Woody Allen's work hasn't been splendid with any regularity in well over a decade, but his 1989 film
Crimes and Misdemeanors is an outstanding achievement, a pensive meditation on morality in which the Woodman finally reconciles his Bergman (as in Ingmar) and schticky, uh, personas. Martin Landau stars an ophthalmologist who's lost his faith in every sense of the word: he's cheating on his wife and hasn't been to temple in years. But the pie-eyed phase of his affair is over, and while endeavouring to both end and keep hushed his bout of infidelity, he becomes a God-fearing man. Meanwhile, in a parallel (and more joke-laden) plot, Allen plays Cliff Stern, a struggling documentary filmmaker doing a bread-job TV special about his brother-in-law (Alan Alda), a famous producer of sitcoms. When Cliff falls for a sensitive behind-the-scenes handler (Mia Farrow), it behoves him to contemplate a divorce from loveless Wendy (professional shrew Joanna Gleason). One of these two main characters does the right thing, the other doesn't, and a rabbi goes blind--draw your own conclusions. Despite a palette of warm colours (courtesy of Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman's cinematographer),
Crimes and Misdemeanors has a colder than an iceberg outlook that really speaks to our human failings, but most importantly, the film's cross-cutting structure coheres. MGM's new DVD release features a detailed 1.85:1 anamorphic remaster (the yellow quality that marred many an Orion VHS transfer, including this film's, is absent), sound that's superior for mono, a trailer, and a collectible booklet.
-Bill Chambers
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