Crimes and Misdemeanors
“Crimes and Misdemeanors” is an odd, but entertaining, duck from Woody Allen. As someone most familiar with the films of his in the past 21 years than in the previous 25, it’s been quite an experience to see how Allen’s wit and filmmaking quirks turned into tired clichés in the ’90s and 2000s. When his 2005 film, “Match Point,” came out, the film it was most compared to was “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” and though I haven’t seen “Match Point” in a number of years, I remember it well enough to try and see how they compare and contrast. There’s no comparison, though- both films have a personality and pace all their own. There’s no way to compare these films- in their own right, they are exceptional spins on a common idea.
Judah Rosenthal (Martin Landau) is one of two characters at the center of “Crimes and Misdemeanors.” He is an ophthalmologist and respected leader in the community, and when we first see him, we see him at a banquet receiving an award for his service. He has a loving wife (Claire Bloom) and daughter, and good relations with his friends and colleagues. He has a secret he has been hiding, though; when his wife and he come home from the banquet, he is thumbing through the mail and finds a letter from a name he recognizes…Dolores Paley (Anjelica Huston). Dolores is a flight attendant he has been having an affair with for the past two years. She is wanting to come clean about their affair to his wife to get back at him for supposed broken promises about leaving his wife, and coming clean might include revealing indiscretions he’s made financially. Judah cannot control her, and has to talk to someone about her; this includes a rabbi patient (Sam Waterston) and his brother (Jerry Orbach), whom has helped him out in a pinch before. The rabbi’s advice is sensible, and befitting a man of God who has challenged Judah over the years to rediscover the faith of his youth; his brother, however, has other ideas about taking care of Dolores, and they would take Judah down a darker moral path, albeit one where he wouldn’t have to worry about his wife’s reaction to the truth again.
The second main character is Cliff (Allen himself). Cliff is a struggling documentary filmmaker whose marriage (to Joanna Gleason) has gone stale- he finds his time with his niece (Jenny Nichols), whom he promised his dying brother he would take care of, going to the movies during the day and teaching her about life. At a party, Cliff is offered an opportunity by his successful comedy writer brother-in-law Lester (played by the hilariously self-involved Alan Alda) to do a short documentary piece on him for the TV series on great men. Cliff accepts, but he doesn’t like it any better than Lester, who has only offered it to him as a favor to his sister. While filming, Cliff meets Halley Reed (Mia Farrow), a production assistant, and the two hit it off immediately. One of the things that connects them is their seeming disdain for Lester, although Halley’s feelings about him are less obvious when Cliff takes a left turn with his film and makes some vicious comparisons of Lester with Mussolini. Yes, the one you’re thinking of. It’s pretty damn funny to watch, though.
The fact that Cliff and Judah’s stories are not interconnected except through some common acquaintances (the rabbi is Cliff’s other brother-in-law) alone makes it one of Allen’s most intriguing films, along with the fact that it is very much in the middle of the spectrum between comedy and drama. That’s one thing that separates this from “Match Point”- that was all thriller, whereas “Crimes and Misdemeanors” moves between comedy (in Cliff’s story) and drama (in Judah’s). In structure, it’s much more like Allen’s underrated “Melinda and Melinda,” wherein two writer friends tell each other a story about a shared heroine, one which is pure comedy, the other of which is drama and tragedy. In the end, though, “Crimes and Misdemeanors” is, at it’s heart, a dark comedy about two men who are at crossroads at their lives, and each take a path towards self-destruction. For Cliff, the self-destruction is his career as he throws away the opportunity to do something successful with Lester by poking fun at him, although he does have a potentially successful film going with a renowned physicist (real-life psychologist Martin Bergmann) that could get him a lot of success after a cruel twist of fate. For Judah, the self-destruction is all internal, as he can’t help but regret the choices he made with Dolores and the way he has chosen to “end” things with her. He is paranoid about the truth coming out, only this time, it’s more than just a lover’s spat- he begins to see the big picture about God and the universe in a way he never did before, and he is almost tempting the fates, hoping he will be found out so that he can be punished. That moral crisis was at the heart of “Match Point,” as well, but seeing it on Landau’s face in this film- in one of the best performances of his career, if not his best- makes it feel more urgent, more real, than when the two young protagonists in “Match Point” had the same dilemma. Judah should know better, and worse- this wasn’t a crime of passion but of convenience; he saw Dolores less as a person, and more as an obstacle. For that reason alone, we want to see him get what he deserves.
Allen then cuts to four months later, and the rabbi’s daughter’s wedding. We see what has taken place between the characters we have followed throughout the film, and while some of it doesn’t surprise us (Cliff and his wife have divorced), some of it does (Halley and Lester have gotten together). In a quiet room with a piano, Cliff gets away from the festivities, and later, he is greeted by Judah, who sits down next to him. They have never met up to this point, but they know one another. They talk, and Judah has a pitch for a fictional story for Cliff to tell. It’s a murder mystery; it’s HIS murder mystery, though he doesn’t admit it. Hearing Judah recount the story, how it plagued him, and finally, how he broke free from his anxieties about it, is one of the most devastating moments in any Woody Allen film. It’s a shrewd, bold ending to one of the most complicated, gripping films in the director’s career. It’s also proof that while Allen is hit-or-miss as a comedy filmmaker at times (especially recently), when he focuses on the moral complexities drama affords, few filmmakers can touch him.
