One of Woody Allen's own favorite movies, although he mentioned he wanted to cut the comedypart out of "Crimes and Misdemeanors". Thankfully he didnt, because "Crimes and Misdemeanors" mixes crime and comedy as perfectly as I have ever seen it. Add to this mix a very melancholic and tragic romance and you have the wonderfully bright ingredients of this Woody Allen classic.The storyline: an secret affair goes sour because the mistress threatens to reveal everything to his wife.The man panicks and starts pondering of ways to get rid of her. This storyline is the backdrop for a moral question: can one get away with crime WITHOUT punishment? The many (humorous and serious) ways in which Woody Allen wrestles with this question is what makes "Crimes and Misdemeanours" so beautiful and endearing.I could go on and on about this movie which is so dear to me, but I want to end with a quote from the brilliant Professor Louis Levy who survived the concentration camps in World War II. Louis Levy is the personification of many moral questions in this movie. And those questions are being posed without humor and in all earnest. In the end Levy asks himself what "love" is: ...when we fall in love, we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. We ask our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted upon us. So that love contains in it the contradiction: The attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past...

I think it's boring, it has no rhythm, it's not interesting. I have seen his film many times. But suddenly it takes us on a new path that is not the case and everything to finish as always. The film is repeated and repeated, we change course, start another movie and end in cross lives.Spoiler: Personally, I do not like anything Woody Allen, sorry, I apologize to everyone in the movies and this movie is not going to be different. I've never seen anything in his movies. Well yes, it makes dialogues better than anyone. I think he was born knowing to do dialogues, but the rest, neither know how to do nor care. I already say the director of photography of the film, Sven Nykvist, in an interview, does not spend time to the camera or the photo and so it comes out. One of his favorite directors is Ingmar Bergman but at least this one if he dedicated time to these sections.At least as happens in real life, the arrogant takes the girl. It's the only thing that has seemed logical and real in the movie. Cynicism on all sides, but selling it as a logical thing.I think that if he had dedicated himself to writing and someone else would have shot the movies he would have won a lot. All you have of genius of the paper, it has of not knowing to direct.

This is about as close as Woody Allen is likely to come to real tragedy. Martin Landau is having an affair but his paramour threatens to lower the boom on him by telling Landau's wife. Landau arranges to have his love murdered but is stunned by what he has gone, haunted by moral lessons learned from a rabbi when he was a child, and ends the movie thoroughly chastened but not in jail. He gives a subtle performance too.That's what is know as "the A story." The "B story" has Woody Allen as a documentary film maker in love with Mia Farrow, who is in love with Allan Alda, an egotistical, famous, rich nincompoop. The egotistical, famous, rich nincompoop gets the girl, while Allan's marriage dissolves, leaving him forlorn.Well, okay. It's not King Lear. But it's enjoyable and at times slyly thought provoking. (Is it really necessary to believe in God and an afterlife of punishment in order to feel guilt?) A rabbi, done to a turn by Sam Waterston, represents God and has gone blind. The symbolism is clear but the meaning is nebulous. The scenes of Jewish rituals are semi-real and heartwarming, like low-key versions of John Ford's weddings and dances.Allen's job is making a documentary film about Allan Alda, whom he loathes. Alda is foolish and, furthermore, he's got first dibs on the girl Allen loves. So the documentary, which is supposed to make a public icon out of Alda, turns out to be a disaster -- scenes of Alda shouting and bragging, intercut with shots of Mussolini on his balcony haranguing his fascist supporters, Alda copping a feel in a dark hallway. During the viewing of the film, we see Woody Allen seated in the theater and chuckling at his own cruel wit. Alda sits there aghast, his mouth open, and then fires Allen on the spot.Of course, the film is necessarily cluttered with Woody Allen's conversational tropes. "How AHHH you?" And, "I just feel, I don't know, unsettled. Y'know?" And Allen's compulsive wisecracks are up to par: "The last time I was inside a woman was when I visited the Statue of Liberty." Lots of dinner parties with guests, a wedding, a sentimental dance. The conversations are incredibly middle-class and banal -- the virtues of acupuncture and the center piece at Rockefeller Center. But the pace is deliberate, and the staging precise, as befits a tragedy.I preferred the B story to the A story. They weren't seamlessly blended. Yet it's watchable and diverting, and odd to see Woody Allen so seriously probing a concept like guilt.

An ophthalmologist (Martin Landau)'s mistress threatens to reveal their affair to his wife, while a married documentary filmmaker is infatuated by another woman.Allen excels when he takes philosophy, theology and other intellectual pursuits and blends hem with his love of cinema and classical music. Some are better than others, and this is among the best, bringing in Jewish morality, nihilism and Dostoevsky...Woody does not often tackle crime, but it is nice when he does. The theme would be revisited by Allen in his films "Match Point" (one of his best) and "Cassandra's Dream". Perhaps this is something he should focus on more often?