Crimes and Misdemeanors

Crimes and Misdemeanors is a good a film as Woody Allen has ever made. He's a director who tends to use his films to work out his own problems, and sometimes it doesn't come off well either because it wasn't a pressing problem, or because he really needed to get a grip (as in Whatever Works). With Crimes and Misdemeanors we really have two separate films, that, in the end, converge beautifully. The first story centers around an older man named Judah (Martin Landau). He's a successful ophthalmologist, but his love life is complicated. He's married to Miriam (Claire Boom) a woman he goes through the motions with. He's having an affair with Dolores (Anjelica Huston). The affair has been going on for two years and Dolores is beginning to get hasty and emotional. She wants Judah to leave his wife, but it's clear that he doesn't intend to. So, she plans to give up their secret to Miriam. Judah gets frightened, and has Dolores killed. He experiences terrible guilt, and feels his past loom up behind him. The second story centers around the Woody Allen character: Cliff. He's a documentary filmmaker who is making a film (just for the money) about a man he hates: Lester (a successful and arrogant man played by Alan Alda). But Cliff is afraid, he's married to a woman he knows will leave him soon, and he spends his days going to 40's films with his niece. Most of the comedy in the film resides in this portion of the film, but tragedy emerges as Cliff's fears emerge: he's terribly frightened that the woman he loves (played by Mia Farrow) will choose Lester over himself. Now, Crimes and Misdemeanors would be a good film if it had just been left to the witty comments and amusing neuroticism. Actually, if it had just been that, it would've ended up being just another entry into Woody Allen's body of work. However, the film has a Sound and the Fury tone to it, where all of the tragedy and evil that befalls the characters just makes them more interesting to consider. To regard. It is the most mature of all of Allen's works, and probably the least repetitive. It's probably his greatest film.