Sunday, September 23, 2007

Woody Allen's 'Crimes and Misdemeanors'

‘Crimes and Misdemeanors’ is arguably Woody Allen’s finest movie. It’s my personal favourite.

This blog is designed as a forum for discussion of the movie.

See the sidebar for links to reviews of the movie and other relevant discussion.

The three posts below link to an illustrated discussion of the movie:
'Woody Allen's 'Crimes and Misdemeanors': A Discussion In Three Parts'.

All comments/discussion appreciated.

6 comments:

Alex said...

Good work! I agree with your comments of the video.
Also my favourite movie of Woody Allen!!
Congratulations.

Clark Meyer said...

Crimes and Misdemeanors was the first movie I saw as a young adult that whetted my appetite for substantive film (it was a real change from a steady diet of Lethal Weapon sequels or whatever the hell I was watching at the time) . . . I remember vividly how stunned I was at the conclusion. At that age, I probably would have said I was an atheist, but the "without God, anything is permissible" ending showed me how little I had thought through the implications.

I watched the film again tonight after 18 years (not sure why it took me so long) as a follow up to my book club's tackling Crime and Punishment, and then I just stumbled upon your analyses on YouTube . . . very thoughtful work! Wonderfully executed!

I have to wonder, was this an exercise for academic purposes or just a labor of love? The teacher in me (I teach English--and a good bit of film--to young adults) is inspired by the format! Rather than simply have my produce a paper about a particular film, I could easily see them attempting an assignment like this one, calling on both writing and editing skills.

shadling21 said...

Great video. Thanks so much. I'm writing a paper on Woody Allen and very much appreciate a video analysis. Why aren't there more of these things? I realize that they are an awful lot of work but this one was so well done!

Desiree said...

Just watched the movie last night, and wanted some analysis. Yours came up first on Youtube. Loved it;
well done, incisive and insightful

Joel said...

Interesting insights. Thanks for posting them.

Crimes and Misdemeanors is a film that does not get old. I watch it every few years and it stays just as engrossing as it was the first time I saw it.

The power of the film for me lies in the idea that the world is neither how we want it to be nor not how we want it to be: the world just is. The world doesn't care if you get what you want or deserve, or not.

It's a powerful idea. Allen made it live. This is why the film endures.

Woody Allen Fan said...

Woody Allen's 1989 movie, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS , is an excellent icebreaker concerning the need of God while making decisions in the area of personal morality. In this film, Allen attacks his own atheistic view of morality. Martin Landau plays a Jewish eye doctor named Judah Rosenthal raised by a religious father who always told him, "The eyes of God are always upon you." However, Judah later concludes that God doesn't exist. He has his mistress (played in the film by Anjelica Huston) murdered because she continually threatened to blow the whistle on his past questionable, probably illegal, business activities. She also attempted to break up Judah 's respectable marriage by going public with their two-year affair. Judah struggles with his conscience throughout the remainder of the movie. He continues to be haunted by his father's words: "The eyes of God are always upon you." This is a very scary phrase to a young boy, Judah observes. He often wondered how penetrating God's eyes are.

Later in the film, Judah reflects on the conversation his religious father had with Judah 's unbelieving Aunt May at the dinner table many years ago:

"Come on Sol, open your eyes. Six million Jews burned to death by the Nazis, and they got away with it because might makes right,” says aunt May

Sol replies, "May, how did they get away with it?"

Judah asks, "If a man kills, then what?"

Sol responds to his son, "Then in one way or another he will be punished."

Aunt May comments, "I say if he can do it and get away with it and he chooses not to be bothered by the ethics, then he is home free."

Judah 's final conclusion was that might did make right. He observed that one day, because of this conclusion, he woke up and the cloud of guilt was gone. He was, as his aunt said, “home free.”

Woody Allen has exposed a weakness in his own humanistic view that God is not necessary as a basis for good ethics. There must be an enforcement factor in order to convince Judah not to resort to murder. Otherwise, it is fully to Judah 's advantage to remove this troublesome woman from his life.

The Bible tells us, "{God} has also set eternity in the hearts of men..." (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV). The secularist calls this an illusion, but the Bible tells us that the idea that we will survive the grave was planted in everyone's heart by God Himself. Romans 1:19-21 tells us that God has instilled a conscience in everyone that points each of them to Him and tells them what is right and wrong (also Romans 2:14 -15).

It's no wonder, then, that one of Allen's fellow humanists would comment, "Certain moral truths -- such as do not kill, do not steal, and do not lie -- do have a special status of being not just 'mere opinion' but bulwarks of humanitarian action. I have no intention of saying, 'I think Hitler was wrong.' Hitler WAS wrong." (Gloria Leitner, "A Perspective on Belief," THE HUMANIST, May/June 1997, pp. 38-39)

Here Leitner is reasoning from her God-given conscience and not from humanist philosophy. It wasn't long before she received criticism. Humanist Abigail Ann Martin responded, "Neither am I an advocate of Hitler; however, by whose criteria is he evil?" (THE HUMANIST, September/October 1997, p. 2)

The secularist can only give incomplete answers to these questions: How could you have convinced Judah not to kill? On what basis could you convince Judah it was wrong for him to murder?


Woody Allen's CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS forces unbelievers to grapple with the logical conclusions of a purely secular morality. It opens a door for Christians to find common ground with those whom they attempt to share Christ; we all have to deal with personal morality issues. However, the secularist has no basis for asserting that Judah is wrong.




(Caution: CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS is rated PG-13. It does include some adult themes