Martin Landau as Judah Rosenthal
• Successful and respected eye doctor, wealthy lifestyle, loving wife
and children.
• He is weak, a liar and a cheat.
• His affair with a flight attendant makes him feel young and happy
again but threatens to ruin his life.
• Why does Allen choose eye doctor for Judah’s profession?
• Because it is ironic that a morally blind man helps others to see
better!
• Should Allen have cast someone else? What if this role were played
by a more attractive actor? Brad Pitt, for example? Would we be
more willing to root for him?
Woody Allen as Cliff
• Woody Allen’s choice to make a
commercial film to fund a pet
project mirrors Hollywood reality.
• Though he is married, he falls in
love with Mia Farrow, pursues her,
and sabotages her relationships
with others – all to compensate for
his loveless marriage.
• Cliff is like most of Allen’s
portrayals: a romantic misfit who is
perpetually perplexed by women's
propensity for choosing betterlooking, wealthier, more sensible
men. His fear of rejection further
undermines his plays for romantic
love.
Mia Farrow as Halley Reed
• Bright, educated, witty, PBS producer.
• Though she is divorced and is being pursued by
Alan Alda’s character, Lester, Cliff works to keep
them apart. Why?
• She must choose between a struggling
intellectual soul-mate and a powerful Hollywood
mogul.
• Who would you choose? Why?
The Rabbi, the Professor, and the Aunt
• What is the Rabbi’s purpose in the film?
• He represents one view of morality—the Godly
moral compass.
• Why is the Rabbi blind?
• Allen’s point—and one that recurs in his
pictures—is that God has abandoned us. We
are doomed to short desperate lives filled with
violence, selfishness and moral confusion.
• What does the professor represent?
• He illustrates moral relativism—that the best we
can do is determine for ourselves what is right
and wrong.
• What does Judah’s Aunt May represent?
• She represents the third option: nihilism or a
“might makes right” view of morality.
• The picture is an illustration of how we are all
faced with these options every day in every
decision we make – particularly the big ones.
Adultery
• The characters played by Martin Landau and Angelica
Huston have been locked in a two-year, “fatal attraction,”
adulterous relationship.
• Cliff would like to have an affair with Halley.
• Is adultery wrong?
• If so, how do we know it’s wrong? Because God tells us
it’s wrong? Because we couldn’t live with ourselves if we
did it? Why do so many married persons have affairs?
Murder
• As with The Godfather, we confront the issue of lawlessness—
specifically murder—as practiced by the mafia.
• The film asks the question: “Could I live with the knowledge that I
had murdered someone. Could I live a normal life with a career,
friends, and family?”
• The reason nearly all of us do not commit murder is because we
answer “no” to this question. If we answered “yes,” society would
break down.
• Did George Eastman answer “no” to the question once he got out on
the lake with Alice Tripp in A Place in the Sun?
• Why do we choose not to murder? Because God forbids it?
Auterism
• The point of Allen’s films is not to focus on what happens to the characters
but instead on how and what decisions they reach.
• Allen starkly blends humor and tragedy in dealing with the subjects of
murder, romance, suicide, and pathos.
• Virtue (true love, honest work) is punished and evil (murder, vanity, fame,
and fortune) is rewarded.
• The film is about whether justice, goodness, and happiness are possible in
a godless (liberal, secular, postmodern) world. Why doesn’t nihilism rein – or
does it? How do we create meaning from the nothingness of life?
Does Art Imitate Life or Life Imitate Art?
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Most critics argue that Allen either consciously or subconsciously alludes to his current real-life troubles in
whatever film he is making at the time.
Crimes And Misdemeanors was made three years before the Allen-Farrow split.
Are there signs in the film that reflect reality and presage the break-up?
Farrow (who had married 50-year old Frank Sinatra when she was 21) later accused Allen of abusing their
adopted daughter Dyan and Allen admitted a romantic liaison with her adopted daughter—Soon-Yi Previn—
from a previous relationship with pianist Andre Previn. Farrow claimed that she discovered the affair by finding
nude photographs of Soon-Yi taken by Allen in his apartment. Soon-Yi was 22 at the time of the revelations.
She and Allen married in 1997 and have two adopted daughters.
The film:
Cliff is in a loveless marriage.
He falls in love with an unobtainable woman.
He is obsessed with hanging around his 14-year-old niece and they have adult conversations and do adult
activities such as watching 1940s films.
Coincidence?
Conclusion: Wither Woody?
• Why are Allen’s films largely
ignored by the American
movie-going public?
• For the most part, they do
not have the traditional
Hollywood “happy ending.”
Instead, characters are
resolved to the
consequences of their lives.
• They are character, dialoguedriven stories of flawed
individuals. There are no
superheroes or super-effects.
• Therefore, while Allen’s films
can teach us a great deal
about relationships and the
human condition, no one is
watching…
Sources
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Ebert, Roger, “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” rogerebert.com, October 13, 1989.
Grant, Judith, “Morality and Liberal Legal Culture,” in Jonn Denvir, ed., Legal Reelism (Urbana, IL: University of
Illinois Press, 1996).
Hicks, Chris, “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” Deseret Morning News, November 3, 1989.
Kempley, Rita, “’Crimes and Misdemeanors,’” Washington Post, October 13, 1989.