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.
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.