Unruly Life of Woody Allen by Marion Meade

Author:Marion Meade
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 1999-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

The summer of 1988, Woody again traveled to Europe with Mia and the family. Accompanied by the troubleshooting Jane Martin, they set out on a whirlwind vacation that whisked them to five countries, including the Soviet Union, which they visited for only one day after Woody became upset with the primitive local customs. First-class tickets on the Concorde and accommodations at deluxe hotels made it an expensive holiday that cost approximately $425,000. (The following year he chartered a private jet.) Writing on hotel stationery in cities such as Helsinki and Salzburg, he completed an unusual screenplay that encompassed the stories of two lives. A highly regarded ophthalmologist (Martin Landau) is having an affair with a neurotic flight attendant (Anjelica Huston), who is threatening to destroy his career and marriage unless he marries her. Even though Judah Rosenthal is haunted by a childhood memory of his father warning him that God sees everything we do, he arranges to have his bothersome mistress murdered—with neither detection nor punishment. Tormented at first by guilt, the eye doctor is eventually able to live with his cold-blooded deed. The crime of the doctor who gets away with murder is paralleled by the misdemeanors of an idealistic maker of high-minded documentary films that nobody wants to see. The nebbishy Cliff Stern (Woody) is regarded as a fool by his castrating wife (Joanna Gleason) and rich brother-in-law, Lester (Alan Alda), who constantly put him down. Cliff's infatuation with a kindly television producer (Mia) seems to offer an escape from his sexless marriage, but she decides to marry Lester instead. What Judah and Cliff—and Woody, too—share in common is their ability to justify their actions.

In Crimes and Misdemeanors, a brilliant balance between comedy and drama, Woody turned out a successful film that was serious, witty, and bore no resemblance to Bergman movies. Among the ethical questions that his contemporary New York characters ponder are: Is evil punished? Are good deeds rewarded? Despite its focus on moral issues, this complex comedy would be his biggest commercial hit since Hannah and Her Sisters. Taking in $18 million at the box office, it struck a chord with both critics and audiences. Although critics debated the meaning of the film, the idea was perfectly clear to John Simon, who hailed Woody's courage for tackling the subject and his "guts" to come up with an honest answer: "There is no justice, no rhyme or reason in the universe, no God." The film was, in Simon's opinion, "Allen's first successful blending of drama and comedy, plot and subplot."

Crimes and Misdemeanors was one of two films Woody released in 1988, quite an accomplishment for even the most industrious auteur. "Oedipus Wrecks" went into production seven months before Crimes. Under the umbrella title New York Stories, Woody and his producer, Robert Greenhut, decided to make a short-story film, three shorts by different filmmakers, a genre that had fallen into disfavor after the forties. But Greenhut believed they could pull together a project exploring various aspects of New York life.

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