misdemeanors | | Cast : | Woody Allen, Martin Landau | | Director : | Woody Allen | | Studio : | MGM/UA Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | October 13, 1989 | | DVD Released Date : | June 05, 2001 | | Language : | Spanish (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | May 01, 2005 | | Summary | If it bends its funny, if it breaks it isn't. Allen's best! | Content
 | `Crimes and Misdemeanors' written and directed by Woody Allen may very well be Allen's best film to date. It is a straight drama with intermixed humor. It has no parody or self-reference like `Stardust Memories', it has no gimmicks like `Annie Hall', and it is not leadenly serious like `Interiors'. While this does not necessarily make it a better movie, it has what seems to be the largest `name' cast of all Allen's works, even though he is able to attract `name' actors like flies to honey. It even has a real plot where events early in the movie create situations to which you expect a resolution by the time the credits roll.
There is a very neat symmetry between two parallel series of events in the movie. The parallelism and it's nature are signaled by the title and the promise is realized far better than other works with similar titles. The liner notes compare the subject in this movie with `Love and Death', but I think the comparison is strained at best. The real issues in this movie are guilt and loss.
The Crime is the murder of Landau's mistress (Angelica Houston) arranged by Landau's brother (Jerry Orbach), a gangster with access to contract killers. The motive for the murder is fact that the mistress has become impatient in her expectation that Landau will leave his wife (Claire Bloom) and threatens to reveal the infidelity to Bloom and the world. What makes the risk to Landau even greater is that he is a very successful and wealthy doctor of ophthalmology who has contributed much to local hospitals and other charities.
The Misdemeanor is the dalliance of Allen's character with his assistant (Mia Farrow) while his marriage with wife Joanna Gleason is souring. The connection between Allen and Landau is based on the fact that one of Gleason's brothers is a rabbi (Sam Waterston) who is going blind and is being treated by Ophthalmologist Landau. The misdemeanor plot is enriched by Gleason's other brother, a highly successful television producer gloriously played with great ambiguity by Alan Alda's slipping between attractive and unattractive traits as easily as a duck takes to water.
Allen is a marginally successful documentary filmmaker whose great ambition is to do a documentary on the life of a philosopher (probably a professor at NYU, loosely based perhaps on Sydney Hook). He is hooked up with Alda's TV producer to do a biographical documentary on the producer's career for PBS. Alda recommends Allen to PBS only as a favor to his sister.
While the events leading to the `Crime' causes intense guilt and remorse on the part of Landau, his connection to the crime goes undetected by the police and he wakes up one morning with his sense of guilt lifted from his shoulders. The irony is that Allen's trivial misdemeanor is published by his loosing his wife, loosing his contract to do the documentary for the producer, and loosing his potential romantic interest (Farrow) to Alda.
I'm reluctant to give away much more of the plots, but I will say that the events are shot through with this kind of irony, including the fact that while Landau gets off Scott free, the rabbi, a totally virtuous character, goes blind. On top of this, the two principles are depicted in such a way that you admire the criminal, Landau and feel little sympathy for his victim or the inept, nebbish filmmaker who gets the short end of the stick from all his colleagues and relatives.
And through all of this, there is a finely crafted vein of humor, including a little aphorism from Alda on the nature of humor when he says that `If it bends, its funny. If it breaks, it's not'.
This movie twists and turns and bends and threatens to break, and never does. Truly one of Allen's best!.
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| Rating | | | Date | March 22, 2005 | | Summary | Something smells rotten in Manhattan! | Content
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This is one of Allen's most heavy weight films. He focuses with the avidness of an entomologist in the intimate life of a famous and distinguished doctor who carries an apparent and normal life who makes a tearful speech about the God eyes but that finally the moral lessons learnt in his youth perhaps, were not enough. He presents a double life , a double moral he is adultery and this adjective doesn't derive precisely of the word adult: he has lived a marriage through twenty years and suddenly meets a furtive, lonely and desperately lone woman Angelica Huston. He brings her back the joy for life but the things seem to be out of his control. She simply does not want to live in this way and additionally he has his hand something dirty with the administration of certain money . In the other hand we have a terrible selfish man who hires to Woody for a special documental where he will expose essentially all the concerns that have beaten Allen through his life. There will be sharp reflections about religion, art, philosophical issues. As always Woody is an irreverent and shy outlaw man who works as a journalist dealing with toxic products; as you can remember Chernobyl affair was still very fresh in the collective memory.
Allen will establish wonderful bits of films that will match exactly with the progressive drama; he twill try to win the love of Mia Farrow deeply fascinated by this hyper selfish : Schubert in Manhattan works out perfectly when Allen walks under a bridge with the camera moving around him and Huston; as you know we are talking about the Death and the Maiden.
These are basically the dramatic nucleus in this interweaved drama; this doctor will be object of blackmail by his mistress and decides to hire a mercenary to solve the disturbing situation. But do not worry, this puzzle is not unique in NYC. We have hundred and thousand similar cases where the public behavior must prevail above the minor issues, and the impunity is just a mere formalism that will be forgotten in the next party perhaps? Lampedusa's echoes still resound even in Manhattan: all must change for getting all keeps equal. My moral must be the same for my reputation and my secure place in this enormous stage, in this multidisciplinary complicity that it must work as a perfect clock mechanism: with the required pulse of a doctor with a laser eliminating a malign tumor: no pain, no complaints and then depending of your private religion there will be always a remote escape, the confession or the Complaint Wall .
As wisely answered Northrop Frye when was asked about his personal opinion about the faith: "The faith proves that the desperation is not the only solution".
One of my top choices Woody 's pictures
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| Rating | | | Date | February 26, 2005 | | Summary | Dark and Brilliant. | Content
| In my mind, this is Allen's blackest film. He plunges the depth of the human existence and finds that there is little redeeming about our lives. Judaic figures like Rabbi Ben and the family father are set up as straw men who argue that God sees everything and that there is a moral center to the universe. The character of Judah, and his actions in the movie, suggest that they were wrong. Their views are also refuted during the Passover seder scene, and later when the philosopher who is so admired commits suicide after writing the simple phrase, "I've gone out the window."
The worldview of "Crimes and Misdemeanors" is not one that I agree with but the excellence of the film is undeniable. The characters come together perfectly and Allen's own role of "loser" is outstanding. There is considerable humor here as well, such as the documentary that is made about Lester [Allen Alda] where he is compared to Mussolini and a bellowing mule. Yet, on the whole, the movie is more bitter than sweet, but it was a great achievement for Allen. This isn't just for diehard fans; everyone could find something fascinating in its 104 minutes. |
| Rating | | | Date | February 24, 2005 | | Summary | Choose your life | Content
| I've watched Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors" perhaps 10 times since the movie was released. I consider it an outstanding film for several reasons. First, the underlying moral questions are profound. See the flashback scene, for example, to the Seder dinner. Listen to the conversation and reflect on the questions raised. Second, the acting is superb, especially by Landau and Houston, but all the characters are memorable. Third, the dialogue combines humor and seriousness is a way rarely seen in American films. Fourth, the sound track is refreshingly sophisticated, combining big band classics with Schubert. Fifth, the construction of the story is well-balanced, juxtaposing different characters and their dilemmas, but always moving toward the ending. This is no "Hollywood Movie." Wm. Paul McKane |
| Rating | | | Date | February 01, 2005 | | Summary | TEN STARS | Content
| This is my favorite fil of all time!
Two elements combine magnificently to create this masterpiece: the script and the actors.
The director does a fine job, but mostly by restraining himself so as not to distract from the story, the dialogue, and the characters. I know some people see this as an argument against God's existance and therefore feel a pious need to trash it. I would argue, however, that it is no such thing. There have been enough movies about how the universe tends to right the wrongs of human design, the fact is that doesn't always happen, ON THIS EARTH. To say that there is no divine hand guiding the lives of people who sail through this mortal existance is not necasserily an argument that there is no divine hand at all. This and films like it (the Seventh Seal comes to mind) are more about the truth of the human condition than the truth of the divine condition. Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people, many times good things happen to you BECAUSE you're bad, and vice-verse. Ideally, the righteous are rewarded and the evil punished, but we do not live in an ideal world. Unfortunatley, film and literature are not resplendent with the truth of this reality. The meek have yet to inherit the earth, and that's exactly what this movie is about. It does not argue atheism, it represents human experience and presents to us the very real temptation to lose hope, but it ends with a plea from beyond the grave (the grave of someone who did lose hope) that we have faith in the small joys of life and look forward with optimism. Why should we retain hope? Because the triumph of the human spirit is that we continue to move forward, and hopefully we learn from past mistakes and our posterity may yet find that extra happiness which eluded us.
Enough postulation about God and Atheism, this is a fantastic movie. Martin Landau's performance is the greatest ever preserved on celluloid, coupled with his performance on "Ed Wood", I would argue that he is the greatest actor of the twentieth century!
Do your self a favor and watch this film, examine life and ask yourself what it means.
Thank you, Woody. |
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