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Crimes and Misdemeanors: On Existential Terror and Morality Lost
"Well, I'm not a saint, okay!"
"But you're too easy on yourself. Don't you see that that's your problem: you rationalize everything; you're not honest with yourself. What are future generations going to say about us? Some day we're going to be like him [motions towards skeleton] - this is what happens to us. It's very important to have some kind of personal integrity. I'll be hanging in a classroom some day and I want to make sure that when I've thinned out, I'm well thought of."
The quote is actually from Manhattan, a film Woody Allen made in 1979, ten years before Crimes and Misdemeanors. But it neatly captures the thematic core of this later movie, a story about trying to get one's moral bearings in a universe where good people suffer and criminals prosper. To an extent, this theme runs throughout all of Allen's work because it is the philosophical dilemma haunting the Jewish Nebbish, a character around which Allen centers every one of his films. Usually these nebbish characters mourn their diligent failures in the face of others' phony successes: a serious comedian struggling with his coke-snorting, audience-deadening producers (Manhattan) or an insecure writer losing a girl to a slick rock musician (Annie Hall). But, in Crimes and Misdemeanors, Allen ups the ante of evil to the high stakes of murder. And instead of suffering unemployment or loneliness, the most moral character in the film - a Jewish rabbi - gradually goes blind.
In this way, Crimes and Misdemeanors is Allen's sharpest and most profound work, a parable wherein the consequences of postmodern nihilism are pushed to the limit, a lament about the moral darkness into which our society is sinking. But it is also, put simply, a Woody Allen film. So rather than feeling like a heavy-handed sermon, it plays like an absurdist comedy with a philosophical twist. Only Allen could pull that off, and in Crimes it comes off without a hitch, which is to say, brilliantly.
Martin Landau, in an exquisitely controlled performance, plays the role of Nietzchean superman: a wealthy, respected opthamologist who murders his mistress to prevent messy complications in his perfect life. That's the "crimes" part of the title's equation. The mistress - while she's still alive, that is - is played by a strikingly youngish Angelica Huston, who imbues the role with an edgy, intense instability.
Across town, Woody Allen and Allen Alda duel to win the affections of a PBS documentary producer, played by Mia Farrow. Woody Allen plays, well, Woody Allen - but with less whining and more anger, frustration, and intellectualism than his usual nebbish character. He's a struggling documentary filmmaker who would rather make a movie about a philosophy professor than pander to his brother-in-law (Allen Alda). But, in the end, he follows the money and agrees to film Alda's biography for PBS. Alda's character is a flagrant womanizer who rides roughshod on his sitcom production team while spewing cheap truisms like "If it bends, it's funny; if it breaks, it's not funny" and "Comedy equals tragedy plus time." That's the "misdemeanors" part of the movie. Alda is successful; Allen is broke.
Sam Waterston, playing the Jewish rabbi, is the link between this pair of ethical struggles, providing a moral compass while gradually losing his sight.
It all sounds very dark when told this way, but the movie is wickedly funny thanks to Allen's excellent ear for dialogue. When Martin Landau's Mafioso brother, played by Jerry Orbach, comes over to discuss ways of dealing with the jilted mistress (she's threatening to confront Landau's wife), he raises the possibility of murder. "What'll they do?" asks Landau's character in shock. "What'll they'll do? They'll handle it," Orbach says matter-of-factly.
Or when Woody Allen is telling Mia Farrow about how much he hates having to film his brother-in-law's documentary. "But he's an American phenomenon!" she says of Alda's character. "Yeah, well, so is acid rain," Allen replies.
This is funny stuff, situated on the edge between seriousness and farce, while retaining the impact of both. The farce captures the viewer's attention as the movie's action occurs, allowing laughter to cover all bets until the moral dilemmas gradually sink in. And once planted there, they haunt the viewer for days afterward, causing him to think about the existential terror of living in a Godless universe, a place where the only currency for greatness is material success in the here and now.
That existential terror is what makes Woody Allen's nebbish characters tick in all of his films. They're confused as to how to carry themselves in the absence of an absolute morality, yet horrified at how peers invoke relativism as a license for bad behavior. Somehow, it's just not right to have an extramarital affair or be a pompous womanizer or an arrogant intellectual loudmouth. But, where does it say so in the postmodern ethics handbook? If one actually prospers as a self-serving egomaniac while the meek and conscientious perish, then maybe the religions of old got it all wrong; perhaps the Biblical laws only apply to a fantasy place while the real world is governed by a darker Darwinian code. This tension between the theoretical teachings of religion and the empirical observations of the worldly man paralyzes Allen's nebbish characters, causing them to act weak and foolish, sometimes even leading themselves into personal ruin.
It's this last part - the outward actions - of Woody Allen's nebbish personality upon which most people fixate without understanding or appreciating the philosophical nuances of his character. They whine about his whining and bitch about his wimpy hijinks, his inability to be a "real man," and in so doing miss the point entirely. Allen isn't celebrating this kind of behavior in his movies; he's lamenting it, indicting the bleak moral void into which the world has sunk and its deleterious effects on the existentially aware man. In a kinder, earlier time, perhaps his little nebbish would be a saint, but in twentieth century Manhattan, he's just comes off as an impotent anachronism.
In a way, there's righteousness in Allen's on-screen nebbish that is sadly lacking in his real life persona. I suspect Allen knows this and in fact tries to make up for his improprieties by making films that are smarter and more moral than himself. Indeed, one of his cinematic influences is Ingmar Bergman, who once remarked: "I could always live in my art, but not in my life."
In Crimes and Misdemeanors, Allen lives more fully than in any of his other films, redeeming himself so completely with his moral statement that one is persuaded to forgive his latter-day sins in the real world and simply respect him for the fine philosopher he is. So, if I were he, I wouldn't worry about advance generations looking down on my being with scorn. Based on the merit of this film alone, I think Allen's afterlife in the classrooms of the future should be very secure indeed.
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