Crimes and Misdemeanors

One of my favorites of his. While I really liked the Landau story, I related a lot more to the Woody Allen story. I was going through a similar romantic crisis as he was at the time, and it worked out just as well, so I have a special place in my bitter heart for this film.

Oh, and this blows Match Point out of the water.

One of my top 3 Woody films, just love it.


And Match Point is fucking dreadful, the man should stick to New York

Always loved Crimes and Misdemeanors. I like both Annie Hall and Manhattan more, but this one is number three when it comes to Allen's films.

Landau is what makes the movie for me, but Allen's story is also fantastic.

Yeah, I enjoyed Match Point at the time, but it feels pretty melodramatic and overripe compared to this now.

I don't know if the reason I love this so much - my favourite Woody Allen, easily - might have something to do with how strongly I agree with each and every one of the philosophical points made: the coldness of the universe, the inexistence of a real moral law, how it is humanity's instinct of love that manages to make existence bearable. Also, as an atheist raised by same, I always find it fascinating to see artists who had religious feeling instilled in them by their upbringing deal with this....like Allen I'm sure has no personal belief in religion whatsoever, but...it's still there. It reminds me a bit of the scenes where Marjane is talking to God in Persepolis (and the Marx scenes prove that it's not only religious people that end up in such situations.)

The Alan Alda character is such a cartoon, both how he's written in the script and Alda's performance, but through some strange miracle they pull it off. You never doubt that guys like these exist.

And speaking of which, whenever they get to the scenes where Martin S. Bergman's talking, I never for one instance doubt that this is an actual published philosopher discussing his work. Just total immersion within my suspension of disbelief, it's pretty rare that that happens to me.

I love the mix of cynicism and hope in this, and the questions about morality and consequence it grapples with. I really enjoyed both storylines, and it's credit to the movie that the eventual meeting between Allen and Landau doesn't feel shoehorned in. I've mentioned this in other threads, but I hadn't seen much of Allen at all until recently, and it hadn't been impressed on me before quite how much he enjoyed playing with form and structure.

And if you aren't a bit heartbroken when Allen realises he isn't going to get the girl, and the total rejection of people 'getting what they deserve' starts to play out, you have no heart.

The scene were Landau's character revists his childhood home and the conversation within his family there is fantastic and one of my favorite non-Woody moments in a Woody film. Love the hell outta this movie.