Product Details

• Actors: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Michael Kirby, David Ogden Stiers, James Rebhorn
• Directors: Woody Allen
• Writers: Woody Allen
• Producers: Charles H. Joffe, Helen Robin, Jack Rollins, Joseph Hartwick, Robert Greenhut
• Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, Original recording reissued, NTSC
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
• VHS Release Date: June 5, 2001
• Run Time: 85 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00005AUJP
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #200,901 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

No other Woody Allen film has ever been hustled into oblivion faster than this black-and-white mélange of Mittel-European nightmare, absurdist farce, and homage to German expressionism--sort of Woody Allen meets Franz Kafka in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, set to Kurt Weill's score for The Threepenny Opera. Yet the daft experiment is not without charm and, as the title suggests, oodles of atmosphere.

In a murky, seriously deranged cityscape only a studio art department could create, a giant bald strangler (Michael Kirby) is going around killing people with piano wire. The authorities are powerless (though he stomps about freely, occasionally declaiming speeches), so vigilante posses start roving the streets. For some reason, they dragoon a noisy nebbish named Kleinman (Allen) to assist them. So Kleinman goes into the fog, kvetching, and meets Irmy (Mia Farrow), a circus sword swallower (no double-entendres, please) whose clown of a husband (John Malkovich) is two-timing her with the strongman's wife (Madonna). Add an "et cetera" here, because the big, mostly wasted cast also includes Kenneth Mars as the strongman, Donald Pleasence as a philosophical coroner, John Cusack as a student who mistakes Irmy for a prostitute, and Kathy Bates, Jodie Foster, and Lily Tomlin as the real prostitutes in whose company she happens to be at the time. None of this adds up, and the whole thing moves and feels less like a film than one of Allen's oddball New Yorker sketches. Still, as the fever dream of an art-house addict, it has its moments. --Richard T. Jameson

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Usually misunderstood, this film is one of Allen's best!, January 1, 2003

By 

C. Bardi (Laurinburg, NC United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shadows and Fog (DVD)

This film IS enjoyable: great actors, funny lines, and perfect atmosphere. Many of those who don't enjoy it say it is confusing, but the film can be easily understood as an allegory for the search for meaning (existentialism). A strangler-at-random serves as the representative of death, while the hapless characters try to figure out their lives and stay out of the strangler's way at the same time. You get to see all the "solutions" to the problem of life and death played out: sex, artistry, religion, science, childbearing, mob thinking, they're all there. As a perfect foil to all of these perspectives Allen plays a snivelling "everyman" with comic brilliance.

If you really want to enjoy this movie, read the pulitzer prize- winning book, The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker (the same book Diane Keaton threw at Woody in Annie Hall!). If The Denial of Death is cake, Shadows and Fog is the frosting.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Massively Underrated, December 16, 2006

By 

Joshua Miller "Josh" (Coeur d'Alene,ID) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shadows and Fog (DVD)

Woody Allen's "Shadows and Fog" has been called a "misfire" and is, in a sense, a forgotten film by Allen. It's hardly mentioned in conversations about his work. I consider myself a pretty big fan of Woody Allen, but the only reason I rented the movie was because John Malkovich was in it. Turns out, this is one of my favorite Woody Allen movies (I've seen 13). It's funny, well acted, has a huge array of stars, has perfect black & white cinematography, and is a pretty damn good movie. Allen plays Max Kleinman, a man who has fallen into a deep sleep only to be rudely awakened by his neighbors. They want his help in finding a serial strangler and Max, apparently, has a part in helping find him. Problem is, Max doesn't know what his part in it is. As Max walks around the gloomy, foggy area fearing the strangler will strike he encounters a bunch of quirky characters. One is Irmy (Mia Farrow), a circus sword-swallower who has ran away after catching her lover, Clown (Malkovich) cheating on her (with Madonna, no less). Before Max and Irmy actually run into each other, Irmy runs into a brothel that is occupied by such familiar faces as Jodie Foster, Lily Tomlin, and Kathy Bates. After she makes $700 for a one-night stand with John Cusack, she finally runs into Max. The movie's got a huge cast, with some actors' only turning up for a few moments. Some of the players include William H. Macy, Donald Pleasence, John C. Reilly, and many others. The movie has a gloomy, shadowy, and foggy (fitting, I guess) atmosphere which might be paying homage to early film-noir movies. The movie, like many Allen films, is fueled almost entire by dialogue and all of it's good and almost all of it's interesting. There are a few quotable lines in here. Since I've noticed most fans of Allen's don't like this film, I'll give you a general idea of what my taste in Allen is like. My favorite Allen movie is Annie Hall, my second favorite is Crimes & Misdemeanors, and my least favorite is Melinda & Melinda. All the performances (even though most of them are very brief) are good. Malkovich, as usual, steals most of his scenes and seems very comfortable reciting Allen's dialogue. Shadows and Fog is a great movie, for Woody Allen and just as a movie.

GRADE: A

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Light satire of a dark theme. Great atmosphere. Rewatchable, April 2, 2005

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shadows and Fog (DVD)

`A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy' and `Shadows and Fog' are two of Woody Allen's `second tier movies, less highly regarded than `Annie Hall', `Manhattan', and `Hannah and Her Sisters', but nonetheless a great pleasure to watch over and over again for anyone who has a taste for Allen's movies. The fact that Allen's movies, even these parodies of classic works and genres are primarily about characters and their personalities, passions, and foibles rather than about story, so you don't loose the primary reason for watching the movie as you do when you watch `The Maltese Falcon' or `Die Hard' or even `The Terminator' for the first time. I have seen both of these movies several times and I constantly find new pleasures in the dialogue.

Aside from their both being genre parodies, both movies share several other aspects, not the least of which is Allen's usual well oiled crew plus great `visiting' Director of Photography. I am constantly amazed at the consistently high level of quality in the filming of Allen's movies, since he has a great reputation for bringing his works in within schedule and under budget. Part of his economy is probably due to the fact that while Allen as director is not in the same league as Martin Scorsese or even Clint Eastwood, lots of actors drop what they are doing to be able to appear in the next Woody Allen film. And, they probably appear for a lot less money than they would for Marty or Clint. I also sense in some scenes that Allen lets little flubs go to the final print which Scorsese, for example, would reshoot until it was perfect.

The casts on these two films are fairly evenly balanced between Allen's ever evolving stock company with Mia Farrow appearing in both films along with Allen regulars Tony Roberts in `Midsummer's Night' and `David Ogden Stiers' and Wallace Shawn appearing in `Shadows and Fog'. Since the latter movie has a much larger cast, it is liberally peppered with currently famous or near famous actors giving cameo appearances such as Kathy Bates, John Cusack, Jodie Foster, Fred Gwynne, Julie Kavner, Madonna, Kate Nelligan, Donald Pleasance, Lily Tomlin, Kenneth Mars, William H. Macy, and John C. Reilly. John Malkovich contributes an excellent performance as the second most important male character in the movie.

The 1982 `A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy' is certainly the lighter of the two as a parody on the theme of `A Midsummer Night's Dream'. Allan borrows Shakespeare's romantic mix-ups plot element on top of the idyllic forest venue to bring together two guest couples to the country home of Allen and Steenburgen. Jose Ferrer plays a polymath professor brother to Steenburgen's character. Ferrer is to marry Mia Farrow, many years his junior, on that Sunday at the country house. Tony Roberts plays a randy bachelor doctor brother to Allan's character. Hagerty is Roberts' office nurse of five weeks who comes along fully expecting a weekend of erotic experiences with her boss. It turns out that Allen knows Farrow and the romantic mix-ups take off from there.

The 1992 `Shadows and Fog' is an intentionally heavy parody of a mix of German impressionistic movies and Franz Kafka story lines with what seems like a cast of hundreds. It all takes place in what seems like pre-World War I Vienna, Berlin, or Prague or some other central European Germanic city. At the outset, it seems like a remake of the German film `M' starring the young Peter Lorre as a murderer. Unlike the `...Sex Comedy', the plot is much more involved. The first line involves Allen as a Kafkaesque cipher awakened in the middle of the night by a crowd of vigilantes with a plan to find a killer roaming the fog laden nighttime streets. The driving force of the plot involving Allen and the mob is that the vigilantes never tell Allen what his role is to be in this plan. They assume he knows his part and are irritated to the point of violence when Allen questions what it is he is supposed to be doing. The second major plot involves a dispute between circus performers Farrow (sword swallower) and Malkovich (clown) which breaks open when Malkovich is caught in a rendezvous with trapeze artist Madonna, the wife of the sleeping strongman. Allen and Farrow meet about half way through the film that brings Allen back to the circus after Farrow does a stint in a whorehouse and Allen comes close to being accused of being the murderer.

Both movies are primarily comedies, yet the humor in the first movie is based more firmly in the situation. The humor in the second movie seems to be more a relief from the perils faced by the two main characters. Although, the image of the positive side of having sex with a sword swallower is a very nice gag created by the characters' situations. On the other side of the coin, `Shadows and Fog' seems to have deeper observations about the human condition. Since I seem to be noticing some of these lines for the first time, after several viewings over the last 14 years, I feel even stronger about the durability of Allen's films.

Allen has always been a master of making very good use of familiar music in his movies. All the `incidental' music in `Midsummer Night' is from the works of Mendelsohn, including the music he composed for Shakespeare'' play to be performed in German. The music in `Shadows and Fog' is almost all taken from instrumental performances of works by Kurt Weill, primarily from `The Threepenny Opera' and the song `Whiskey Bar'.

Since I am a long time fan of Allen's movies, the only thing which disappoints me about these and all other of his DVDs is the fact that there is no director's commentary. This makes the difference between four and five stars for the DVD.

Recommended to any fans of Allen or comedy in general.