ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE NINETIES
WONDERFUL, DARK, HILARIOUS enough said.
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MovieChat Forums > Shadows and Fog (1992) Discussion > ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE NINETIES
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Shadows and Fog has always been one of my favorite Woody Allen films, chiefly because of its spellbinding black and white cinematography and the atmosphere of dread created by the director. Allen himself certainly has one of his funniest roles.
shareWoody Allen's film noir meditation on existance, fascism, magic and German Expressionism takes in Franz Kafka ("The Process"); Kurt Weill and Berthold Brecht (The Threepenny Opera and "Mack the Knife"); Fritz Lang ("M" and its semi-remake While the City Sleeps); Wiene (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari); Dreyer(Vampyr); Murnau (Nosferatu); Tod Browning (Freaks); John Parker (Dementia); Von Sternberg (The Blue Angel); Welles (Touch of Evil); Wilder (Irma la Douce); Fellini (Variety Lights; La Strada); and, of course, Bergman The Magician. A chiaroscuro masterpiece: brilliant, scary, funny, despairing, hopeful and profoundly disturbing.
Doctor_Mabuse
100% agree with you........
A lot can happen in the middle of nowhere...share
This film had quite a critical bashing though I thought it was one of his best ones. Certainly one of my favourites simply because its so unusual.
shareYeah, its one of the best that I have seen of his, though Stardust Memories is what I think is his best.
A lot can happen in the middle of nowhere...share
So very true, and I'd add Woody's "Husbands and Wives" to that category also. He was really on a roll in the early '90s.
shareIt isn't much more than a cute pastiche of Expressionist and noir aesthetics, and narratively the film is a mess, meandering aimlessly from points to A to B without recontextualizing the stylistic influences to give them real narrative shape. There isn't a single point in the picture where Allen makes it clear what he wants to say about his apparent fascination with German art, as it never becomes anything more than a visual pageant and an interesting, albeit wasteful excuse to run his standard neurotic nebbish character through a breezy and haphazardly constructed screenplay that becomes so referential that it doesn't have a self to reference. If he hadn't made that trip to the well 11 years later with Anything Else, it would easily the worst (not to mention the laziest) film Allen has made, although this one probably stands out as even more of a dissapointment given how interesting it is conceptually and how much could and should have been accomplished with a director this talented.
If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive.