Crimes and Misdemeanors
I surely don't have time- to myself, or otherwise- to be sullenly rewatching <PERSON> movies (without even a monetizable work hook!) and yet here I am. I think this'll be the last one, after HUSBANDS AND WIVES last week and <PERSON> about a month ago - a trio that, taken together, but each in different ways, probably constitute the best directing he ever did. (The official over/under on "Woody Allen: Ranked" featurettes online when he eventually dies, sooner or later, is 0.5; the odds he'll somehow keep churning out movies post mortem, from a Hell presided over by <PERSON>, are slightly better).
Anyway: CRIMES is spare and swift in a purposeful way, distinct from the more haphazard "effortlessness" of post-2000s, "late style" <PERSON>; MATCH POINT, which is basically a remake, isn't remotely as precise or effective despite its Highsmithian airs. The cutting in the sequence leading up to <PERSON> murder is maybe <PERSON> finest hour, a stately fugue of anticipatory dread synced perfectly to <PERSON>. And the image of <PERSON>'s dead, staring eyes -- crept up to by an uncharacteristically low-angled camera, which holds for a small eternity before scuttling away - is genuinely nightmarish, although I suppose it says something that a character given zero dimension beyond her status as an obstreperous plot point has her best onscreen moment as a corpse.
This was one of <PERSON> problems with <PERSON>'s "film of ideas;" that <PERSON>'s unfortunate <PERSON>, rubbed out by gangsters hired by her married, older lover after she threatens to bust up his marriage, inspires no sympathy - and thus no real sense of tragedy in the aftermath. 698
I think she's right about this, and that <PERSON>'s ominous line, "I will not be destroyed by that neurotic woman," is probably one of the top ten jaw-droppers in <PERSON>'s filmography, category of "veiled confessional," though of course this movie predates his major personal controversies - it'd have to with <PERSON> cast as the idealized object of his own character's affections. In a way, it's that precise *lack* of plausible, red-blooded, mammalian emotion - of feelings any deeper than fight-or-flight, the condition embodied perfectly in <PERSON>'s skilled, gestural acting- that makes CRIMES so bracing to me. <PERSON>'s movies, whether comedy or drama (the two modes juxtaposed so blatantly here in the titles and cross-cutting structure) are almost always chill, functional little edifices that instrumentalize their characters, so making that tendency explicit - in effect doubling and tripling down on it through parallel narratives in which evil prospers and idealism goes (literally) out the window - is a solid artistic choice; I sort of feel like this (and HUSBANDS, and I guess DECONSTRUCTING <PERSON>) feel like the last time this filmmaker was really *making* choices, instead of just flying on autopilot. None of this explains why I spent ninety minutes last night with a movie that I already know is pretty good, and yet isn't exactly likely to reveal new depths or meanings, or even provide much pleasure except as ambient audiovisual background noise (I watched it while revising a book proposal on something totally different). But I've been thinking of <PERSON>'s eyes - and the bride kissing her own blind father gratefully on the cheek - all afternoon, so I guess I don't regret it. 698