The Editing of "Crimes and Misdemeanors"

            Another story in “Crimes and Misdemeanors” looks at Cliff’s work as a documentary filmmaker. Because he needs money, he obliges his pompous brother-in-law Lester’s request for a biography. We see him unenthusiastically filming Lester as he talks about himself. Halley, another filmmaker, views the footage after Cliff edits it. “I didn’t know you were going to cut it this way,” she says mildly. The viewer doesn’t know what she’s alluding to until Cliff screens the film for Lester. We see Lester growing more and more agitated as Cliff, slouching in a chair, laughs silently to himself. When we’re shown parts of the film, we see that Cliff has edited it to make Lester look ridiculous. In one scene he puts Lester’s voice into the mouth of Mr. Ed, the talking horse.

            It’s taken me a few movies to appreciate Johnston’s explanations of editing and framing (pages 164-171). With “Crimes and Misdemeanors” the puzzle piece of editing falls into place. I’m no film professor, but my guess is that “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” with its seamless interweaving of disparate storylines (I count six), is a masterpiece of editing. I have a history of bias against Woody Allen movies. Watching them unreflectively, I’ve felt uncomfortable with his worldview without being able to articulate why. Recently I watched part of a TV documentary on Allen, which was kinder to him than Cliff is to Lester. It helped me to understand his methods and his madness.

Allen has a prodigious imaginative and comedic talent, and he is a comic for whom nothing is sacred, including meaning. Why did he cut “Crimes and Misdemeanors” the way he did, layering a murder story with other stories? The editing is masterful where technique is concerned, but the stories taken together do not deliver a unified insight about human problems, either from the standpoint of moral complexity (Marsh), or what an amoral universe might be like (Johnston).

            In “Crimes and Misdemeanors” Allen is just having fun. His cameraman shoots footage of Cliff shooting Lester. Wow, says Allen, let’s have Cliff shoot Lester in revenge; we’ll have him display Lester as a laughable idiot. No, it doesn’t make sense; Cliff needs money but he certainly won’t get paid for this. And yeah, we can have a real shooting; a guy has his mistress done away with. Oh, people want meaning, do they? Okay, we’ll put in a lot of references to vision. Judah is an ophthalmologist; Ben the rabbi is going blind; Cliff sees movies with his niece; he tells her not to listen to her teachers but just to “see what they look like;” Cliff makes movies, which are visual artifacts; Judah metaphorically sees the light at the end of the tunnel (Johnston, 159).

            Although “Crimes and Misdemeanors” hosts an extended discussion of morality in the story about Judah, it’s not about morality or the lack of it. The message is in the editing, especially in the last few minutes of the movie, which reprise brief scenes from all the stories. The message is this. Life is a jumble of events and situations that have meaning only in the experience of the viewer beholding them. Our job is just to get through the day.

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