Reeling Backward: "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (1989)

"Crimes and Misdemeanors" is perhaps Woody Allen's most ambitious film, and not his most successful. Though it was a substantial critical and popular hit, I found it rather dreary and ineffectual. It's a self-conscious exploration of morality, of whether belief in God or in humanist choices are incompatible, and whether dark crimes -- big and small -- can weigh down our souls like anchors in the ocean.

It's the sort of movie, in fact, where the two main characters, whose stories have paralleled without ever intersecting, bump into each other in the last scene and blatantly discuss the theme of the picture. It's the classic example of telling rather than showing, and I'm of the school that when you tip your hand too much into the light, the audience is quick to check out emotionally and intellectually.

In many ways "Crimes" reminded me of "A Serious Man," another movie by great filmmakers that I disregarded despite the widespread affection with which it was met. Both also focus on Jewish figures whose faith is called into question, though Allen's picture is more about the general question of faith in a higher power, while "Man" is essentially a rumination on Jewish theological imperatives.

Martin Landau received a Best Supporting Actor nomination from the Academy Awards, which is ridiculous for what is so clearly a leading role. He plays Judah Rosenthal, a very successful ophthalmologist who has reached the "great man" point of his career, where he collects awards and salutations in his final years before retirement. He has a loving wife (Claire Bloom) and daughter, a fabulous Long Island mansion, status and respect, and is by all measures a good person who does charitable work.

But he has a secret. For the past two years he's been carrying on an affair with a younger woman, a flight attendant named Dolores (Anjelica Huston). He recently broke it off and she's become unstable, threatening to confront his wife and making all sorts of demands upon him. Dolores appears ready to blow up his life if she can't have him, destroying his marriage and even having him arrested as an embezzler, since he confided in her about some financial improprieties involving the foundation he heads up.

On the flip side is Cliff Stern (Allen), a wannabe documentary filmmaker whose entire existence seems to be built around hollow aspirations for the sort of success Judah takes for granted. His marriage to Wendy (Joanna Gleason) is an empty husk, drained of all passion and joy -- they're just marking time until the inevitable. He spends most of his days watching old movies or trolling book stores, often in the company of the niece he dotes upon.

Cliff is given a huge opportunity to direct a PBS profile of Wendy's brother Lester, a famous television comedy producer and writer. Cliff can't stand his preening, self-adoring brother-in-law, played with full-bore snark and smirk by Alan Alda. (Lester has the habit of interrupting conversations so he can whip out a tape recorder to document his awful, but commercially viable, ideas for shows.)

But Cliff falls hard for Halley (Mia Farrow), a producer on the show. Lester also has an eye for the careful, cautious woman, who's just come out of a nasty divorce. So at first it's unclear if Cliff is wooing her just to spite Lester. But they find a genuine attraction between them while collaborating on Cliff's true labor of love, a documentary about little-known but brilliant philosopher.

The two characters share a lot of the same New York City bandwidth without ever actually tripping over each other, at least until the movie's end. Judah treats Lester's brother Ben (Sam Waterson), a rabbi who is going blind but seems to retains his full vision about the human condition and its perils. The two men are eventually brought together by a wedding that Lester is paying for, as Cliff and Wendy make their final appearance together before announcing their divorce.

It's pretty clear that Allen was using Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" as the basis for a modern riff on the themes of guilt and morality. Judah uses his scuzzy brother (Jerry Orbach) to have Dolores murdered, and then he spends of the rest of the picture anguishing over his terrible actions. He even visits her apartment after the deed is done, ostensibly to collect incriminating photos and journal entries but mostly, we suspect, to gaze upon her dead body and punish himself.

A doubter who grew up in a deeply religious family, Judah begins to feel the weight God's gaze upon him, and wonders if he'll ever be able to see the light again. When a police detective drops by to ask routine questions, he almost confesses his sins upon the spot.

Cliff, on the other hand, is guilty of much less serious acts of immorality -- desired, if not commissioned, infidelity -- and does not feel any remorse over how much he disdains his wife. It's a fairly typical Woody Allen character, full of neurotic bombast and nebbishy charm, and we feel greatly for the little fella when his worst fears are realized and Halley returns from a long assignment in Europe affianced to Lester.

Though it's more or less a straight drama, Allen can't resist throwing in bits of his trademark humor, such as Cliff's edit of the profile about Lester including cutaway shots to Mussolini. Or lamenting about his nonexistent sex life: "The last time I was inside a woman was when I visited the Statue of Liberty."

I adored Martin Landau's performance in "Crimes and Misdemeanors," but on the whole I found the juxtaposition with Allen's own character incongruous and unsatisfying. Allen tries to split the difference between two interesting characters, and loses his way.

Supposedly the filmmaker threw out most of the first act while editing the movie, and called back his cast for reshoots. I think the best movie he could've made would have been to write himself out of the picture.

Reeling Backward: "Limelight" (1952)

Charlie Chaplin was 63 years old when he made "Limelight," and most people (including him) expected it would be his last film.

Thematically, it certainly seems designed to serve as the great silent filmmaker's swan song. It's about a once-beloved tramp comedian whose audience has forgotten about him -- not too different from the real Chaplin -- who falls in love with a much younger dancer. Chaplin was infamous for his affairs, and marriages, to women decades younger than himself.

The theme is about the old stepping out of the way to make room for the young -- ceding the limelight because it's time.

Chaplin would, of course, go on to make two more films, 1957's "A King in New York" and "A Countess in Hong Kong" in 1967 -- starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren! -- neither of which I've seen, and I hear I'm lucky for it. Like most admirers of Chaplin, I consider "Limelight" to be his "true" last film.

The film is set in 1914, which not coincidentally was the first year Chaplin appeared in a movie after great success on the stage. It was also the outbreak of World War I, considered by many the beginning of the modern era, with all the triumphs and horrors technology has brought to mankind.

It's a story about beginnings and endings, and quite consciously so. Chaplin plays Calvero, once the king of comedy but now a forgotten has-been. One night he comes back to his building staggering drunk, and smells gas coming from the ground floor apartment. Its occupant, Terry, has tried to kill herself after failing to recover from illness to resume her ballet career. Calvero saves her and installs her in his apartment as his charge.

At first Terry is paralyzed from the waist down, but the doctor concludes it's psychosomatic. When Terry tells Calvero about the tragedy of her life -- parents dead, her sister a prostitute, the only love of her life a penniless composer with whom she's barely exchanged a word -- Calvero exhorts her not to throw her life away. Summoning the humanist philosophy that dominated Chaplin's films, Calvero extols the human brain as the greatest creation in the universe.

"What can the planets do? Nothing! Just sit on their axis," he says, still looking for a laugh even in the grim face of death.

Terry does, of course, regain the use of her legs and begins dancing again. By this time she's convinced herself that she loves Calvero. He clearly returns the affection and delights in having a companion for his waning years. But Calvero considers it unfair to burden such a young girl with a misplaced romance with a man who could be her grandfather, and abruptly departs.

Now a star, Terry finds Calvero again months later earning a living playing music on the streets for coins. She's appalled, but he claims to be happier than he's ever been. "It's the tramp in me," he says.

Calvero's outfit and makeup for his clown act are, of course, very similar to the Little Tramp he immortalized in dozens of films. But Chaplin bid adieu to the tramp in 1936's "Modern Times." Interestingly, Chaplin continued making essentially silent films even with the advent of sound, vowing that the world would never hear the tramp speak. (He did in his "Times," but fittingly it was only gibberish.)

Perhaps "Limelight" is our chance to hear what the tramp has to say.

Terry is played by Claire Bloom, who's become something of a celebrity in this space, having been featured in a number of Reeling Backward columns: "Richard III," "The Man Between" and "Clash of the Titans." "Limelight" was her first major film role, and nearing 80 she's still working regularly today. Her ballet scenes were doubled by Melissa Hayden.

The score -- by Chaplin and two associates -- won an Academy Award, but notably not for 1952. Due to his left-leaning political sympathies, Chaplin was denied re-entry into the U.S. in 1952 -- as McCarthyism took a brief, but indelible hold on the nation's psyche -- and as a result the film was banned from nearly all theaters. It finally got a wide release in 1972, and earned an Oscar for musical score after a special dispensation of the rules from the Academy allowed it to compete 20 years after it was made.

Buster Keaton also makes an appearance as Calvero's onstage partner for the big final act, the only time the two great comedians starred in a movie together. Keaton was at rough time in his life, financially and otherwise, and got a hand from his old rival.

"Limelight" seems stuck in time, even for 1952. The un-ironic pathos and sentimental humanism seems almost quaint in the post-Hitler world. But that's Chaplin for you -- a man who lived by, and wrote, his own rules.

3.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Richard III" (1955)

Shakespeare is better read than seen.

I long ago came to this blasphemous conclusion, which no doubt will earn me the title of uncouth knave among those who cherish the immortal Bard. But if they're honest, they'll admit that anyone outside of those with an advanced degree in English literature can hardly understand the flowery poetry of his plays.

The passing of half a millennium, not to mention dialogue that was crafted for its artfulness rather than its verisimilitude, make it a baffling experience in which you sit there, listening to the words and trying to assemble their meaning in your head as they fly by at an unstopping pace. I myself will admit to grasping perhaps 40 percent of it.

Laurence Olivier's early film career was defined in part by his Shakespearean adaptations: "Hamlet," "Henry V" and "Richard III" in 1955. These films, which he also directed, breathed life into the artifice of the plays as much as the aforementioned challenges allowed.

It's interesting to me how history-based fiction seems desperate for villains, to the point of turning monarchs and other historical figures into blackhearts even when they did not earn that depiction.

For example, all the stories involving Robin Hood show Richard the Lionheart as virtuous and true, while his brother John was a depraved usurper. In actuality, Richard was a poor king who barely spent any of his life in England, and John signed the Magna Carta, the foundation upon which all of modern Western democracy was built.

King Richard III ruled for but two years, and was overthrown by a coalition of lords. Interesting footnote: He was the last British king to die in battle. Shakespeare's play depicts him as a loathsome, though cunningly charismatic figure, who will stop at nothing to secure the throne, including murdering his own brother, nephews and wife.

The historical record is much murkier. It's not even clear if the sons of Edward IV were ever murdered. Rumors that they were bastards and thus not eligible for the throne were spread, but we don't know if Richard was behind it. A mock trial held in 1997 judged by three Supreme Court justices acquitted Richard of guilt.

It's entirely likely that Richard was not even a hunchback, which is a central motif of the play. Word is that the man who overthrew him, the Earl of Richmond (later Henry VII) ordered portraits of Richard altered to make him misshapen.

So much for Richard's soliloquy about his body being "rudely stamp'd."

It's fascinating to note that Richard is almost always portrayed by middle-aged actors -- Olivier was 48, and actually comes in at the low end. In reality, Richard was only 32 when he died.

Olivier is a delight in the title role. The way he connives and plots and lies to his political opponents, and then turns to the audience to deliver a delicious observation about their failings and how he's going to best them, lends the film a comedic undertone.

If you think about it, as a storytelling device it's not terribly different from the structure of reality television, in which the participants comment on the action in interviews recorded separately and intercut with the main narrative. Even fictional shows like "The Office" and "Parks and Recreation" have come to use the device of the faux documentary to allow characters to speak directly to the audience, much as Shakespeare loved to do.

As history, "Richard III" is a load of cock and bull. As a piece of narrative, it jumps around haphazardly, has dozens of characters who get lost in the shuffle, and is often impossible to decipher because of the language barrier. As a character study, it's an often delightful mix of tragedy and humor, sometimes within the same scene.

2.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: Berlin Spy Sagas

I'm trying something a little different here for the classic film review -- I'll be comparing two Cold War spy films set in post-WWII Berlin. The films are "The Man Between" from 1953 and 1965's "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold."

Both movies feature a protagonist who's cynical and world-weary, yet finds a way to do the right thing. They both end with thrilling climaxes at the East/West Germany border. And both star Claire Bloom.

"Spy" was directed by Martin Ritt from the novel by John le Carre; "Man" was directed by Carol Reed, best known for "The Third Man," which covered similar ground.

Richard Burton played the "Spy," while James Mason was the "Man." Both men's characters carefully cultivate a sense of self-loathing, which in each case is pierced by their relationship with the Claire Bloom character. She plays the innocent, or at least naive, woman who falls for a man knowing full well he is rife with faults.

In "Spy," Bloom plays Nan, an English member of the Communist Party. She works in a library and quietly agitates for her beliefs. Then one day Alec Leamas (Burton) comes to work as an assistant librarian. He's approaching middle age, a disgraced spy, and a drunk. Little does she know that this is a carefully orchestrated ruse to make the East Germans think he is a turncoat.

After Leamas goes over the wall -- in this case, the Berlin Wall -- he is quickly caught in a bit of subterfuge between his Marxist counterparts. There's a battle of wills between the number two spymaster, Fiedler, and his boss, Mundt. Leamas has been sent over to discredit Mundt, but when Nan is brought in as a witness, she unwittingly becomes a pawn in a complex game of spy intrigue.

"Man" is set earlier, in the days before the Berlin Wall was built. But the border is no less forbidding. Still, Susanne (Bloom), a young English girl visiting her brother and his German wife, finds that she can cross over to the East German side without too much trouble. There she meets Ivo Kern (Mason), a shadowy charmer who has some nefarious hold over Susanne's sister-in-law.

In short order she learns that Ivo is the man working both sides against each other, with his own skin his primary concern. In a thrilling extended chase sequence that occupies the last 45 minutes or so, Ivo and Susanne are caught on the wrong side of the border with all the Communists on the lookout for them. It's during these scenes, where Ivo repeatedly attempts to dissuade Susanne from any amorous feelings toward him, that we see what's really in his heart.

Both films are shot in grim black-and-white that lends a gritty, cinema verite feeling. It's interesting how in "Man" there is Communist propaganda all around, especially images of Joseph Stalin, while in "Cold" the backgrounds are drab and cramped, without ornamentation.

Each films ends with a showdown during an attempted border crossing, as Bloom and her paramours attempt to flee back over to the West German side. I don't think I'm spoiling anything when I say they both end in tragedy.

This is the third Claire Bloom film I've featured recently in this space -- she played Hera in "Clash of the Titans" -- and I must say I've enjoyed discovering her as an actress. She's had a long and productive career, and at age 78 she's still going with regular television appearances.

She had her first major role the year before "Man," playing the ingenue who steals Charlie Chaplin's heart in "Limelight," his last movie -- well, his last good movie, anyway. I'll be keeping an eye out for more of her work.

Both films: 3.5 stars

(Programming note: I couldn't find a trailer or a current DVD available for "The Man Between.")