Classic Flicks: Crimes and Misdemeanors darkens comedy

By Joseph Allencherril     11/1/11 7:00pm

Born Allen Stewart Konigsberg, Woody Allen is one of a handful of Renaissance men in the film industry. Even in his seventh decade, he has kept up the pace of releasing about one film a year, if not more; he released Midnight in Paris to widespread critical acclaim this past summer, and is currently working on the film Nero Fiddled, which is set for release in 2012. Apparently, I am not alone in my admiration: film-making legend Francis Ford Coppola himself once wished that to be able write as freely as Woody Allen did so that he would not have to always work from another writer's screenplay.

Allen is a master of the mystical, almost indefinable art called Jewish humor. Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld tried it. Groucho Marx and S.J. Perelman practiced it years ago, but in constructing a web of practitioners of Jewish humor, one would probably find Allen at the center. Allen is not suited for most roles on the silver screen, but the one character he is able to play and has played so often — himself — Allen portrays vividly. To be sure, Allen has frequently said that his neurotic, philosophically babbling screen character is nothing like the real-life Allen (much like how the David character we see in Curb Your Enthusiasm is nothing more than a ruder, less restrained version of the real-life Larry David).

In the 1989 black comedy Crimes and Misdemeanors, Allen plays Clifford Stern, a fledgling documentarian, while Martin Landau plays Judah Rosenthal, an ophthalmologist; both men are confronting moral crises. After Rosenthal's affair with flight attendant Dolores Paley (Anjelica Huston, The Royal Tenenbaums), he faces pressure to break up with his wife Miriam (Claire Bloom, The King's Speech). Meanwhile, Cliff has been hired by his arrogant brother-in-law, Lester (Alan Alda, The Aviator), to direct a film celebrating Lester's successful work in the television industry. However, while filming, Stern falls in love with Lester's associate producer, Halley Reed (Mia Farrow, Rosemary's Baby). Allen's storytelling approach is far from regular: Crimes and Misdemeanors is a film in which evil actions are rewarded and the innocent are castigated. It is frequently labeled a dark comedy, but I contend that this is Allen's darkest comedy.

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I can recommend the majority of Allen's films: Bananas (1971), Annie Hall (1977). Manhattan (1979), Zelig (1983), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Radio Days (1987), Match Point (2005), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) and Midnight in Paris (2011). With the exception of Interiors (1978) — an Ingmar Bergman-esque anomaly among Allen's works — all of these films are comedies. Zelig is also one of the first mockumentaries. At any rate, this would not take a lifetime since Allen's films are slim, averaging around 90 minutes in length and are edited to the pulp.

According to Allen, "I hope I've come to a point in my life where, within the next 10 or 15 years, I can do two or three things that lend credence to all the stuff I've done already ... Let's hope."

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