Crimes and Misdemeanors Information

Crimes and Misdemeanors is a 1989 black comedy written, directed by and co-starring Woody Allen, alongside Martin Landau, Mia Farrow, Anjelica Huston, Jerry Orbach, Alan Alda, Sam Waterston and Joanna Gleason. The film was met with critical acclaim and was nominated for the following Academy Awards:

• Woody Allen, for Best Director.
• Martin Landau, for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
• Woody Allen, for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.

Plot

The film is set in New York City and follows two main characters: Judah Rosenthal (Landau), a successful ophthalmologist, and Cliff Stern (Allen), a struggling documentary filmmaker. The two men are each confronted with moral crises.

Judah's crisis concerns his affair with a flight attendant Dolores Paley (Huston). After it becomes clear to her that Judah will not end his marriage, Dolores, scorned, attempts to inform his wife of their affair. Dolores' letter to his wife Miriam (Claire Bloom) is intercepted and destroyed by Judah, but she sustains the pressure on him with her threats of revelation. She is also aware of some questionable financial moves Judah has made.

Early in the film, he confides in a patient, Ben (Waterston), a rabbi who is rapidly losing his eyesight. Ben advises openness and honesty between Judah and his wife, but Judah does not wish to imperil his marriage.

Desperate, Judah turns to his brother, Jack (Orbach), who hires a hitman to kill Dolores. Later, before her corpse is discovered, Judah retrieves letters and other items from her apartment in order to cover his tracks. Stricken with guilt, Judah turns to the religious teachings he had rejected, believing for the first time that a just God is watching him and passing judgement.

Cliff, meanwhile, has been hired by his pompous brother-in-law, Lester (Alda), a successful television producer, to make a documentary celebrating Lester, whom Cliff grows to despise. While filming, he falls in love with Halley Reed (Farrow), Lester's associate producer.

At the time, Cliff is despondent over his failing marriage to his wife Wendy (Gleason), and he woos Halley, showing her footage from his ongoing documentary about Prof. Louis Levi, a renowned philosopher, a character based on Primo Levi.^[1] He tells Halley he's shooting Lester's documentary for the money so he can finish the documentary on Levi.

Cliff's plain hatred of Lester are evident in a screening of the documentary film. It juxtaposes footage of Lester with shots of Benito Mussolini addressing a throng of supporters from a balcony; it also depicts Lester yelling at his employees and clumsily making a pass at an attractive young actress.

Halley leaves for London, where Lester is offering her a producing job; when she returns several months later, Cliff learns that she and Lester are engaged. Hearing that Lester sent Halley a bouquet of white roses every week they were in London, Cliff is crestfallen as he realizes he is incapable of that kind of affectionate display. His last romantic gesture to Halley had been a love letter which, he admits, he had plagiarized almost entirely from James Joyce.

Adding to Cliff's burdens, he learns that Prof. Levi, whom he had been profiling on the strength of his celebration of life, had committed suicide, leaving a curt note, "I've gone out the window."

In the final scene, Judah and Cliff meet by happenstance at the wedding of the daughter of Ben, Cliff's brother-in-law and Judah's patient. Judah has worked through his guilt and is enjoying life once more; the murder had been blamed on a drifter with a record. He draws Cliff into a supposedly hypothetical discussion that draws upon his moral quandary. Judah says that with time, any crisis will pass; but Cliff morosely claims instead that one is forever fated to bear one's burdens for "crimes and misdemeanors."

The film ends with a narration by the late Prof. Levi about the interplay between morality and happiness.

Cast

Influences

• The outline of Judah's moral dilemma — whether a person can continue with his everyday life with knowledge of having committed a murder — evokes ^[2] the pivotal idea of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (and provides a resolution opposite to one in the novel). The theme would be revisited by Allen in his movies Match Point and Cassandra's Dream.
• The scene where Judah revisits his childhood home and sees his family at the dinner table is a twist on the scene in Wild Strawberries, directed by Allen’s idol, Ingmar Bergman, where Isak Borg revisits his childhood home and sees his family at the dinner table.^{[citation needed]}

Production

• After viewing the first cut of the film, Woody Allen decided to throw out the first act, call back actors for reshoots, and focus on what turned out to be the central story.^[3]

Music

Allen makes use of classical and jazz music in many of the film's scenes. The soundtrack includes Franz Schubert's String Quartet #15 in G, which is used in the scenes leading up to Dolores' death, and Judah discovering her body.

Box office

The North American box office tally for Crimes and Misdemeanors was $18,254,702.^{[citation needed]}

References

1. ^ Ken Dancyger and Jeff Rush (2006)Alternative scriptwriting, A Case Study of Changing Motifs and Mixing Genres: Crimes and Misdemeanors p.139
2. ^ Mary P. Nichols, Reconstructing Woody: Art, Love, and Life in the Films of Woody Allen (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000) ISBN 978-0-8476-8990-3, pp 149-164 (Part 10 The Ophthalmologist and the Filmmaker)
3. ^ "2046". Chicago Sun-Times. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050901/REVIEWS/50822004/1023.

External links

• Crimes and Misdemeanors at the Internet Movie Database
• Crimes and Misdemeanors at Allmovie
• Roger Ebert's Review of Crimes and Misdemeanors

Categories: 1989 films | American films | English-language films | Films directed by Woody Allen | Films set in New York City | Orion Pictures films | Films about film directors and producers | American black comedy films

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