Crimes and Misdemeanors Information

Crimes and Misdemeanors is a 1989 existential drama written, directed by and co-starring Woody Allen, alongside Martin Landau, Mia Farrow, Anjelica Huston, Jerry Orbach, Alan Alda, Sam Waterston and Joanna Gleason.

The film was met with critical acclaim and was nominated for three Academy Awards: Woody Allen, for Best Director; Martin Landau, for Best Actor in a Supporting Role; and Allen again, for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.

Plot

The story follows two main characters: Judah Rosenthal, a successful ophthalmologist, and Clifford Stern, a small-time 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, scorned, threatens to inform his wife of their affair. Dolores' letter to Miriam is intercepted and destroyed by Judah, but she sustains the pressure on him with her threats of revelation. 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, who hires a hitman to kill Dolores. Before her corpse is discovered, Judah retrieves letters and other items from her apartment (where he sees her bloody corpse) 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 (Mia Farrow).

Despondent over his failing marriage to Lester's sister Wendy, he woos Halley, showing her footage from his ongoing documentary about Prof. Louis Levy (the psychologist Martin S. Bergmann), 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 become evident in a 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 depicts Lester yelling at his employees and clumsily making a pass at an attractive young actress.

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 romance in her life.

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 a bouquet of white roses every week 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 admits with humor, he had 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. Once deeply anguished by the murder he arranged, Judah has worked through his guilt and is enjoying life once more; the murder had been blamed on a drifter with a 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."

Cast

• Martin Landau as Judah Rosenthal
• Woody Allen as Cliff Stern
• Mia Farrow as Halley Reed
• Anjelica Huston as Dolores Paley
• Alan Alda as Lester
• Jerry Orbach as Jack Rosenthal
• Joanna Gleason as Wendy Stern
• Claire Bloom as Miriam Rosenthal
• Sam Waterston as Ben
• Caroline Aaron as Barbara
• Stephanie Roth as Sharon Rosenthal
• Mercedes Ruehl (uncredited) as Party Guest

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 (a recording by the Juilliard Quartet), 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 with his everyday life with knowledge of having committed a murder - evokes the pivotal idea of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (and provides a resolution opposite to one in the novel). The theme would be revisited by Allen in his films Match Point and Cassandra's Dream.The character of both Judah and his gangster brother were said to be influenced by a Jewish medical student who attended NYU with one of Marshall Brickmans relatives.

Reception

Crimes and Misdemeanors received positive reviews; it currently holds a 92% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 77/100 weighted average score on Metacritic, which translates to "generally favorable reviews". In a poll of Empire magazine's poll of the 500 greatest movies of all time, the film was ranked number 267.

In 2010, it was the first film to win the 20/20 Award for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay (Woody Allen), and Best Supporting Actor (Martin Landau). It also received three additional nominations for Best Director (Woody Allen), Best Supporting Actor (Jerry Orbach) and Best Supporting Actress (Anjelica Huston).

Box office

The film grossed a domestic total of $18,254,702.