I just finished watching it after work for about the hundredth time but it has been probably over a year since I watched it last. The thing is as well acted and directed as C&M is, over the last few years I felt that Match Point (2005) explored the same themes with better looking actors and locations. But it all comes back to Woody's love of New York. The locations, as always, could not have been better scouted by anyone, and each and every shot in the picture looks and feels authentic. The acting is impeccable, played out by veterans of the stage and screen to the nines. The film centres around ophthalmologist Martin Landau who one the surface appears successful and happy, however he has been seeing another woman he met on a business trip two years prior played by 'Morticia Addams' Anjelica Huston. She is a wreck, madly in love with Landau's character Judah, hoping that the promises made by him, for them to be together would come true. Judah cannot go through with it but Huston's character threatens not only to reveal the tryst to his wife, but also divulge information about financial improprieties to Judah's business associates. He feels that the is no other recourse but to 'take care of her' and the remainder of the film deals with the question of whether it's worse to just confess, to face the music, or to carry around the guilt of a murder with you for the rest of your life. This is the central theme to Dostoyevsky's Crime & Punishment, but, unlike the novel, comic relief comes in the form of Woody's character, a very small time documentary filmmaker who's is hired by his brother in law, a pompous, successful Hollywood producer played by Alan Alda, to film a documentary about his life. Woody hates this guy more than anything, because to him he symbolizes that is wrong with the world. The comedic and dramatic story are intertwined so perfectly that at no point does the murder story make you feel uncomfortable or the comedic one get annoying or tired. If you haven't seen it, make a point, outstanding film.
Crimes & Misdemeanors, 1989, Director: Woody Allen. Starring: Alan Alda, Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Anjelica Huston, Martin Landau, Jerry Orbach, Sam Waterston.
And what the hell, if I've already brought it up I might as well go on a bit of a Martin Landau rant. Yes, he was in the original Mission:Impossible series this is true, but his best work might have been in Ed Wood. Martin played aging, drug addicted former biggest horror movie star in the world Bela Lugosi playing out the final years of his life with one of his biggest fans, B movie director Edward D Wood, Jr. Playing the star struck director is Johnny Depp in his second flick with Tim Burton (the first one being Edward Scissorhands) who's turn as a film maker who will do anything to get his movie made is almost on par with the performance of Landau. A great movie about people who make movies for people who like movies about people making movies (get all that - it does make sense). Here's one of many great scenes of Depp and Landau together.
North By Northwest is probably my favourite Hitchcock movie, and it just may be his most exciting and suspenseful. I mean, there is so many amazing set pieces in that movie, from Mount Rushmore, to the United Nations building to the crop dusting scene in rural Indiana. Martin Landau playing one of Vandamm's henchmen who forcibly pour a quart of bourbon down Cary Grant's throat then put him behind the wheel and send him on a hazy joy ride to his certain death on the treacherous cliffs nearby. An American cinema classic directed by a British man.
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