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Crimes And Misdemeanors [DVD] [1990]
 
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Crimes And Misdemeanors [DVD] [1990]

DVD ~ Martin Landau
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
RRP: £15.99
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Frequently Bought Together

Crimes And Misdemeanors [DVD] [1990] + Husbands And Wives [DVD] [1992] + Manhattan Murder Mystery [DVD] [1994]
Total RRP: £48.97
Price For All Three: £13.54

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Crimes And Misdemeanors [DVD] [1990]
76% buy the item featured on this page:
Crimes And Misdemeanors [DVD] [1990] 4.6 out of 5 stars (14)
£4.88
Husbands And Wives [DVD] [1992]
8% buy
Husbands And Wives [DVD] [1992] 4.4 out of 5 stars (7)
£3.98
Manhattan Murder Mystery [DVD] [1994]
8% buy
Manhattan Murder Mystery [DVD] [1994] 4.5 out of 5 stars (11)
£4.68
Manhattan [DVD] [1979]
5% buy
Manhattan [DVD] [1979] 4.5 out of 5 stars (19)
£4.58

Product details

  • Actors: Martin Landau, Woody Allen, Bill Bernstein, Claire Bloom, Stephanie Roth Haberle
  • Directors: Woody Allen
  • Writers: Woody Allen
  • Producers: Charles H. Joffe, Helen Robin, Jack Rollins, Robert Greenhut, Thomas A. Reilly
  • Format: Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen
  • Language English
  • Subtitles: Danish, English, French, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish
  • Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
  • Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Classification: 15
  • Studio: MGM Entertainment
  • DVD Release Date: 1 Jul 2002
  • Run Time: 100 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B00005KIT3
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 9,461 in DVD (See Bestsellers in DVD)

Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review

Along with Deconstructing Harry which would follow seven years later, this is Woody Allen's most sombre comedy-drama, as well as his most ambitious film of the 1980s. Allen weaves together two central stories about very different groups of Manhattanites, linking them through a mutual friend, a rabbi (Sam Waterston) who's going blind. This image is key to the sometimes ponderous, often clever musings on faith, morals, and vision (or lack thereof) that obsess his deeply troubled and unhappy characters. At its centre, the film explores people who, through lack of religious conviction or arrogance, rationalise their awful, selfish acts by presuming that God couldn't possibly be watching.

The central story--a neo-noir of sorts--follows a fortuitous ophthalmologist (Martin Landau, all sweat and grimaces) who faces the prospect of his obsessed mistress (Anjelica Huston) ruining his life by telling his family of their affair. Desperate, the doctor hires his slimy criminal brother (Jerry Orbach) to eliminate the situation, and then suffers overwhelming regret afterwards. The flip tale is more typical Allen. Funnier and lighter, it focuses on an impossible romance between Allen's character and Halley Reed, a film producer played by Mia Farrow. Between Allen and his Hollywood fantasy stands his brother-in-law (Alan Alda, perfectly cast as an obnoxious, successful sitcom producer), who also desires Halley. Allen is Landau's opposite: an honest, struggling documentarian who cares nothing about fortune, suffers in a loveless marriage, and is surrounded by triumphant phonies. The nice-guys-finish-last moral may be as contrived as it is devastating. Yet, when Landau and Allen finally share a final scene during a wedding, their faces, subtle body movements, and contrasting fortunes somehow suggest that indeed God may be blind, and if not, the deity has a very sick sense of humour. --Dave McCoy


DVD Description

DVD Special features:

Original Theatrical Trailer
Interactive Menus Screens and Chapter Selections
Soundtrack in Mono: English, French, Italian, Spanish
Subtitles: English, French, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, English for the hard of hearing.


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Customer Reviews

14 Reviews
5 star:
 (11)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.6 out of 5 stars (14 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Could this be Allen's ultimate masterpiece?, 31 Jan 2006
By Jonathan James Romley (Dublin, Ireland) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   
Despite what another commentator has said, it remains untrue that Allen only discovered Bergman after the "early funny ones" and thus, flippantly decided to be profound. Long-term aficionados of the director will know that he was indulging in homage to the likes of Bergman, Godard and Fellini as far back as Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, Sleeper, and Love & Death. However, whereas those films took certain elements from European cinema and turned them into satire, Allen would eventually begin to explore his own serious side with films like Interiors, Stardust Memories, Another Woman and September, before finally perfected his new found style with this glorious and morally oblique modern-masterpiece.

Crimes and Misdemeanours is a film that manages to move gracefully between two very different (though ultimately, very serious) stories, whilst simultaneously juggling a tone that is both light and humours, but also bleak and profound. By focusing on two different characters, Allen is able to bring us into the film slowly... it is to his credit as a filmmaker that he is able to pull off the subtle shifts in style, creating a mood in one scene that is vague and philosophical, before cutting to something that seems much more frivolous. The serious moments never seem pretentious and the lighter moments are never forced, with Allen making great use of his persona as the slightly neurotic loveable loser at odds with the world around him, as he's hired by his brother-in-law (a pompous TV producer) to direct a flattering documentary portrait of the man and his work. The second arc of the story, the one that really presents the moral centre of the film, focuses on a wealthy ophthalmologist (brilliantly played by Martin Landau), faced with some serious questions of faith, as well as various ethical decisions, when a spurned lover begins to make his life very complicated.

Allen juggles between the stories perfectly, having each disparate tale somehow reflect subtly on the other one, creating in the process, an effortless back and forth. As well as the subtle foreshadowing's there are also more intelligent cinematic devices being used, as Allen creates a subplot in which his character Cliff is also working on a documentary about an ailing professor who, on occasion, can be glimpsed in the background on Cliff's editing monitor discussing the broader philosophical aspects of life, love and death. These snippets of philosophical discourse also, subtly, pass comment on the actions depicted in the film, creating a further layer of self-reference that can also be seen in the films that Allen's character watches during his down-time. Once again, Allen doesn't allow these devices to overwhelm the story or push things into the realms of overt-intellectual masturbation, but instead, merely compliments the two stories, adding further layers for the audience to pick through and also giving further emotional and psychological weight to that fantastically low-key ending.

As great as the writing and the performances are, it is in his role as filmmaker in which Allen truly impresses with this film... managing to take his fondness for Bergman and, for once, develop it into his own personal style of filmmaking. Therefore, it's less self-conscious than Another Woman, and even with the influence of Bergman evident in his use of legendary Swedish cinematographer Sven Nyvist, this still feels like a Woody Allen film, even managing to prefigure the style of Husbands and Wives and Bullets Over Broadway. Every nuance of the film, from the casting, to the lighting and composition, the editing and the choice of music is perfect, with Allen managing to create a great atmosphere of loss and isolation for his characters to fall into.

Though it is Allen and Landau that represent the moral centre of the film, there are also some impeccably nuanced performances from supporting players. Alan Alda, as Cliff's self-important brother-in-law Lester offers great comic-support, whilst Mia Farrow gives her second best performance in a Woody Allen film, following her great turn in the similarly brilliant Purple Rose of Cairo. There's also further support offered by Sam Waterston as the man of faith slowly loosing his sight, Jerry Orbach as Landau's mobster brother, Joanna Gleason as Cliff's long-suffering wife (and Lester's favourite sister) Wendy, and Angelica Huston as the woman scorned. If I had to pick out one flaw with this film, I'd say that Huston's character is a little annoying, falling into the occasional Allen trap of being far too needy and obnoxious (the same can be said about Farrow's character in the later Husbands and Wives, or Dianne Keaton's role in Manhattan). This really is a mild criticism, though, with Huston trying her best to overcome her character's (admittedly quite necessary) shortcomings to give a strong and affecting performance.

However, the film belongs to Landau and Allen, with the former giving perhaps the best performance of his career and the latter proving himself to be (once and for all) the greatest American filmmaker of his generation. Crimes and Misdemeanours is really a perfect film (for me), and along with Love and Death, Annie Hall, Purple Rose of Cairo and Bullets Over Broadway, gives further proof of Allen's cinematic genius.

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A work of contemporary genius, 28 Feb 2001
By Mr. D. Woods "dwoods92" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)      
One of my personal favourites of Woody Allen's works, 'Crimes and Misdemeanors' is witty, poignant and emotional. Allen's ability to create a sympathetic character in Martin Landau's Judah Rosenthal, who agrees to the planned murder of his former mistress, shows his wonderful eye for character. The dialogue, as always, is sharp and witheringly dry but without pretension and the echoes of a great Allen influence, Ingmar Bergman, can be detected within the narrative. An often dark yet thoroughly rewarding cinematic experience, this is Woody Allen at his very best.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The only Crime was it took this long!, 19 Jun 2001
By mike@aba.co.uk (Stockport, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
Crimes & Misdemeanours is an examination into the dark soul of Everyman. By setting Man's intentions against Man's actions, Allen masterfully illuminates the dark space that lies between the two, and the monsters that lie in wait there. It's never an easy journey when a Director holds a mirror up to us in this way, and this film is no exception. By clever use of the story of two decent ordinary guys lives, Allen opens out nice & easy, lulling the viewer into a false sense of 'Allen' insecurity. But as the story progresses, these simple men become victims of their own desires, and, consequently, others become victims of these simple men. We see here an older, more sullen Allen, miserly with his feelgood moments in the film, dragging us unwillingly down into the place he's intent on showing us, our own dark ambition. Comedy would not be my first choice of words to describe this film, but unmissable would definately feature. Watch this film!
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