Crimes and Misdemeanors (Widescreen)

When i was young i recall watching the great movies of neil simon on tv, brighton beach memoirs and biloxi blues,and those films of his one time wife marsha mason,and his big break in hollywood,when his play come blow your horn was produced. A playwright making films,something very few playwrights have the luxury of doing,and in fact making an impact i hope on writing in movies and the different types of films he produced. Here in crimes and misdemeanors we have a different type of filmmaker,woody allen,whoose films always had lower budgets than typical productions and he always had a staple of decent american actors who often worked they said to be in one of his films,that was their reason for making his films,since they took a big cut in salary. The movie begins with a religious doctor saying a speech in which being raised on the tanach,the understanding of jews and their god,although their teachings go much beyond that,he became a scientist and he always struggled with the tension within himself,but the movie shows he wants a moral order to make sense of life,the world and human minds are lost he's convinced without a god,as the film shows not just fantasies,fantasies could be moral and good,but bad fantasies which actually harm everyone. We have an affair,a man whoose mind leads him astray, a doctor who cant check himself,and rather than resolving the situation in a humane way,decides to dispose of her and has her murdered. He later feeling bad about the matter,he develops a sense of religiousness or conscience,decides to inform police who havent apprehended anyone,but the killer tells the doctor a lesson...think before you act,about affairs,and murders,and everything...since your a doctor you cant act on whims,a doctor whoose fantasies are realized in whims of actions,and seems disturbed his world has gone to pieces...there is also woody's character of the director being preyed on by hollywood...but he too wants a moral world,to display reality,and not those products with sappy and happy endings,filling your heads with fantasies,but products emphasizing reality...also much scenes of people smoking cigarettes,like the doctor,addicted personalies who on whims act out their inner
worlds and are frustrated when the real world smashes their fantasy life...the doctor laments'god is a luxury'(i actually recall the award winning theologian who postulated these kinds of views of moder life)...but god is actually a luxury which will reform our minds hopefully...since these very intelligent characters cant do it be reason..the end of the film discusses the nature of tragedy...a la shakespeare...and wealth and privelege...which can be a good thing in society unless we use it to indulge ourselves...like these characters...this kind of film requires much intellectual knowledge of divergent areas,and intuition,an imaginative discussion of ideas seen through the lives of people,but the people must come alive and be entertaining,be real,and this is achieved through the masterful work of comedy as evidenced here and everywhere in the film,..this film is also very well paced...the music fitting and different...and many touches throughout...a person who knows old hollywood and builds on it...of course an excerpt from old hollywood(and hardly any of her films are available in decent dvd format)of carole lombard who had great dialogue and mastery over it...is a good place to start for any filmaker writing about modern times...

Deeply moving, deeply though-provoking, brilliantly acted and occasionally very funny. A disturbing, dark film about human nature that still manages to leave room for a glimmer of hope within it's chilling bleakness.

Martin Landau is amazing, but all of the cast make significant contributions.

One of the few films I can watch over and over, with no loss of its power. Every time I watch it I end up pondering my own sense of morality, my questions about whether there is truly justice in the world, and the extent to which good people do bad things. And yet, along with all those heavy ideas, this is also entertaining, witty, and occasionally very tense story-telling of the first order.

For me it's second only to 'Annie Hall' amongst Allen's huge body of work, and stands as one of the few truly great films of the 1980s.

There's no need to force conclusions from this fantastic movie about either the nature of god or the nature of man - that would be like rejecting the circle that I draw because you can find parts which aren't perfectly round. We all know what a circle is, and we all know the difference between right and wrong. Rather than go on and on forever trying to explain it, if you can sit through this movie and not find Judah's actions distasteful, then no god or good is going to have any impact on you ... "I've gone out the window."