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One begins to catch himself saying at the start of another Woody Allen film, "Oh, it's Woody doing..." Last week I reviewed Alice, which is Woody's take on Lewis Carroll; quite often he "does" Ingmar Bergman, of course, and in the new-to-DVD Shadows and Fog, he tries his hand at German Expressionism. (With maybe a touch of Fellini.) Based on the imitative Allen's own one-act play "Death", the film takes place in a nighttime world far removed from his typical amber New York, a stony town where most jobs are had by circus folk or prostitutes and a strangler stalks the streets. Allen's Kleinman becomes a reluctant watchman and meets the jilted lover (Mia Farrow) of a pretentious clown (John Malkovich); on separate occasions, both Kleinman and the woman wind up at a whorehouse, where each indulges. If Franz Kafka were alive to direct a film, it'd probably turn out a lot like the drifting Shadows and Fog; there is a quote about the German-Jewish author that could just as easily apply to Woody Allen: "Some deny the existence of misery by pointing to the sun; he denies the existence of the sun by pointing to misery." Of course, Kafka's version wouldn't have had so many punchlines, and he probably would've pulled off the ending better: Woody's too self-conscious to do dada with grace. But hey, it's short. MGM's DVD version gives lie to the title Fog: the 1.85:1, 16x9-enhanced transfer is sometimes so low in contrast that the black-and-white image becomes an indecipherable wash of grey; the letterboxed bands are much darker than any single picture element throughout. The trailer, I should note, looks no higher-key than the film itself, and I might be fooling myself into thinking that Carlo Di Palma's well composed cinematography ever appeared different. A 2.0 mono soundmix does the job, while the included booklet is an invaluable resource of quotes from Allen himself.-Bill Chambers