Crimes and misdemeanors: film analysis and themes

Ethics and Morality

Report on the film Crimes & Misdemeanors

Even Woody Allen's most ardent fans acknowledge the iconic actor/writer/filmmaker has suffered mis-steps, but with so many classics to his credit, it's best to describe those as merely less memorable.

Fortunately, 1989's Crimes & Misdemeanors is an Allen black comedy that remains powerful, nearly 20 years after its initial release.

Crimes & Misdemeanors focuses on the extreme moral dilemma faced by ophthalmologist Judah Rosenthal (Martin Landau). His long- time mistress Dolores (Anjelica Houston), frustrated by Judah's lack of commitment, threatens to reveal all, ruin his life. Judah's rougher-around-the-edges brother Jack (the late Jerry Orbach) suggests they have Dolores killed.

Allen takes great pains to show Judah as a just and honorable man, or certainly, as one who sees himself as such; his life is not just his own, he has a close- knit family to whom he is responsible. The audience believes that Dolores is an aberration in his universe. A revelation such as this affair, exposing a dark side, would be a tragedy for many, not just Judah. There is the rest of the family to consider. As presented by Allen, it works.

Allen himself appears in the second, "lighter" storyline, as a documentary film director Clifford Stern, forced to make a film about his successful brother-in-law, TV sitcom producer Lester (Alan Alda), who Stern despises, and whose fame he secretly envies. During the course of production, Stern, in a marriage (to Joanna Gleason's Wendy) long past its sell-by date, considers adultery with production assistant Halley (Mia Farrow). Stern other brother-in-law, Ben (Sam Waterston), Judah's rabbi and confidant, is going blind and is a patient of Judah's, one whose sight he cannot save.

Crimes & Misdemeanors is an excellently crafted film, its familial and romantic relationships and situations believable. The film had a surge of renewed relevance when Allen released 2006's "Match Point." Written, directed and filmed during Allen's "British" period, "Match Point," a drama, clearly borrows "comedic" "Crimes'" most significant plot twist. There is undoubtedly a strong correlation between these two films.

Although this salient point reveals a spoiler for both films, it cannot be ignored by Allen fans: in both of these films, an adulterous man silences his threatening-to-go public mistress by killing her. And here's where Woody Allen flexes his muscles, demonstrating his narrative power: the anti-hero gets away with it, and the audience not only accepts it, but breathes a sigh of relief for their fictional leading man.

In "Crime's" conclusion, set at Ben's daughter's wedding, Ben, who is the film's true just and loving man, copes with inevitable blindness, dancing sightless with his daughter the bride, as self-important Judah justifies the "crime" he has committed -- albeit told to Stern at the wedding, in a folkloric way). Judah has literally gotten away with murder. It is bleak, grim and evil triumphs. It is Allen at his darkest and yet, as a film, "Crimes" succeeds. It is entertaining and thought-provoking, yet the audience ultimately identifies with a killer.

And here is where the aforementioned "mis-step" has relevance. Where he so clearly was successful in telling the "Crimes & Misdemeanors'" tale, Allen is less so in "Match." "Match's" Jonathan Rys-Myers' Chris, a social-climbing tennis instructor, is, right from the start, less sympathetic than Landau's Judah. Judah is a healer, he has saved sight, he has done some good; in no way does it justify what he inevitably demonstrates what he is capable of, but Chris, in his youth and beauty, has given little to the world.

Chris' infinitely trusting wife, Chloe, is played by the luminous Emily Mortimer, who today's film-going audiences may better relate to, in comparison to Claire Bloom's turn-a-blind-eye senior Miriam Rosenthal in "Crimes." Chloe has no suspicions; she is an innocent. And Chris' moral vacancy, unlike self-justifying Judah, is clear.

This comparison takes nothing away from "Crimes." Indeed, it brings to light how effective that film was, and still, is. "Crimes" balances Allen's most shocking plot revelation to date (a murder is committed and the perpetrator gets away with it), with his own character Stern's storyline.