Shadow and Fog (15.)
Directed by Woody Allen. 1991
Starring Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, John Malkovich, Kathy Bates, John Cusack, Jodie Foster, Julie Kavner, Madonna, Donald Pleasence, Wallace Shawn, David Ogden Stiers, Lily Tomlin, John C. Reilly, Philip Bosco, Fred Gwynne, William H. Macy. In Black and White. 83 mins. Available individually on blu-ray or as part of the Woody Allen: Seven Film – 1986-1991 boxset from Arrow Academy.
Shadow and Fog, a strange expressionist oddity in which a Stan Laurel figure wanders around lost through a Kafkaesque plot in a black and white city that is a mixture of the sets of M and Freaks, is surely Allen's oddest creation. But of all the mishaps, misfires and mistakes that would increasingly come to litter his filmography, this is the one I most wish had come out right. It could have been wonderful. Of all the times for him to have a sense of humour failure.
It sees him returning to the classic coward-let-loose-in-a-genre piece that was his usual vehicle in the early funny ones. Just like Bob Hope used to play yellowbellied cowboys and adventurers, Woody would be a cowardly revolutionary, or a cowardly Russian soldier. Here, though he is a cowardly hero in a mish mash cinematic pastiche, which is a novel concept and uncharted territory for the comedy coward.
A killer is loose in the city, a city that is itself on the loose. It's a dark city lovingly pieced together from various elements of 30s German Expressionist cinema. It's filled with Americans, but looks Eastern European: all dark alleys and narrow cobbled streets, with a gypsy circus camp set up outside, just across a bridge that looks like it might be best suited to straddling the Danube. It's a city where the background music is always Weill/ Brecht, though amazingly given the subject matter, Mac the Knife isn't heard until towards the end, and then fleetingly.
One dark and foggy night the insignificant clerk Kleinmann (Allen) is roused from his sleep and told that he is to be part of a vigilante gang out to catch the killer. He is part of The Plan, but nobody tells him what his part is. Elsewhere sword swallower Farrow decides to flee the circus after discovering her lover, the clown John Malkovich, trying it on with tightrope walker Madonna.
The film is magnificent to look at. It was filmed on a number of sets and it creates a world that seems to be a little bit more original and distinctive than just another Woody Allen-copying-his-idols-piece. (The film was his most expensive film up to that time, though it feels quite small scale.) Even by his standards the cast is preposterously star studded. When he played the Sands in Vegas, Frank Sinatra had a joke about how the place was so upmarket and exclusive they got Sammy Davis Jr in just to clean. (A bit racist, but it was the times – he was probably smoking when he said it too.) Allen gets Kate Nelligan in just to shout down from a window, Herman Munster Fred Gwynne just to be part of a mob, and most of the other big names are lucky if they have more than one scene.
And as they wander the streets you keep waiting for it to really take hold, to flourish, but it never does. It is amiably and intriguing, but it just isn't funny enough. The situations could be darkly hilarious, but the one liners can't rise to the situation and the potential isn't fulfilled. Initially it feels great to have Allen back playing a comic weasel again, a man so grovelling he calls his boss your majesty, but his performance is one of his weakest. At one point he sits down and starts pondering the meaning of existence with Cusack in a whore house and it is a concession that the film has failed; it shouldn't be dryly discussing existential issues, it should be making comic set piece of them. The film does have a lovely finale though, in a circus ring with Kenneth Mars playing a magician, that hints at what the film could've been.
Allen suddenly looks a lot older in this film. About half a year ago when we set out on this Arrow's box set marathon with the early funny ones, he was already in his mid-thirties but still youthful. Twenty years on though he looks like an old man, a little bit beaten. Sadly this seems to be the last of Arrow's Woody box sets which is a shame because his next six features – Husbands and Wives, Bullets Over Broadway, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Mighty Aphrodite, Everybody Says I Love You, and Deconstructing Harry – would've made for a very decent collection, the last before his bad films could gang up and pick on the few isolated good ones.
Quite a bit of S&F is made up of Allen and Farrow walking around chatting, just like much of the previous two collections were. The pairing only had one more film left in them (Husbands and Wives) and by the time that was released their off screen relationship would be torn apart in the most spectacular way. Woody fans always seem to prefer Diane Keaton but Woody and Mia seem well matched here. Keaton would always got him into trouble, but he and Farrow could always witter away to each other contentedly. Their shared discontents seem comforting, they formed the bond between them.
Directed by Woody Allen. 1991
Starring Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, John Malkovich, Kathy Bates, John Cusack, Jodie Foster, Julie Kavner, Madonna, Donald Pleasence, Wallace Shawn, David Ogden Stiers, Lily Tomlin, John C. Reilly, Philip Bosco, Fred Gwynne, William H. Macy. In Black and White. 83 mins. Available individually on blu-ray or as part of the Woody Allen: Seven Film – 1986-1991 boxset from Arrow Academy.
Shadow and Fog, a strange expressionist oddity in which a Stan Laurel figure wanders around lost through a Kafkaesque plot in a black and white city that is a mixture of the sets of M and Freaks, is surely Allen's oddest creation. But of all the mishaps, misfires and mistakes that would increasingly come to litter his filmography, this is the one I most wish had come out right. It could have been wonderful. Of all the times for him to have a sense of humour failure.
It sees him returning to the classic coward-let-loose-in-a-genre piece that was his usual vehicle in the early funny ones. Just like Bob Hope used to play yellowbellied cowboys and adventurers, Woody would be a cowardly revolutionary, or a cowardly Russian soldier. Here, though he is a cowardly hero in a mish mash cinematic pastiche, which is a novel concept and uncharted territory for the comedy coward.
A killer is loose in the city, a city that is itself on the loose. It's a dark city lovingly pieced together from various elements of 30s German Expressionist cinema. It's filled with Americans, but looks Eastern European: all dark alleys and narrow cobbled streets, with a gypsy circus camp set up outside, just across a bridge that looks like it might be best suited to straddling the Danube. It's a city where the background music is always Weill/ Brecht, though amazingly given the subject matter, Mac the Knife isn't heard until towards the end, and then fleetingly.
One dark and foggy night the insignificant clerk Kleinmann (Allen) is roused from his sleep and told that he is to be part of a vigilante gang out to catch the killer. He is part of The Plan, but nobody tells him what his part is. Elsewhere sword swallower Farrow decides to flee the circus after discovering her lover, the clown John Malkovich, trying it on with tightrope walker Madonna.
The film is magnificent to look at. It was filmed on a number of sets and it creates a world that seems to be a little bit more original and distinctive than just another Woody Allen-copying-his-idols-piece. (The film was his most expensive film up to that time, though it feels quite small scale.) Even by his standards the cast is preposterously star studded. When he played the Sands in Vegas, Frank Sinatra had a joke about how the place was so upmarket and exclusive they got Sammy Davis Jr in just to clean. (A bit racist, but it was the times – he was probably smoking when he said it too.) Allen gets Kate Nelligan in just to shout down from a window, Herman Munster Fred Gwynne just to be part of a mob, and most of the other big names are lucky if they have more than one scene.
And as they wander the streets you keep waiting for it to really take hold, to flourish, but it never does. It is amiably and intriguing, but it just isn't funny enough. The situations could be darkly hilarious, but the one liners can't rise to the situation and the potential isn't fulfilled. Initially it feels great to have Allen back playing a comic weasel again, a man so grovelling he calls his boss your majesty, but his performance is one of his weakest. At one point he sits down and starts pondering the meaning of existence with Cusack in a whore house and it is a concession that the film has failed; it shouldn't be dryly discussing existential issues, it should be making comic set piece of them. The film does have a lovely finale though, in a circus ring with Kenneth Mars playing a magician, that hints at what the film could've been.
Allen suddenly looks a lot older in this film. About half a year ago when we set out on this Arrow's box set marathon with the early funny ones, he was already in his mid-thirties but still youthful. Twenty years on though he looks like an old man, a little bit beaten. Sadly this seems to be the last of Arrow's Woody box sets which is a shame because his next six features – Husbands and Wives, Bullets Over Broadway, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Mighty Aphrodite, Everybody Says I Love You, and Deconstructing Harry – would've made for a very decent collection, the last before his bad films could gang up and pick on the few isolated good ones.
Quite a bit of S&F is made up of Allen and Farrow walking around chatting, just like much of the previous two collections were. The pairing only had one more film left in them (Husbands and Wives) and by the time that was released their off screen relationship would be torn apart in the most spectacular way. Woody fans always seem to prefer Diane Keaton but Woody and Mia seem well matched here. Keaton would always got him into trouble, but he and Farrow could always witter away to each other contentedly. Their shared discontents seem comforting, they formed the bond between them.
