Love and Death, Crimes and Misdemeanors

A Comparison Between Two of Woody Allen's Films

Dec 17, 2008

The cerebral director Woody Allen portrays the concepts of love and death as crimes and misdemeanors and vice versa.

Although filmed 14 years apart, Woody Allen’s 1975 romantic comedy Love and Death explores many of the same themes as his 1989 romantic comedy Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Woody Allen Examines Adultery and Unrequited Love

It’s easy to see the similarity in the film titles: Love and Death and Crimes and Misdemeanors. In both movies, the issues surrounding love and death are crimes and misdemeanors, and all the crimes and misdemeanors concern love and death. The main characters feel a void at the center of their being because of love. To love is to suffer; conversely, to not love is to suffer, too.

In the earlier film, Love and Death, writer-director-actor Woody Allen deals with frustrations of adultery and unrequited love. One woman loves him, but he loves someone else, who loves someone else, who loves someone else. Allen’s character, Boris, obsesses equally on love and death. He wonders what happens after death, and considers our “dance with death” a rationalization of murder and divine justice.

In Crimes and Misdemeanors, Allen’s character, Clifford Stern, a documentary filmmaker, has the same concerns: adultery and unrequited love – all under the cover of jealous and murderous impulses that may or may not be realized.

Both movies concern childhood memories. In Love and Death, Boris recounts a childhood dream in which waiters emerge from upright coffins outside in a field surrounded by fog. He later describes life as one big restaurant with animals devouring each other. He has visions of Death, as a cloaked being who visits him periodically to check up on him. He fears that without a god, all of life would be murder and mayhem. He contemplates the murder of Napoleon along with Sonja (Diane Keaton), who comes up with the lame assassination scheme.

Later, Boris has a vision of an angel when he’s in prison; a false vision that lies to him. His love life is total frustration; he adores his cousin who doesn’t love him romantically, he has an affair with a beautiful countess who is attracted to him because he disgusts her. He always wants what he can’t have. For Boris and Sonja, who also wants what she can’t have, love and lust are mysterious – like wandering through life in a fog.

In Crimes and Misdemeanors, the central character Judah (Martin Landau), an opthamologist, has a passionless marriage and a neurotic mistress who threatens him with blackmail and exposure. He has flashbacks to his religious childhood (scenes in temple, scenes at home around the dinner table, and symbolic situations concerning Judaism). Along with his morality-challenged brother Jack (Jerry Orbach), he contemplates murdering his mistress Delores (Angelica Huston) in order to be free.

Meanwhile Clifford also remains stuck in a passionless marriage. He falls in love with a production assistant Halley (Mia Farrow), who prefers the insufferable bore Lester, (Alan Alda), Clifford’s much-despised brother-in-law. Clifford can’t understand his unrequited love interest and her adoration of Lester. He wants what he can’t have and can’t have what he wants. His misdemeanors involve kissing and proposing marriage to Halley while still married, and working on a flattering documentary about Lester solely for the money. His idol, an intellectual professor who talks of love and death, inexplicably commits suicide.

Where is Justice in Woody Allen Films?

Justice seems in short supply in these two Allen films. In Love and Death, cowardly Boris gets honored for bravery. When he’s actually innocent, he gets punished with death. There seems no logical system for rewards and punishments. In fact, as Boris notes, the happiest person he knows is the village idiot.

Likewise in Crimes and Misdemeanors, Judah prospers after the murder of his mistress and feels the guilt slipping away over time. The fact that he receives no punishment for his sin leads him to believe that God does not exist and no punishment will be forthcoming. This realization, however, represents his greatest fear: There is no logic, no moral structure to life. The meaning of life lies shrouded in a foggy childhood dream.

The copyright of the article Love and Death, Crimes and Misdemeanors in Romantic Comedy Films is owned by Leslie C. Halpern. Permission to republish Love and Death, Crimes and Misdemeanors in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.