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Sick Product of a Sick System

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Hadows and Fog isn't Woody Allen's most celebrated work, in fact it barely gets a mention but I liked the film. Its setting is a circus in some town in Eastern Europe and the film is brimming with marquee names like John Malkovich, John Cusack and Jodie Foster to even Madonna. The jokes and gags are funny though not in a direct way and there is a bare plot so to speak. The decision to shoot in black and white is sound as the cinematography is a highlight even detractors of this film speak well of.

Another mid-career Allen film unfairly dismissed both by critics and (I must admit) myself at the time of it's release. Sometimes with great filmmakers, we get spoiled and anything flawed or less than pure genius gets maligned for being weaker than that filmmaker's very best work instead of being appreciated for being miles ahead of most of the films that get made.I was shocked at how much better I liked this on a recent re-viewing almost 20 years after seeing it in the theater. Yes, the super-star cameos still seem a bit distracting and self-serving, but nowhere near as much as in 1992. Yes, some plot elements work better than others, the ending is kind of clunky, etc. But this is still a great-looking, visually dense film, that manages to tread (most of the time) a very difficult tightrope of being funny and playful, while still exploring disturbing themes of paranoia, guilt, crowd mentality, religion, etc. Certainly not a great film, but a brave one more worthy of being enjoyed for it's strengths than attacked for its admitted shortcomings.

"I'm performing an unusual amount of autopsies these days", says the cool, rational doctor played by Donald Pleasence in his laboratory filled with cadavers. "That's probably what accounts for so many of those human fingers laying around, you don't generally see that" replies a frightened Woody Allen in perhaps his most misunderstood film; the abstract, experimental Shadows And Fog.While that might not read like a humorous exchange, believe me, in context it's quite funny.The story for Shadows And Fog is based on Woody Allen's one act play titled Death, published in his 1975 short story collection Without Feathers and takes place in an unnamed city over the course of one foggy night.There is a psychotic killer loose and he's been strangling any citizen unlucky enough to cross his path. He murders with a stunning callousness and so far has left no clue to his identity or motives, which has baffled the authorities and sent the general populace into a frenzy of fear.In their frustration, some have formed a vigilante group with a clever plan to catch this murderer on their own and they have just awoken Kleinman (Woody Allen) from a deep sleep to help them.But, even though he asks numerous times, Kleinman can never get clear instructions on exactly what he is supposed to do to help with the plan. All the other vigilantes seem to know their parts, but Kleinman hasn't a clue about his and no one will tell him.However, as the night rolls on, despite nearly being murdered by the maniac himself, Kleinman will also become the prime suspect hunted by the police and will almost get lynched by the vigilante mob as well. He will also lose his job, his home, his fiancé, his freedom, most of his friends and in a final moment of abject humiliation; he will even lose his ability to perform sexually. And you think you've got troubles!Woody Allen wants to show us how quickly a civilized man can lose everything meaningful in his life through no fault of his own. Did I mention that Shadows And Fog is a comedy? I remember when I first saw this film in 1992, it seemed like I was the only person in the theater laughing. That's mostly because I was the only person in the theater.Aside from the murder angle, there are other subplots mixed in that connect to the main story with varying degrees of success, including a story about a clown and a sword swallower in traveling circus, a lost mother and an abandoned infant, some "undesirables" (read Jewish) getting rounded up to be shipped off to camps and a whorehouse full of lusty women who engage in philosophical discussions with over-educated university students.Yes, Shadows And Fog meanders like someone lost on a foggy night and the film tries to hang too many incidents onto a light narrative frame, but if being overly ambitious is a fault, then it is a good one to have for a movie. Think about all the movies you have seen that didn't try to do anything at all and barely succeeded at that! But if this film were in say German, subtitled in English and directed under a nom de plume, it probably would have gotten the critical praise it deserved instead of the critical silence it received.Stylistically, the look of Shadows And Fog is patterned after old German Expressionist films like The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari and M (interestingly, both of them deal with crazed killers who strike at night). But you don't need to understand German Expressionism to understand Shadows And Fog.Whether you like the story or not, the Black and White cinematography by Italian cameraman Carlo Di Palma and the massive city set designed by Allen regular Santo Loquasto deserves praise. This was the largest interior set ever built in New York and they used every inch of the Kaufman Astoria Studios to create this Kafkaesque world. With it's many deceptive levels, perspectivized alleyways, bridges and foggy docks, Shadows And Fog is amazingly good looking and held my visual interest even when I tuned out a bit with some of the sub plots.One of the great glories of Shadows And Fog however, is its cast. Along with Allen and his regulars, Mia Farrow, Wallace Shawn, David Ogden Steirs and Julie Kavner, we also have Kathy Bates, Lily Tomlin, Jodie Foster, John Malkovich, Donald Pleasence, Josef Sommer, Kenneth Mars, William H. Macy, John C. Reilly, Fred Gwynne, Kurtwood Smith, Robert Joy and in an inspired piece of casting, Madonna plays a slutty circus tramp.Although Woody Allen performs in Shadows And Fog, he still has cast John Cusack in a younger "Woody" surrogate role. But while the older Woody gets the snappy one-liners, John Cusack is saddled with lines asking ontological questions about life and musing aloud about love, sex and death. "What are your views on divine matters?" he has to ask one character.That John Cusack can make these heady lines sound natural says a lot about his talent. Remember what Walter Huston said about the job of an actor; an actor isn't paid to make good dialog sound good, he's paid to make bad dialog sound good.Finally, as a filmmaker, Woody Allen is in that unenviable category of having been so good for so long, he is no longer compared to other filmmakers, but is compared to his own previous great works. On that scale, Shadows And Fog is only mid-level Allen, but mid-level Woody Allen is better than most other directors' best efforts.

This movie looks great. If you're a fan of well-crafted B&W imagery you should give it a viewing, but like an Orson Welles dud, it doesn't work; due to the difficulty of finding a decent story that won't collapse under the weight of all the self-conscious technique he can't wait to try. Instead of trying on Ingmar Bergman, here he's mostly trying on '30's directors like Josef von Sternberg, with a dash of Fellini and playwright Brecht (Mack the Knife is included as background music). It may remind you of Soderbergh's technique-laden dud, 'Kafka.' There's a moment where a bunch of hookers chat at a table while a camera in the middle rotates; a limp gimmick that hasn't worked anywhere I've seen it. (DePalma, Spike Lee... That 70s Show).It's not a bomb worthy of contempt like others have suggested, but it doesn't work. You're never involved in Woody's predicament or the outcome of this plot. These actors inhabit a large (not quite large enough) unit-set, whose limitations have been well hidden by the fog and the camera work, but it's limited to artful compositions and pans; two very nice tools indeed, but the long-take/tracking-shot, is completely missing. The fog ends up being a clunky metaphor for chaos and confusion. Mia Farrow in ding-y mode just has never engaged me. The all-star cast is nothing but a distraction. And Allen is so committed to his half-hearted, un-nourishing formula (another verbose Woody nebbish, a put-upon, addled female lead, 7 minutes of meditation on metaphysics, 12 Woody one-liners...) that it's gone from your mind as soon as the credits roll. Is it gorgeous? Yes. Do all these borrowing ever come into focus? No. It's just a string of conceits, the film equivalent of name-dropping. If you're an aesthetician who can only detect surface beauty and high production values... and love tossing around the word 'masterpiece' w/o being able to talk about ideas, you'll enjoy it. If you don't believe Welles ever made a dud, you will be in heaven. It's pretty. So's wallpaper.