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Shadows and Fog (1991)

Shadows and Fog (1991)
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Woody Allen's black-and-white curiosity piece is a mixture of influences -- from German silent film expressionism to Franz Kafka's nightmare worlds to the contemporary fables of Wim Wenders. Woody Allen plays the nebbish clerk Kleinman (in a throwback to his characters from Sleeper and Love and Death), who is awakened in the middle of the night by a vigilante group who want him to help capture a serial killer on the loose. Kleinman reluctantly agrees, but when he gets to the street, the vigilantes are gone and Kleinmen spends most of the film wandering the shadowy back alleys in search of the citizen's brigade. Meanwhile, a circus is in town. When sword-swallower Irmy (Mia Farrow) catches her creepy clown husband (John Malkovich) getting familiar with trapeze artist Marie (Madonna), she packs her bags and heads for town, where she meets up with Kleinman. This meeting sets up a number of plot lines that has Irmy befriending a trio of prostitutes (Jodie Foster, Lily Tomlin and Kathy Bates) at the local brothel and accepting $700 from a university student (John Cusack) who wants to sleep with her. She finally meets up with her husband, and they then find an abandoned baby which they decide to raise as their own. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

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Starring:
Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, (more)
Director(s):
Woody Allen
Theatrical MPAA Rating:
PG13
Format(s):
DVD
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Synopsis of Shadows and Fog

Woody Allen's black-and-white curiosity piece is a mixture of influences -- from German silent film expressionism to Franz Kafka's nightmare worlds to the contemporary fables of Wim Wenders. Woody Allen plays the nebbish clerk Kleinman (in a throwback to his characters from Sleeper and Love and Death), who is awakened in the middle of the night by a vigilante group who want him to help capture a serial killer on the loose. Kleinman reluctantly agrees, but when he gets to the street, the vigilantes are gone and Kleinmen spends most of the film wandering the shadowy back alleys in search of the citizen's brigade. Meanwhile, a circus is in town. When sword-swallower Irmy (Mia Farrow) catches her creepy clown husband (John Malkovich) getting familiar with trapeze artist Marie (Madonna), she packs her bags and heads for town, where she meets up with Kleinman. This meeting sets up a number of plot lines that has Irmy befriending a trio of prostitutes (Jodie Foster, Lily Tomlin and Kathy Bates) at the local brothel and accepting $700 from a university student (John Cusack) who wants to sleep with her. She finally meets up with her husband, and they then find an abandoned baby which they decide to raise as their own. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Theatrical Feature Running Time:
85 mins

Complete Cast of Shadows and Fog


Director(s):
Woody Allen
Writer(s):
Woody Allen
Producer(s):
Robert Greenhut
Theatrical MPAA Rating:
PG13(Questionable for Children, Adult Situations, Violence)
Categories:
Comedy
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    Erin Y.

    I thought with all these great actors in one movie, that this would be great.... it was completely awful. We couldn't get past 30 min, it is not worth the rental. And I don't know why people like woody allen... he is annoying, in every movie i have seen him in. Do yourself a favor and skip this one.

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    Keith G.

    Another mid-career Allen film unfairly dismissed by critics, and myself, at the time of it's release. Sometimes with great filmmakers, we get spoiled and anything less than pure genius gets maligned for being weaker than that filmmakers very best work instead of being appreciated for being miles ahead of most of 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, 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 funny and playful, while still exploring disturbing themes of paranoia, guilt, crowd mentality, religion, etc. Not a great film, but a brave one more worthy of being enjoyed for it's strengths than attacked for its admitted shortcomings.

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    Jonathan A.

    Woody Allen assembles an amazing cast (John Cusack, Kathy Bates, Lilly Tomlin, Madonna, John Malkovich, Jodie Foster, David Ogden Stiers). Opening with shadows and murky streets very reminiscent of German silents this promising movie seques into a Kafkaesque nightmare in which Woody is rousted from his sleep to walk the streets because of the "plan" of which he is never informed. The problem is that there is no story here, that Woody's problem seems more like a schtick than a problem, that Mia Farrow in some of the worst acting of her career comes across as a screechy child/woman bitch/victim.

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