Crimes and Misdemeanors

The phrase Crimes and Misdemeanors is in Section 4, Article Two of the United States Constitution (regarding impeachment of the president, vice president and all civil officers of the United States).  

The film Crimes and Misdemeanors is a 1989 drama written and directed by Woody Allen and starred among others Allen, Mia Farrow (Allen's girlfriend at the time), Martin Landau, Claire Bloom, Angelica Huston, Sam Waterston and Jerry Orbach.  

The film received three Academy Award nominations:  Best Director (won by Oliver Stone for Born on the Fourth of July), Best Original Screenplay (won by Tom Schulman for Dead Poet Society) and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Landau, but won by Denzel Washington for Glory).

Judah (Landau) is a successful ophthalmologist married to Miriam (Bloom), but having an affair with Delores (Huston).  After it becomes obvious to Delores that Judah will not end his marriage, she threatens to disclose their liaison to his wife.

Anxious how to handle the situation, Judah confides in a patient who is a rabbi (Waterston).  The rabbi advises honesty, but Judah believes this would destroy his marriage.

Instead, Judah turns to his brother, Jack (Orbach), a criminal.  Jack arranges for Delores to be killed.  The marriage is saved, but Judah is then stricken with guilt and turns to his previously rejected Jewish religious teachings.

In a separate story line, Cliff (Allen), a documentary film maker, falls in love with Halley (Farrow), a colleague of the subject of his latest project.  A year after the murder of Delores, Cliff and Judah meet at a wedding reception and are sitting together in a secluded area.  Judah discusses what happened to him, but in the abstract.

"I have a great murder story.  My murder story has a very strange twist.  Let's say there's this man who was very successful.  He has everything...and after the awful deed is done, he finds he's plagued by deep rooted guilt.  Little sparks of his religious background which he'd rejected has suddenly stirred up.  

He hears his father's voice.  He imagines that God is watching his every move.  Suddenly it's not an empty universe at all, but a just and moral one and he's violated it.  Now, he's panicked-stricken.  He's on the verge of a mental collapse.  An inch away from confessing the whole thing to the police (like Rascolnikov in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment) and then one morning he awakens, the sun is shining and his family is around him.  Mysteriously, the crisis is lifted.  

(He) takes his family on a vacation to Europe and as the month passes he finds he's not punished.  In fact, he prospers.  The killing gets attributed to another man.  Now, he's scot free.  His life is completely back to normal, back to his protected world of wealth and privilege.  

Maybe once in a while he has a bad moment, but it passes, with time it all fades.  People carry awful deeds with them.  What do you expect him to do, turn himself in?  This is reality.  In reality, we rationalize.  We deny or we couldn't go on living."

Three years later (1992), Allen and Farrow's real-life romantic relationship is slowly ending.  Then, he takes up with Farrow's adult adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn (father, Andre Previn), whom he subsequently marries and with whom he raises two children.  When Farrow discovers his relationship with her daughter, she plots to take their seven year-old adopted daughter (Dylan) from Allen.  

Farrow concocts a story that Allen sexually assaulted Dylan...once.  Despite two authorities (Connecticut and New York) concluding there is no physical evidence the assault occurred, Farrow brainwashes Dylan into believing the assault did indeed happen.  As a result, Woody Allen has been unjustly smeared ever since.  

Last year, Cristina and I saw Allen's recent film, A Rainy Day in New York, here in Brazil.  Unfortunately, because of the false accusation against Allen, now taken up by the #Me Too movement, the film is unavailable in the USA.  What a pity!