Crimes and Misdemeanors
Crimes and Misdemeanors is a 1989 American existential comedy-drama film written and directed by Woody Allen, who stars alongside Martin Landau, Mia Farrow, Anjelica Huston, Jerry Orbach, Alan Alda, Sam Waterston and Joanna Gleason.
Although a box office flop, the film was met with critical acclaim, and received three Oscar nominations: Woody Allen, for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, and Martin Landau, for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. In several publications, Crimes and Misdemeanors has been ranked as one of Allen's greatest films.
Plot
The story follows two main characters: Judah Rosenthal, a successful ophthalmologist, and Clifford Stern, a small-time documentary filmmaker.Judah, a respectable family man, is having an affair with flight 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 has made, which adds to his stress. He confides in a patient, Ben, 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, a gangster, who hires a hitman 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 just God 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 Prof. Louis Levy, a renowned philosopher. He makes sure 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's dislike for Lester becomes evident during the first screening of the film. It juxtaposes footage of Lester with clownish poses of Benito 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. Cliff learns that Professor Levy, whom he had been profiling on the strength of his celebration of life, has committed suicide, leaving a curt note, "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 isn't ready for another romance.
Adding to Cliff's burdens, Halley leaves for London, where Lester is offering her a producing job; 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" while they were in London, Cliff is crestfallen as he realizes he is incapable of that kind of ostentatious display. His last romantic gesture to Halley had been a love letter which he had mostly plagiarized from James Joyce.
In the final scene, 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 instead that one is forever fated to bear one's burdens for "crimes and misdemeanors". Judah cheerfully leaves the wedding party with his wife, and Cliff is left sitting alone, dejected. Ben the rabbi, who is now blind, shares a dance with his daughter while the voice of Prof. Levy is heard, saying that the universe is a dark and indifferent place which human beings fill with love, in the hope that it will give the void a meaning.
Cast
Production
After viewing the first cut of the film, Allen decided to throw out the first act, call back actors for reshoots, and focus on what turned out to be the central story.Music
Allen makes use of classical and jazz music in many of the film's scenes. The soundtrack includes Franz Schubert's String Quartet No. 15, which is used in the scenes leading up to Dolores' death, and Judah discovering her body.Influences
The outline of Judah's moral dilemma - whether a person can continue everyday life with the knowledge of having committed murder - evokes the pivotal idea of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, despite suggesting a resolution nearly opposite to that of the novel. Allen would revisit the theme in his films Match Point, Cassandra's Dream and Irrational Man.Reception
Box office
The film grossed a domestic total of $18,254,702.Critical response
Crimes and Misdemeanors received mostly positive reviews. It currently holds a 93% "Certified Fresh" rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 45 critics, with an average rating of 8/10. It also holds a 77/100 weighted average score on Metacritic, based on 10 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".Vincent Canby of The New York Times lauded the film, remarking:
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four stars, writing:
Though normally a fierce critic of Allen's work, John Simon of National Review declared the film to be "Allen's first successful blending of drama and comedy, plot and subplot," and also wrote: Variety gave the film a more mixed review, however, writing, "Woody Allen ambitiously mixes his two favoured strains of cinema, melodrama and comedy, with mixed results in Crimes and Misdemeanours."
In 2016, film critics Robbie Collin and Tim Robey ranked it as the second best movie by Woody Allen.
Accolades
The film was met with critical acclaim, and was nominated for three Academy Awards: Woody Allen for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, and Martin Landau for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.In Empire magazine's poll of the 500 greatest movies of all time, Crimes and Misdemeanors was ranked number 267. In 2010, it was the first film to win the 20/20 Award for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor. It also received three additional nominations, for Best Director, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress. In a 2016 Time Out contributors' poll, it ranked second only to Annie Hall among Allen's efforts, with Dave Calhoun praising it as "the film in which Woody's comic and serious sides most comfortably align". The film achieved the same rank in an article by The Daily Telegraph critics Robbie Collin and Tim Robey, who wrote, "Here 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 of Fred Astaire gave it lift-off." Crimes and Misdemeanors was also named Allen's second best by Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly and Barbara VanDenbergh of The Arizona Republic, third by Darian Lusk of CBS, and fourth by Zachary Wigon of Nerve. In a 2015 BBC critics' poll, it was voted the 57th greatest American film ever made.
In October 2013, the film was voted by The Guardian readers as the third best film directed by Woody Allen.
| Year | Award | Category | Nominated work | Result |
| 1989 | Academy Awards | Best Director | Woody Allen | |
| 1989 | Academy Awards | Best Original Screenplay | Woody Allen | |
| 1989 | Academy Awards | Best Supporting Actor | Martin Landau | |
| 1989 | Golden Globe Awards | Best Motion Picture - Drama | Crimes and Misdemeanors | |
| 1990 | British Academy Film Awards | Best Film | Robert Greenhut Woody Allen | |
| 1990 | British Academy Film Awards | Best Director | Woody Allen | |
| 1990 | British Academy Film Awards | Best Original Screenplay | Woody Allen | |
| 1990 | British Academy Film Awards | Best Supporting Actor | Alan Alda | |
| 1990 | British Academy Film Awards | Best Supporting Actress | Anjelica Huston | |
| 1990 | British Academy Film Awards | Best Film Editing | Susan E. Morse | |
| 1990 | Directors Guild of America Awards | Outstanding Directing - Motion Pictures | Woody Allen | |
| 1990 | Writers Guild of America Awards | Outstanding Original Screenplay | Woody Allen | |
| 1989 | National Board of Review | Crimes and Misdemeanors | ||
| 1989 | National Board of Review | Best Supporting Actor | Alan Alda | |
| 1989 | New York Film Critics Circle | Best Supporting Actor | Alan Alda | |
| 1989 | Los Angeles Film Critics Association | Best Supporting Actor | Martin Landau |