| Crimes and Misdemeanors | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Woody Allen |
| Written by | Woody Allen |
| Produced by | Robert Greenhut |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Sven Nykvist |
| Edited by | Susan E. Morse |
| Music by | Franz Schubert |
Production companies | Jack Rollins & Charles H. Joffe Productions |
| Distributed by | Orion Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 104 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $18.3 million[2] |
Crimes and Misdemeanors is a 1989 Americanexistentialcomedy-drama film written and directed byWoody Allen, who stars alongsideMartin Landau,Mia Farrow,Anjelica Huston,Jerry Orbach,Alan Alda,Sam Waterston, andJoanna Gleason.
The film was met with critical acclaim, receiving threeAcademy Award nominations: Allen, forBest Director andBest Original Screenplay, and Landau, forBest Actor in a Supporting Role. Several publications have rankedCrimes and Misdemeanors as one of Allen's greatest films.
The story follows two main characters: Judah Rosenthal, a successful and reputableophthalmologist, and Clifford Stern, a small-timedocumentary filmmaker.
Judah, anupper class respected family man, is having an affair withflight attendant Dolores Paley. After it becomes clear to her that Judah will not end his marriage, Dolores threatens to disclose the affair to Judah's wife, Miriam. She is also aware of some questionable financial deals Judah made before becoming a wealthy ophthalmologist, which adds to his stress. He confides in a patient, Ben, arabbi 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, a gangster, who hires ahitman to kill Dolores. 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 justGod is watching him and passing judgment.
Cliff, meanwhile, has been hired by his pompous brother-in-law, Lester, a successful television producer, to make a documentary celebrating Lester's life and work. Cliff grows to despise him. While filming and mocking the subject, Cliff falls in love with Lester's associate producer, Halley Reed. Despondent over his failing marriage to Lester's sister Wendy, he woos Halley, showing her footage from his ongoing documentary about Professor Louis Levy, a renowned philosopher. He ensures Halley is aware that he is shooting Lester's documentary merely for the money so he can finish his more meaningful project with Levy.
Cliff learns that Professor Levy, whom he had been profiling for a documentary centered on his philosophical views and the strength of his celebration of life, has committed suicide, leaving a curt note that only says: "I've gone out the window". When Halley visits to comfort him, he makes a pass at her, which she gently rebuffs, telling him she is not ready for another romance. Cliff's dislike for Lester becomes evident during the first screening of the film. Cliff has maliciously edited the film, which juxtaposes footage of Lester with clownish poses ofBenito Mussolini addressing a throng of supporters from a balcony. It also shows Lester yelling at his employees and clumsily making a pass at an attractive young actress. Lester fires him.
Adding to Cliff's burdens, Halley leaves forLondon for a producer position. When she returns several months later, Cliff is astounded to discover that she and Lester are engaged. Hearing that Lester sent Halley white roses "round the clock, for days" when he unexpectedly met her in London, Cliff is crestfallen as Halley falling for Lester is his “worst fear realized.”[3] His last romantic gesture to Halley had been a love letter which he had mostlyplagiarized fromJames Joyce, including references toDublin.
Judah and Cliff meet by happenstance at the wedding of the daughter of Rabbi Ben, who is 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 criminal 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 that “very few guys could live with that on their conscience.”[3] Judah cheerfully leaves the wedding party with his wife, and Cliff is left sitting alone, dejected.
The wedding party continues. Rabbi Ben, who is now blind, shares a dance with his daughter while the voice of Professor Levy is heard, saying that the universe is a dark and indifferent place which human beings fill with love, in the hope that “future generations will understand more.”[3]
After viewing the first cut ofCrimes and Misdemeanors, Woody Allen chose to get rid of the first act, call back actors for reshoots, and focus on what turned out to be the film's central story.[5]
Allen makes use ofclassical andjazz music in many of the film's scenes. The soundtrack includesFranz Schubert'sString Quartet No. 15 (a recording by theJuilliard String Quartet), which is used in the scenes leading up to Dolores' death, and Judah discovering her body.[citation needed]
The outline of Judah'smoral dilemma—whether a person can continue everyday life with the knowledge of having committed murder—evokes the pivotal idea of Russian novelistFyodor Dostoevsky'sCrime and Punishment (1866), despite suggesting a resolution nearly opposite to that of the novel.[6]
The film grossed a domestic total of $18,254,702.[2]
Crimes and Misdemeanors received mostly positive reviews. It holds a 92% rating on review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes, based on 50 critics, with an average rating of 7.9/10.[9] It holds a 77/100weighted average score onMetacritic, based on 10 critics.[10]
Vincent Canby ofThe New York Times lauded the film, remarking:
The wonder ofCrimes and Misdemeanors is the facility with which Mr. Allen deals with so many interlocking stories of so many differing tones and voices. The film cuts back and forth between parallel incidents and between present and past with the effortlessness of a hip, contemporary Aesop. The movie's secret strength—its structure, really—comes from the truth of the dozens and dozens of particular details through which it arrives at its own very hesitant, not especially comforting, very moving generality."[11]
Roger Ebert of theChicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four, writing:
The movie generates the best kind of suspense, because it's not about what will happen to people—it's about what decisions they will reach. We have the same information they have. What would we do? How far would we go to protect our happiness and reputation? How selfish would we be? Is our comfort worth more than another person's life? Allen does not evade this question, and his answer seems to be, yes, for some people, it would be.[12]
Though normally a fierce critic of Allen's work,John Simon ofNational Review declared the film to be "Allen's first successful blending of drama and comedy, plot and subplot", and added:
The chief strength of the movie is its courage in confronting grave and painful questions of the kind the American cinema has been doing its damnedest to avoid.[13]
Jonathan Rosenbaum of theChicago Reader dismissed the film, writing:
The overall "philosophical" thrust is designed to make the audience feel very wise, but none of the characters or ideas is allowed to develop beyond its cardboard profile (though Alda has a ball with his part).[14]
Jim Hoberman revisited the film in 2014 forThe New York Times, writing:
An agnostic with regard to Mr. Allen when I first reviewedCrimes and Misdemeanors forThe Village Voice, I thought I saw “startling intimations of greatness.” Revisiting the movie nearly a quarter-century later, I was struck by the skill with which he pulls off this unlikely amalgam.Crimes and Misdemeanors, remade after a fashion in Mr. Allen’sMatch Point (2005) is an ambitious movie, although, according to his current biographer David Evanier (reached by email), Mr. Allen does not rank it among his favorites. It is also discomfiting, not least in Cliff’s cozy relationship with his prepubescent niece, Jenny...Mr. Allen is a complicated man, and, as the world knows, his relationship with Ms. Farrow and their children has proved to be equally so.Crimes and Misdemeanors is his darkest film and, it would now seem, his most personal as well.[15]
The film was nominated for threeAcademy Awards: Allen forBest Director andBest Original Screenplay, and Martin Landau forBest Actor in a Supporting Role.
InEmpire magazine's 2008 poll of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time",Crimes and Misdemeanors was ranked number 267.[16] In 2010, it was the first film to win the 20/20 Award[17] for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay (Allen), and Best Supporting Actor (Landau). It also received three additional nominations, for Best Director (Woody Allen), Best Supporting Actor (Jerry Orbach) and Best Supporting Actress (Huston). In a 2016Time Out contributors' poll, it ranked second only toAnnie Hall among Allen's efforts, with Dave Calhoun praising it as "the film in which Woody's comic and serious sides most comfortably align".[18] The film achieved the same rank in a 2016 article byThe Daily Telegraph criticsRobbie Collin and Tim Robey, who wrote, "Here [Allen is] thinking deeply about moral choice, the question of whether guilt in your own eyes or the eyes of the world matters more. This bubblingly wise film, rich with beautifully dovetailing metaphors about blindness and conscience and the perils of self-knowledge, [...] is Allen on soaring form, gliding so elegantly through its maze of ideas it's as if the spirit ofFred Astaire gave it lift-off."[19]Crimes and Misdemeanors was also named Allen's second best by Chris Nashawaty ofEntertainment Weekly[20] and Barbara VanDenbergh ofThe Arizona Republic,[21] third by Darian Lusk ofCBS News,[22] and fourth by Zachary Wigon ofNerve.[23] In a 2015BBC critics' poll, it was voted the 57th greatest American film ever made.[24]
In October 2013, the film was voted byThe Guardian readers as the third best film directed by Allen.[25]
| Year | Award | Category | Nominated work | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1989 | Academy Awards | Best Director | Woody Allen | Nominated |
| Best Supporting Actor | Martin Landau | Nominated | ||
| Best Original Screenplay | Woody Allen | Nominated | ||
| 1989 | Golden Globe Awards | Best Motion Picture – Drama | Crimes and Misdemeanors | Nominated |
| 1990 | British Academy Film Awards | Best Film | Robert Greenhut Woody Allen | Nominated |
| Best Director | Woody Allen | Nominated | ||
| Best Original Screenplay | Nominated | |||
| Best Supporting Actor | Alan Alda | Nominated | ||
| Best Supporting Actress | Anjelica Huston | Nominated | ||
| Best Film Editing | Susan E. Morse | Nominated | ||
| 1990 | Directors Guild of America Awards | Outstanding Directing - Motion Pictures | Woody Allen | Nominated |
| 1990 | Writers Guild of America Awards | Outstanding Original Screenplay | Won | |
| 1989 | National Board of Review | Top 10 Films | Crimes and Misdemeanors | Won |
| Best Supporting Actor | Alan Alda | Won | ||
| 1989 | New York Film Critics Circle | Best Supporting Actor | Won | |
| 1989 | Los Angeles Film Critics Association | Best Supporting Actor | Martin Landau | Nominated |
Crimes and Misdemeanors was released throughMGM Home Entertainment onDVD on June 5, 2001. A limited-editionBlu-ray of 3,000 units was later released byTwilight Time on February 11, 2014.[26]
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| Other | |
