Martin Landau as Judah Rosenthal

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Martin Landau as Judah Rosenthal

• Successful and respected eye doctor, wealthy
  lifestyle, loving wife and children.
  
• He is weak, a liar and a cheat.
• His affair with a flight attendant makes him feel
  young and happy again but threatens to ruin his
  life.
  
• Why does Allen choose eye doctor for Judahs
  profession?
  
• Because it is ironic that a morally blind man
  helps others to see better!
  
• Should Allen have cast someone else? What if this
  role were played by a more attractive actor? Brad
  Pitt, for example? Would we be more willing to
  root for him?

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Woody Allen as Cliff

• Woody Allens choice to make a commercial film to
  fund a pet project mirrors Hollywood reality.
  
• Though he is married, he falls in love with Mia
  Farrow, pursues her, and sabotages her
  relationships with others all to compensate for
  his loveless marriage.
• Cliff is like most of Allens portrayals a
  romantic misfit who is perpetually perplexed by
  women's propensity for choosing better-looking,
  wealthier, more sensible men. His fear of
  rejection further undermines his plays for
  romantic love.

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Mia Farrow as Halley Reed

• Bright, educated, witty, PBS producer.
• Though she is divorced and is being pursued by
  Alan Aldas character, Lester, Cliff works to
  keep them apart. Why?
  
• She must choose between a struggling intellectual
  soul-mate and a powerful Hollywood mogul.
  
• Who would you choose? Why?

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The Rabbi, the Professor, and the Aunt

• What is the Rabbis purpose in the film?
• He represents one view of moralitythe Godly
  moral compass.
  
• Why is the Rabbi blind?
• Allens pointand one that recurs in his
  picturesis that God has abandoned us. We are
  doomed to short desperate lives filled with
  violence, selfishness and moral confusion.
• What does the professor represent?
• He illustrates moral relativismthat the best we
  can do is determine for ourselves what is right
  and wrong.
  
• What does Judahs Aunt May represent?
• She represents the third option nihilism or a
  might makes right view of morality.
  
• The picture is an illustration of how we are all
  faced with these options every day in every
  decision we make particularly the big ones.
  

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Adultery

• The characters played by Martin Landau and
  Angelica Huston have been locked in a two-year,
  fatal attraction, adulterous relationship.
  
• Cliff would like to have an affair with Halley.
• Is adultery wrong?
• If so, how do we know its wrong? Because God
  tells us its wrong? Because we couldnt live
  with ourselves if we did it? Why do so many
  married persons have affairs?

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Murder

• As with The Godfather, we confront the issue of
  lawlessnessspecifically murderas practiced by
  the mafia.
  
• The film asks the question Could I live with
  the knowledge that I had murdered someone. Could
  I live a normal life with a career, friends, and
  family?
• The reason nearly all of us do not commit murder
  is because we answer no to this question. If we
  answered yes, society would break down.
  
• Did George Eastman answer no to the question
  once he got out on the lake with Alice Tripp in A
  Place in the Sun?
  
• Why do we choose not to murder? Because God
  forbids it?

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Auterism

• The point of Allens films is not to focus on
  what happens to the characters but instead on how
  and what decisions they reach.
  
• Allen starkly blends humor and tragedy in dealing
  with the subjects of murder, romance, suicide,
  and pathos.
  
• Virtue (true love, honest work) is punished and
  evil (murder, vanity, fame, and fortune) is
  rewarded.
  
• The film is about whether justice, goodness, and
  happiness are possible in a godless (liberal,
  secular, postmodern) world. Why doesnt nihilism
  rein or does it? How do we create meaning from
  the nothingness of life?

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Does Art Imitate Life or Life Imitate Art?

• Most critics argue that Allen either consciously
  or subconsciously alludes to his current
  real-life troubles in whatever film he is making
  at the time.
• Crimes And Misdemeanors was made three years
  before the Allen-Farrow split.
  
• Are there signs in the film that reflect reality
  and presage the break-up?
  
• Farrow (who had married 50-year old Frank Sinatra
  when she was 21) later accused Allen of abusing
  their adopted daughter Dyan and Allen admitted a
  romantic liaison with her adopted
  daughterSoon-Yi Previnfrom a previous
  relationship with pianist Andre Previn. Farrow
  claimed that she discovered the affair by finding
  nude photographs of Soon-Yi taken by Allen in his
  apartment. Soon-Yi was 22 at the time of the
  revelations. She and Allen married in 1997 and
  have two adopted daughters.
• The film
• Cliff is in a loveless marriage.
• He falls in love with an unobtainable woman.
• He is obsessed with hanging around his
  14-year-old niece and they have adult
  conversations and do adult activities such as
  watching 1940s films.
• Coincidence?

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Conclusion Wither Woody?

• Why are Allens films largely ignored by the
  American movie-going public?
  
• For the most part, they do not have the
  traditional Hollywood happy ending. Instead,
  characters are resolved to the consequences of
  their lives.
• They are character, dialogue-driven stories of
  flawed individuals. There are no superheroes or
  super-effects.
  
• Therefore, while Allens films can teach us a
  great deal about relationships and the human
  condition, no one is watching

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Sources

• Ebert, Roger, Crimes and Misdemeanors,
  rogerebert.com, October 13, 1989.
  
• Grant, Judith, Morality and Liberal Legal
  Culture, in Jonn Denvir, ed., Legal Reelism
  (Urbana, IL University of Illinois Press,
  1996).
• Hicks, Chris, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Deseret
  Morning News, November 3, 1989.
  
• Kempley, Rita, Crimes and Misdemeanors,
  Washington Post, October 13, 1989.