To this point in his career, Allen’s investigation of the moral decline of society had been limited to acts which, while clearly immoral, were rarely illegal. In Crimes and Misdemeanors, his best film to date, the main character, Judah Rosenthal (Martin Landau), comes to “see” that in a world devoid of a divine presence, all acts are permissible, even murder.
The apparent philosophical despair of this film, in which the most moral individual, Ben (a rabbi), is shown gradually going blind, has been taken by many to symbolize Allen’s ultimate sense of hopelessness. All of the supposedly virtuous characters are shown wearing glasses because of their inability to see the true nature of the world. As the film progresses, one character, Halley (Mia Farrow), is apparently able to discard her glasses only after she has also discarded her values by agreeing to marry the arrogant, pompous but successful TV producer Lester (Alan Alda). Allen’s character, Cliff Stern, is punished for his commitment to his beliefs as we see him lose everything he cared for: his love, his work, and even his spiritual mentor, the philosophy professor Louis Levy (Martin Bergmann), who, like Primo Levi, survived the Holocaust but responds to the petty immoralities of everyday life by killing himself.
Most ominously, Judah, who bears the name of one of the greatest fighters for traditional Jewish values and heritage, betrays the faith of his father Sol (David Howard) by not only committing a murder; but also renouncing the consequences of his guilt in a universe which he declares to be indifferent to our actions.
These themes are introduced at the very beginning of the film when we hear Judah address the audience at a banquet given in his honor:
JUDAH: That the new ophthalmology wing has become a reality is not just a tribute to me, but to a spirit of community, generosity, mutual caring, and answered prayers. Now it’s funny I use the term answered prayers, you see, I’m a man of science, I’ve always been a skeptic, but I was raised quite religiously, and while I challenged it, even as a child, some of that feeling must have stuck with me. I remember my father telling me, “the eyes of God are on us always!” The eyes of God! What a phrase to a young boy! And what were God’s eyes like? Unimaginatively penetrating and intense eyes I assumed. And I wonder if it was just a coincidence that I made my specialty ophthalmology?
At the words “even as a child,” we are shown two Orthodox Jewish men sitting in the front of a synagogue reading sacred texts as they sway back and forth in the traditional fashion.
In these first scenes, Allen establishes the conflicting elements which will dominate his starkest investigation yet into the increasing moral and religious paralysis which grips contemporary American society. By giving his protagonist the first name of “Judah,” and so explicitly showing us his Orthodox Jewish upbringing, Allen makes clear his intention to explore the role of religion, specifically the role of Judaism, in the story he is about to tell. The name Judah reminds us of one of the scriptural names for a part of ancient Israel (Judea), as well as, most obviously, the famous and successful Jewish leader Judah Maccabee, whose story is the historical focus of the Jewish holiday called Hanukkah (“dedication”).
In the second century B.C.E., Syria and Judea were ruled by a Greek king named Antiochus IV (ruled 175–163 B.C.E.). Within Judea a conflict developed between some upper-class Jews who were drawn to the sophistication of their Greek rulers and those Jews, both affluent and lower-class, who rejected the Hellenizing influences and demanded a rigid adherence to ancient Jewish culture. Eventually, the Greek king directly involved himself in the conflict by forbidding the “observance of the Sabbath, circumcision, and Torah study” (Hein, 1993, p. 309). According to the authors of Religions of the World:
When his officials demanded that Israel sacrifice to Zeus, the people were outraged. The Book of Maccabees tells how an elderly priest, Mattahias of Modin, openly defied this order, instead killing the Syrian official who had made the demand. Mattahias led his five sons and their followers in the ensuing battle against the Greek regime, and one son, Judah Maccabee, emerged as the leader of the successful resistance. The Hellenizers’ retreat inspired the Maccabees to cleanse and rededicate the temple in 165 B.C.E. That occasion served as the historical basis for the Jewish festival of Hanukkah [Hein, 1993, p. 309].
Thus, the festival of Hanukkah instructs Jews to reject the sophisticated—and admittedly appealing—ideas of secular society in favor of a strict adherence to traditional values. It further seems to make a divine promise to those Jews who follow God’s word: If they will reject the easy temptations of a corrupt and morally weak society, then God will miraculously intervene to support their struggle to maintain their integrity. This promise does require commitment and faith on the part of the devout Jews. God did not intervene until after the rebellion was in full swing, and, even then, His intervention was one more of moral support than actual involvement in the battle. In fact, the story suggests, Jews themselves have the force of will, courage, and physical strength necessary to defeat immorality if only they choose to use it openly.
Although we see in his speech at the testimonial dinner that he still carries with him a sense of obligation towards his Jewish heritage and the values it epitomizes, Judah can not bring himself to resist the temptation to follow his reason alone and deny the objective existence of all values.
The conflict between reason and faith is presented explicitly in many of the film’s relationships. Here, for example, is a dialogue between Judah and Ben (Sam Waterston):
JUDAH: Our entire adult lives you and I have been having this conversation in one form or another.
BEN: Yes, I know. It’s a fundamental difference in the way we view the world. You see it as harsh and empty of values and pitiless, and I couldn’t go on living if I didn’t feel it with all my heart a moral structure, with real meaning, and forgiveness, and some kind of higher power, otherwise there’s no basis to know how to live! And I know you well enough to know that a spark of that notion is inside you somewhere too.
JUDAH: Now you’re talking to me like your congregation.
BEN: It’s true, we went from a small infidelity to the meaning of existence.
In this exchange, the fundamental conflict present in all of Allen’s films is laid bare for our inspection. This conflict, which I have called “the existential dilemma,” pits our recognition of the claim that there can be no rational basis for grounding values against our need to conduct our lives in accordance with a set of just such standards. Returning to our discussion of Soloveitchik, again we see the dialectic between the hedonism of Adam the first (represented here by Judah) and the redemptive spirit of Adam the second (Ben). This conversation has indeed gone on within Allen’s work throughout his entire career, just as it has gone on between Judah and Ben throughout their whole lives.
While Ben and Judah are in one sense presented as the two extremes on these issues, in another sense, as Ben has just told us, this conflict is really taking place within Judah. Judah does have a spark of Ben’s faith within him and the film’s primary drama turns on the way he decides to resolve this crisis and the consequences of that decision. When Ben says that they have moved “from a small infidelity to the meaning of existence,” he suggests an interpretation of both the film’s title and the interrelationship between its two plotlines. How one acts to deal with “a small infidelity” determines one’s position on the very “meaning of existence.” The distance between such small misdemeanors and unforgivable crimes is much shorter than normally thought, once one has rejected all notions of values and responsibility.
This point is strikingly similar to the one made in the novel whose title most resembles that of this film, namely Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. In that book, an author who (like Kierkegaard or Soloveitchik) has made the leap of faith while acknowledging the apparent fundamental absurdity of the world, shows us how the failure to make that leap leads a student named Raskolnikov, overcome by existential dread, to murder an elderly woman. Through his dialogue with his pursuer, and his own corresponding internal debate, Raskolnikov is led by the novel’s end to a genuine acceptance of the possibility of religious redemption.
Interestingly, Judah’s situation requires that, in order to accept Ben’s challenge, he must choose to have faith not directly in God, but (like Buber) in the redemptive power of an authentic “I-Thou” relationship with his wife Miriam (Claire Bloom). Judah must decide if he can trust Miriam sufficiently to chance the possibility that the revelation of his sin will destroy both of their lives. If he decides that he does not trust her enough to take this risk, then one must wonder at his reasons for wishing to maintain his marriage with her.
At a surprise birthday celebration at home with his family, Judah is given a treadmill. Confirming the hint that his family represents a form of staid boredom while his mistress Dolores (Anjelica Huston) brings with her excitement and melodrama, Judah is called to the phone to hear Dolores’ threat to be at his house in five minutes if he doesn’t meet her at the gas station down the road. Ominous sounds of thunder accompany her threats, and by the time Judah arrives to meet her, a full-fledged storm is in progress.
Sitting in a car, Dolores demands that they go away together and that, when they return, Judah must “bring things with Miriam to a conclusion.” She also gives him a birthday present, an album of Schubert’s music. Her choice of birthday present, a gift of the music she knows he loves, suggests that she represents the desires of his soul while Miriam’s treadmill symbolizes the dullness of his respectable married life. Nonetheless, her ultimatum brings him to the point of crisis.
When he returns home, the sound of thunder accompanied by a brilliant flash of lightning announces Judah’s appearance as he descends the stairs with Ben’s words about morality and forgiveness racing through his mind. Images of hellfire surround him as he stares into the burning fireplace and ignites a cigarette with his lighter. Ben’s voice expands into a fantasy of his actual presence as he tries to persuade Judah to give up the murderous schemes of his brother Jack (Jerry Orbach) in order to ask the world, and God, for forgiveness. Judah rejects Ben’s arguments, and when Ben mentions God, Judah reveals that Jack has at last convinced him to become a hedonistic nihilist:
JUDAH: God is a luxury I can’t afford.
BEN: Now you’re talking like your brother Jack.
JUDAH: Jack lives in the real world. You live in the kingdom of heaven. I managed to keep free of that real world, but suddenly it’s found me.
BEN: You fool around with her for your pleasure, and when you think it’s enough, you want to sweep her under the rug?
JUDAH: There’s no other solution but Jack’s, Ben! I push one button and I can sleep again nights.
BEN: Is that who you really are?
JUDAH: I will not be destroyed by this neurotic woman!
BEN: Come on Judah! Without the law it’s all darkness!
JUDAH: You sound like my father! What good is the law if it prevents me from receiving justice? Is what she’s doing to me just? Is this what I deserve?
At this Judah picks up the phone, calls Jack, and tells him “to move ahead with what we discussed. How much will you need?” Judah has now resolved to place his own selfish interests over the law, morality, and God. In doing so, he explicitly abandons the faith of his fathers and places himself outside of God’s realm. His self-deception is massive: he refuses to take any responsibility for creating his predicament (he claims that the real world “found him” as though he did nothing to bring that about), and he refuses to consider the possibility that he may truly deserve what is happening to him.
Judah’s namesake, the Maccabee, gave up his life to fight for his father’s faith against the superior military forces of his people’s oppressors. The original Judah did nothing to “deserve” his fate, yet he never questioned his obligation to sacrifice everything in this cause. The contemporary Judah expects to be handed a life of wealth and comfort without sacrifice. Like Dr. Faustus, Judah is willing to sell his soul in exchange for the satisfaction of his desires. In his fantasized dialogue with Ben, he is so mired in lies that he won’t even allow Ben to use his strongest argument (that Judah is cold-bloodedly plotting a murder), restricting him to “sweeping her under the rug” instead. As a result of this betrayal of his heritage and the best part of himself, we expect to see him punished both by society, and, if we believe, by God.
After the murder has taken place and Judah has visited the scene to remove incriminating documents, we see him back at home, sitting alone in the bathroom with the lights on while an unaware Miriam sleeps soundly in the bedroom. Suddenly, the phone begins to ring. Judah rushes to answer it only to find there is no one on the other end of the line, suggesting that God is calling Judah to task for his crime, yet refusing to speak to him directly.
Driving in his car, Judah again thinks of the synagogue his family attended in his childhood. Finally, unable to stop himself, he goes to the home of his youth and asks the current owner if he may look around. He tells her of his memories of playing with Jack there and of the high expectations they all had of him, expectations that were never fulfilled. Suddenly, he hears the sound of a Passover seder emanating from the dining room. Standing in the doorway, he watches as his imagination creates a seder from his youth.
The first sounds he hears are those of the Hebrew prayers over the eating of the bitter herbs. The seder is a dinner service performed at home with the head of the family, in this case Judah’s father Sol (David Howard), leading the service and explaining its meaning as he sits at the table’s head. The eating of the bitter herbs represents the suffering of the Jews when they were slaves in Egypt until Moses came, with God’s help, to lead his people into freedom in the promised land.
We listen as Judah’s Aunt May (Anna Berger), challenges Sol by questioning the legitimacy of the “mumbo-jumbo” of the religious service. Calling her a “Leninist,” Sol acts offended by the tone of her comments as she questions the existence of any objective set of moral values and argues that “might makes right” even when it comes to the Holocaust.
This scene contains the most complete discussion of morality and faith to be found in any of Allen’s films. In fact, it is so powerful that it could stand alone as a superb discussion of philosophical issues, comparable to the famous “Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” section from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Like that passage, this scene contains a dialogue between those who favor a nihilistic view of the universe as a meaningless, mechanical environment in which we are completely free to create the meaning of our lives however we wish, and the believer who uses the same freedom to choose to have faith in God and morality while acknowledging that there is no rational basis for that faith. Thus, in this debate, we revisit the distinction made by Soloveitchik in his discussion of the conflict between Adam the first and Adam the second.
The “nihilists” (Aunt May and her supporters among the sederquests) take a position resembling not only that of the Grand Inquisitor, but also that of a variety of philosophers throughout Western history, including the Sartrean existentialists. Like Soloveitchik’s “majestic man,” they favor the evidence of the senses and the scientific use of reason over the desires and beliefs of the so-called “soul.” The “believer” (Sol), on the other hand, takes a position resembling the more mystical religious traditions which culminate in the existential theories of theists such as Kierkegaard, Marcel, Buber, and Soloveitchik.
The dialogue also reminds us of Socrates’ debate with the Sophist Thrasymachus in one section of Plato’s best known dialogue, The Republic. Like Thrasymachus, May argues that what is just is “whatever is in the interest of the stronger party.” For Thrasymachus, what was important was to appear to the world at large as a just, honorable person while simultaneously acting unjustly so as to get away with as much as possible. While Socrates is able to defeat the Sophist’s arguments in the context of this dialogue, Plato’s opponents have always contended that this was made possible only because Plato purposely did not allow Thrasymachus to give the best possible arguments.
Allen does not similarly handcuff the nihilists in his scene. Their arguments are presented so compellingly that it is made clear that this incident from his youth contributed greatly to Judah’s later choice of the rational life of the man of science over that of the believer which his father wanted so much for him. May’s use of the fact of the Holocaust adds to the potency of her position and is worth a more detailed examination. For the sake of this discussion, I will temporarily play devil’s advocate by expanding her arguments.
For May, one of the most striking moral implications of the Holocaust lies in the fact that it vividly demonstrates that human beings can violently disagree concerning the moral principles which they adopt. The fundamental assumption underlying natural law theory (the position for which the Man in the Hat appears to argue) states that, while people of good intent might legitimately disagree over many normative issues, ultimately there exists a universal set of underlying basic principles on which we all can and should agree.
But, May would counter, in the twentieth century if we have learned anything, it is that people do not agree on many fundamental principles of value. Debates and disagreements over such issues have characterized numerous international conflicts and matters of dispute. Thus, perhaps the most difficult problem facing natural law theorists is not just to decide what these natural laws are, but also to persuade others to adopt them or to forcibly impose them upon people who disagree, which would only result in the confirmation of May’s contention that “might makes right.”
Thus, May contends, the role of morality in each individual’s life is only what they choose it to be. If one wishes to uphold “morality,” however one defines it, then one may do so. If, on the other hand, one wishes to ignore the issues of morality altogether, and commit a crime, even murder, then there is nothing to prevent it other than one’s own conscience (“And I say, if he can do it, and get away with it, and he chooses not to be bothered by the ethics, then he’s home free.”) There is no question that the arguments of the nihilists in this scene overwhelm the naturalist claims of the Man in the Hat that we are all basically “decent,” and, it is implied, that all agree on the most important fundamental values.
Even more compelling for the nihilists’ position is the question of how God could have allowed the Holocaust to take place. How could an all-powerful caring God have stood by and allowed millions of innocent people to die without intervening as He is claimed to have done during the story of the original Passover, the Exodus from Egypt?
Yet, in its own way, Allen’s presentation of Sol’s position is also compelling. While acknowledging that his position is based on faith rather than logic and reason, Sol ultimately claims that the life of the man of faith, Soloveitchik’s Adam the second, is more fulfilling than that of the nihilists’ Adam the first. As we discussed earlier, Adam the second makes the Kierkegaardian leap of faith into belief without the safety net of logic or evidence. Given the fact that he feels that a life without morality or God is a meaningless one which can only end in bitterness and despair, he chooses to believe, precisely because there is no reason to do so, in a sacrificial act analogous to that of Abraham in choosing to obey God’s command to sacrifice Isaac despite the dictates of both his desires and his reason.
Even if there is no God, if one’s faith is a denial of the “truth,” it is better to believe than not to believe because only through belief can the spiritual life, the only one capable of fulfilling our deepest human needs, be attained. For Sol, the existential human condition is such that each of us must choose the values by which we will live. Even those, like the nihilists, who claim to have chosen to deny all values are making a choice which implies its own set of values. The nihilists’ choice ultimately implies the acceptance of the ethic of hedonism, the belief that one is justified in doing whatever one wishes. This is itself a value system which posits the worth of individual pleasure over the demands of a traditional morality and religion.
It is impossible to avoid responsibility for choosing some values; every act in which one engages represents a favoring of the worth of that action over all the others available to one at that moment. Therefore, since one must choose to believe in something, and that choice must be made without any objective knowledge of right and wrong, one should choose those values which best correspond to one’s vision of how the universe ought to be. For Sol, this means that one should choose to believe in a universe governed by a caring and moral God who may not directly intervene in human affairs or manifest His presence in any concrete fashion. One should choose to do this not because one can know with certainty that such a God exists, but, rather because without such a belief life would not be worth living.
In this sense, the woman at the seder table is right in comparing Sol’s choice to have faith to the aesthetic activity of an artist, but wrong in suggesting that only those born with “a gift” have the capacity to do this. For, according to existentialists like Sartre, the human condition is such that all of us are condemned to create the meaning of our lives on the basis of our freedom. Thus, Sol is not unusual in his ability to have faith, but only in the strength of his commitment to that faith. Sartre makes a similar point about the relationship between art and morality in his essay, Existentialism and Humanism:
Rather let us say that the moral choice is comparable to the construction of a work of art.
But here I must at once digress to make it quite clear that we {existentialists} are not propounding an aesthetic morality, for our adversaries are disingenuous enough to reproach us even with that…. There is this in common between art and morality, that in both we have to do with creation and invention. We can not decide a priori what it is that should be done…. Man makes himself; he is not found ready-made; he makes himself by the choice of his morality, and he can not but choose a morality, such is the pressure of circumstances upon him. We define man only in relation to his commitments; it is therefore absurd to reproach us for irresponsibility in our choice [Sartre quoted in Kaufmann, 1975, pp. 364–365].
Returning to our discussion of Dostoyevsky, in his passage on the author in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward Wasiolek describes the dilemma raised by Dostoyevsky’s acceptance of the notion of radical freedom and the meaninglessness of our experience in this way:
The total freedom of the underground man brought Dostoyevsky to the total terror of a universe without truth or principle, good or evil, virtue or vice. This nihilist vision of the universe was to send philosophers like L.I. Shestov and Nietzsche into dark ecstasy over the naked power of the will, and it was also to bring Dostoyevsky to what seemed to be an irresolvable dilemma: Freedom is the supreme good because man is not man unless he is free, but freedom is also a supreme evil because man is free to do anything, including illimitable destruction…. These two kinds of freedom are most fully embodied and brought into conflict in the persons of Christ and the Grand Inquisitor in “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor.”… Christ’s freedom is that of conditionless faith, given by man in fearful and lonely anxiety and without the reassurance of rational proof, miracles, or the support of the crowd. The freedom of the Grand Inquisitor is the freedom of the superior will, presented in its most attractive form…. So powerfully did Dostoyevsky dramatize the Grand Inquisitor’s argument against Christ and his freedom that critical opinion has split since that time in choosing Christ or the Grand Inquisitor as the bearer of truth. Dostoyevsky was without doubt on the side of Christ, but he meant to have each reader decide in free and lonely anxiety where to place his own belief [Edwards, 1972, Vol. 2, p. 412].
In the same manner, Allen presents the views of both the nihilist and the believer so powerfully that it is possible to claim that he himself favors either side. Indeed, it is for this reason that Allen has so often been accused of favoring narcissism or moral relativity. While it is clear that this debate rages within Allen as fiercely as it did within Dostoyevsky, ultimately, in my view, Allen’s own position is in accord with the believer. We have seen Allen’s indictment of those who have forgotten the values of their heritage too often to conclude otherwise.
Finally, it is in this scene, for the first time, that Judah is forced, by the most powerful moral voice within him (that of his father), to face up to the true nature of his crime by giving it the name it deserves, that of murder!
When we next see Judah, he is in his office lying to a police detective about his knowledge of and involvement with Dolores. While his lies seem persuasive to us, Judah expresses his terror that he may have made a slip as he talks over the incident with Jack. When he then reveals that he has an overpowering urge to just confess and get the whole thing over with, Jack explodes in anger, urging him “to be a man,” and saying that he’s not going to go to jail to satisfy Judah’s sense of guilt. Judah demands to know if Jack is threatening him. While Jack denies it, Judah realizes that his father was right in his claim that “one sin leads to deeper sin, adultery, fornication, lies, killing….” Judah now sees that the way he thought about Dolores, as a problem that could be solved by just one push of a button, could also be applied by Jack to him. In a sense, Judah’s intellect leads him to use the golden rule to see the ultimate wrongness of his act. By acting to murder Dolores when she became a problem for him, he intellectually gave his permission to Jack to do the same if he, Judah, were to become a similar obstacle.
Judah becomes riddled with guilt. We see him sitting in his car in front of Dolores’s apartment house, almost wishing for the police to see him there and question him. At a meal in a restaurant with Miriam and Sharon, we learn that Judah has been drinking heavily and acting irritably. We hear him say in a whisper, “I believe in God, Miriam, because, without God, the world is a cesspool.” He pounds the table in anger when Sharon suggests they should leave, and finally goes for a walk by himself outside, “to get some air.”
The second plotline in Crimes and Misdemeanors is the story of Cliff Stern (Allen) and his attempt to maintain his moral integrity in the face of the nihilism represented by his wife Wendy (Joanna Gleason), her brother Lester (Alan Alda) and Halley Reed (Mia Farrow). While Wendy and Lester are Ben’s siblings, they share none of his spiritual commitment. Wendy urges Cliff to make a flattering documentary of Lester, a successful but shallow TV producer. Halley works for public television, which has commissioned the show. Cliff reluctantly agrees only because he needs the money to finance his much more serious project, a film profile of the philosopher Louis Levy. As the film progresses, we learn that Cliff’s marriage to Wendy is close to ending and we watch as Cliff competes with Lester for Halley’s affection.
Cliff initially approaches Halley to ask her why PBS is wasting its time with a profile of an idiot like Lester. Halley agrees with Cliff and tells him that she argued against it but that they “like to mix it up.” She notes that Lester “is an American phenomenon.” When Cliff responds, “So is acid rain!” Halley asks him why he agreed to film the documentary if he hates its subject so much. Cliff confesses that he’s just doing it for the money so that he can finance his real project, a film on the philosopher Louis Levy. He then asks her if he can show her some of his footage of Levy in order to convince her that a show on Levy would be much more appropriate for her series.
Cliff shows her a clip of one of his interviews with Levy in his office. Levy (Martin Bergmann) is a white-haired, older man with glasses who speaks with a European accent. In a return to scriptural metaphor (initially evident in connection with Judah’s name and its reference to the story of the Maccabees), Levy speaks of another biblical reference, this time the ancient Israelites’ notion of a fierce but caring God.
While Allen has shown us a number of philosophers in his films (for example, Leopold in A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy and Marion in Another Woman), this is the first time that a philosopher has been portrayed from the beginning as a voice of wisdom—almost, in a sense, as the voice of God. Like God, Levy is never encountered directly; we experience him only in Cliff’s videotapes and, finally, in his last note. Levy speaks to Cliff, who wishes to spread Levy’s message to the rest of society through his art (the documentary he hopes will be shown on PBS).
In the excerpt that Cliff shows Halley, Allen returns to the theme of sacrifice that has played so large a role in his earlier films. While God cares for us, He also demands that we make the Kierkegaardian leap of faith by following a strict moral code of behavior despite the fact that this code might require us to act contrary to our interest or even our reason. By the same token, however, Levy speaks of God and morality as the “creations” of the Israelites. They “conceived a God that cares.” This use of language suggests that we have no proof either of God’s existence or of the validity of the moral code, yet we “conceive” of them in a way which has been historically compelling. Here again, Allen is presenting us with the existential dilemma—our desire to ground our lives in a set of traditional ethical values derived from a supernatural presence, even as we acknowledge sadly that no ontological foundation exists to justify such a belief.
The theme of vision is emphasized by the fact that four of the major characters (Cliff, Ben, Halley, and Louis Levy) wear glasses, while Judah (not in need of vision correction himself) is an ophthalmologist. Judah has already told us about “the eyes of God,” which his father claimed always to be upon us. The four bespectacled characters are the ones who seem most open to Levy’s descriptions of the obligations incumbent upon those who choose to follow God, yet they are shown as suffering from impaired vision, and perhaps the most saintly of them, Ben, is in the process of going blind. This suggests that those of us who retain an interest in God and morality have simply failed to see that such concerns have lost their relevance in these corrupt times.
Removing her glasses (a gesture which might indicate insincerity), Halley tells Cliff that, while the show on Lester cannot be cancelled at this point (as Cliff had hoped), she is really impressed with Levy and will fight to get financing and support from PBS to include Cliff’s documentary in the fall schedule. When Cliff responds by telling Halley that even though they have only just met, he has “taken an instant liking to her,” Halley responds, “And I to him,” pointing to the screen where she has just watched Levy. The expression on Cliff’s face indicates his disappointment in Halley’s response. While Cliff is confessing an attraction to Halley not only as a professional but as a person, Halley will only admit to liking Cliff’s work.
Cliff brings a present to the apartment of his niece Jenny (Jenny Nichols). The present is a book of old photographs of New York from the twenties. Once again, Allen’s persona reveals a nostalgia for earlier, presumably more moral times; however, when Cliff mentions that the book has a chapter on speakeasies, we wonder just how much better things were back then. His sister Barbara (Caroline Aaron) starts to cry uncontrollably as soon as Jenny leaves the room. She tells Cliff about a horrible experience she has had with a man she met through a personal ad she placed in the newspaper. While this man initially appeared to be a gentleman, late one night, after an evening of dancing and drinking, he insisted that she allow herself to be bound to her bed, after which he got over her and “went to the bathroom” on her. Following this humiliation, he took his clothes and left.
Cliff responds to Barbara’s story with disgust and tries to get Barbara to promise never to place such an ad again. She tells him of the immensity of her loneliness as a widow, saying he could never understand what that’s like, given his successful marriage to a woman he loves. Cliff disillusions her about the success of his marriage, confessing that “neither of us has the energy to do anything about it, but it’s not so great.”
Barbara’s pathetic story reinforces the film’s sense that all standards have disappeared in contemporary society. In the past, a young widowed woman with a child would have been a part of an extended family that would have helped her and eased her grief and loneliness. For example, although Aunt Bea in Radio Days remained unmarried, she was part of the family and never lonely, a point emphasized when Joey’s father discovers her playing solitaire on New Year’s Eve. Instead of teasing her, he says, “No date tonight? Well, it’s all right. We’re all together, you know.”
Given the disintegration of our collective sense of family and community, it never occurs to Cliff to tell Barbara to call him whenever she feels lonely. Instead, he responds by comparing his own loneliness and misery to hers. Don’t feel so bad, his comments suggest; marriage is no picnic these days either.
As if to confirm Cliff’s point, we see Wendy in bed reading as a discouraged Cliff comes in, sits on the edge of the bed, and tells Wendy about Barbara’s horrendous experience. When an unsurprised, and apparently uninterested, Wendy asks why the man defecated on Barbara, Cliff responds, “I don’t know. Is there any, is there any reason I could give you that would answer that question satisfactorily?” He goes on to ponder the mysteries of human sexuality, as Wendy matter-of-factly puts down her magazine, sets her watch alarm, and then announces that she’s going to sleep. Their marriage has deteriorated to such an extent that Wendy does not feel an obligation to express even the most superficial kind of concern for Cliff or the members of his family. Her lack of response to his revelation shocks us. She doesn’t ask how this came to happen to Barbara, nor does she ask how Barbara is doing now. We wonder what could have happened between them for her to treat Cliff so callously, and we can’t understand why they remain in such an apparently loveless union.
Cliff’s plans are destroyed when he learns that Louis Levy has committed suicide. Shocked, Cliff sits in his office watching a videotape in which Levy expresses his views on suicide:
LEVY: But we must always remember that we, when we are born, we need a great deal of love in order to persuade us to stay in life. Once we get that love, it usually lasts us. But the universe is a pretty cold place, it’s we who invest it with our feelings, and, under certain conditions, we feel that it isn’t worth it anymore!
At this, the video screen goes all white, almost as though an explosion had suddenly engulfed Levy.
Halley appears to offer her condolences. Cliff tells her, and us, the following:
CLIFF: Oh, God, it’s been terrible, you know? I called, the guy was not sick at all, and he left a note, he left a simple little note that said “I’ve gone out the window,” and this is a major intellectual and this is his note, “I’ve gone out the window.” What the hell does that mean, you know? This guy was a role model, you’d think he’d leave a decent note!
HALLEY: Well, what? Did he have family or anything?
CLIFF: No, you know, they were all killed in the war. That’s what so strange about this. He’s seen the worst side of life his whole life, he always was affirmative, he always said “yes” to life, “yes, yes,” now today he said “no!”
HALLEY: Imagine his students, imagine how shattered they’re going to be?
CLIFF: Listen, I don’t know from suicide, you know, where I grew up, in Brooklyn, nobody committed suicide, you know, everyone was too unhappy!
HALLEY: Boy, you know, this will put a damper on the show!
CLIFF: Well, I’ve got six hundred thousand feet of film on this guy, and he’s telling how great life is and now, you know, you know, what am I going to do? I’ll cut it up into guitar picks!
HALLEY: I was just thinking that no matter how elaborate a philosophical system you work out, in the end, it’s got to be incomplete.
This pessimistic, and unquestionably accurate, appraisal of all philosophical systems, including those to come, leaves us with apparently few options. On the one hand, like Judah, Jack, or Lester, we can choose to base our lives solely on hedonistic principles seeking to get as much as we can for ourselves and destroying those who get in the way. Or, like Aunt May, we can become permanent cynics, attacking everything and everyone around us while hypocritically pinning all our hopes on some utopian ideology (like Marxism) which promises us salvation, either here on earth or in some mystical heaven. Or, we can take Sol’s approach and choose to commit ourselves to a set of values while simultaneously acknowledging that such a choice can only be based on faith, never on knowledge. Finally, we can follow Louis Levy’s path and escape all of life’s woes and contradictions by simply ending life.
In the last videotape we watch of Levy, he begins by echoing Camus in his suggestion that we all need to be given a reason not to commit suicide, “to persuade us to stay in life.” Yet, as Cliff tells us, Levy was able to construct such a reason through the creation of his philosophy of affirmation. This positive outlook on life was enough to get him through horrendous experiences. Cliff hints, but does not actually say, that Levy’s family was killed in the Holocaust, and that Levy just barely escaped with his life. Given May’s earlier reference to the Holocaust as the ultimate horror, one can understand Cliff’s incredulity that Levy could make it through such an experience, survive, go on to live for over forty more years, and then, suddenly, decide to take his own life.
The answer to this puzzle, like that surrounding the death of Primo Levi, the real-life figure whose story it recalls, is never revealed; but we can speculate. Despite its overwhelming horror, in some ways the Holocaust can be dealt with intellectually if it is viewed as an aberration, a unique event perpetuated by a nation cowed by economic collapse and international humiliation, and led by a madman who ruled with an iron fist. If the Holocaust was such an aberration, detested and abhorred by all sane, right-thinking, decent people, then we can be shocked by the enormity of its evil while still remaining basically optimistic about the human condition and its future.
After all, one could argue, the world did eventually crush Nazism, and when the true scope of the Holocaust became known, the international community agreed to hold war crimes trials at Nuremberg at which the remaining architects of the killing were tried, convicted, and executed. Today, only a very small number of crackpots, with no real clout, continue to defend the Nazis; and even most of those fanatics base their defense on the obviously erroneous claim that the Holocaust did not actually occur. By making such a claim, no matter how hypocritically, they admit openly that had the Holocaust in fact taken place, even they would be forced to admit that it was wrong.
Addressing May’s other implicit point, namely the question of how God could have stood by and allowed the Holocaust to take place without intervening, theologians have had an answer to this kind of question for centuries. Because it is essential to God that we humans possess the free will to choose between good and evil, He leaves it to us to decide when to resist the evil of others. It was only after the Jewish people agreed to follow Moses and make the many sacrifices required to reach the promised land that God sent the miracles which helped pave their way to the Exodus. And, even with God’s miracles, the Egyptians were not convinced to allow the Jews to go; right until the end they pursued their former slaves until finally, with the miracle of the parting of the waves, they were destroyed.
In a similar fashion, a theologian could argue that the Holocaust was perpetuated by free individuals who chose to obey the immoral commands of their leaders when they could have done otherwise. Eventually, because so many around the world freely chose to risk their lives to oppose this evil, it was destroyed. Such a theologian could even argue that God may in fact have intervened miraculously in the conflict in ways that are clear for those who wish to see them. Again and again, one could argue, the Allies were helped by accidents, discoveries, and mistakes in strategy on the other side which some could call miracles. Indeed, if, at the beginning of the Battle of Britain, you had told most people that in a mere five years the Axis would be completely defeated and Hitler dead, they would have be willing to call such an outcome a miracle.
But none of this answers our question. If in fact Levy was able to survive the Holocaust with his optimism intact, then what could have occurred in the intervening years to destroy his spirit and lead him to suicide? The answer to this question is hinted at in Allen’s portrayal of the character Frederick in his 1984 film Hannah and Her Sisters. Frederick is a man who has experienced the meaninglessness of life and the terror of dread. Rather than persevere, he has given up the search in order to inhabit a sterile abyss of his own making, one of loneliness, bitterness, and frustration. He is filled with hatred for the hypocrisy around him and he expresses it in this compelling soliloquy:
FREDERICK: You missed a very dull TV show about Auschwitz. More gruesome film clips! And more puzzled intellectuals declaring their mystification over the systematic murder of millions. The reason they can never answer the question, “How could it possibly happen?” is because it’s the wrong question. Given what people are, the question is “Why doesn’t it happen more often?” Of course, it does, in subtler forms…. It’s been ages since I just sat in front of the TV, just changing channels to find something. You see the whole culture: Nazis, deodorant salesmen, wrestlers, a beauty contest, a talk show. Can you imagine the level of the mind that watches wrestling, huh? But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers! Third-rate conmen telling the poor suckers that watch them that they speak with Jesus! And to please send in money! Money, money, money! If Jesus came back, and saw what is going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up!
For Frederick, the Holocaust is not the unique aberration of which we spoke, but instead simply an exaggeration of the way we regularly treat each other more and more in our contemporary world. Like Allen himself, Frederick is convinced that the evil of the Holocaust is symptomatic of a fundamental degradation of the human spirit which is progressing at a frighteningly rapid pace in a world in which everyone is increasingly motivated by hedonistic self-interest, and all references to morality are taken to be either the ravings of pompous frauds or the sighs of hopelessly naive innocents who have blinded themselves to the operation of the “real world” all around them.
Louis Levy finally realized this truth, the ultimate extension of Hannah Arendt’s famous description of “the banality of evil,” and, being a fundamentally honest person, concluded both that nothing he could say or do would stop this degradation and, further, that he no longer wished to live in such a world. Given the complete pessimism of such a conclusion, he had nothing more to say, so in his note he simply reported his decision.
Cliff tries to cheer himself up by finally making his move on Halley. After he kisses her, she tells him he shouldn’t have done that, and he responds in virtually the same words used by Isaac in Manhattan when he finally kissed Mary: “It’s something I’ve wanted to do now for weeks, you must know that!” However, unlike Mary (and all other previous objects of the romantic interests of an Allen persona), Halley says no. She claims not to be ready for a new romance because of the breakup of her marriage, and she denies Cliff’s concern that she may be interested in Lester. She does let Cliff kiss her again, however, and when she leaves, she claims to be confused, allowing us to hope with Cliff that a relationship will still materialize between them.
We see Lester walking down the hallway at his office. In just a few seconds, he manages to demonstrate just how much of a horse’s ass he really is. First, he demands that a script on the homeless be cut by five minutes (presumably for more commercials), and he warns his staff not to let its author trick them by typing it over in a more compressed form. Then, he tells them to fire a writer from a show because he’s just not funny enough—“he has cancer, I’m sorry, I’ll send him flowers.”
We then see Lester and Cliff sitting (not together) in the audience of a screening room, and we realize we are watching Cliff’s finished documentary. In it, Lester is portrayed as more and more of a bully and a tyrant, one finally compared visually to Mussolini, as Cliff sits in the audience with a broad grin on his face.
Outraged, Lester leaps up from his seat and tells Cliff that he’s fired. While acknowledging that he’s no saint, Lester denies Cliff’s characterization of him as someone who has “deadened the sensibility of a great democracy.” Lester will now finish the film himself, Cliff tells Halley as they walk together in the park, and will probably portray himself as a hero. Halley tells Cliff that he never should have made such a negative film, that she could have told him PBS would never have shown it that way because, she tells us once more, they are only interested in “upbeat” films.
Throughout the film, we have been told repeatedly that even public television, which is supposedly more serious and honest than commercial television, has fallen into the inauthenticity of an American culture which demands sterility from its media, here in the form of doctored documentaries with upbeat messages. Allen’s antagonism to commercial television has been quite clear from his comic pokes at it as far back in his career as Bananas. Crimes marks the first occasion on which he has satirized PBS, although his antipathy to the publicly funded network probably dates back to 1971, when PBS refused to carry a program they had commissioned (eventually called The Politics of Woody Allen); as Eric Lax tells it:
“The commercial networks offer you no freedom at all,” Woody explained when he agreed to do the show. PBS offered freedom but ultimately withdrew it. Privately, PBS felt the program was potentially too offensive at a time when they were the subject of intense criticism from conservatives and their funding was under consideration…. “It was an honest disagreement,” he (Allen) said during the controversy over the show’s cancellation…. “It was all so silly. It wasn’t Jonathan Swift. If the show had gone on as scheduled, it would have passed unnoticed.” Which is why Woody makes films [1992, pp. 118-120].
During their walk, Cliff asks Halley to marry him once he can free himself from Wendy. Halley tells him that they have to talk, and then reveals that (like Tracy in Manhattan) she must go to London for a few months to work. While Tracy went for six months, Halley claims to be going for only three or four. When she tells him it’s for the best, Cliff probably concludes that he is being given this time to wrap up the loose ends of his marriage so that he can greet her as a free man on her return. While he is disappointed by this news (“I feel like, you know, I feel like I’ve been handed a prison sentence”), we still can hope that things might work out between them.
Back in the movies with Cliff and Jenny, we watch an old prison film, The Last Gangster (1937), in which Edward G. Robinson serves out a term as stylized titles show the months passing. Allen then cleverly uses a similar title to tell us that Cliff’s sentence has now passed as he shows us the exterior of the hotel where the wedding reception for Ben’s daughter is being held. Thus the film is given a certain symmetry in that it begins and ends at public celebrations.
Ben, wearing dark sunglasses which suggest that he is now completely blind, is surrounded by guests who must be identified for him by his wife. We see Cliff and Wendy making their way through the guests. Cliff complains that everything he’s wearing is rented, and Wendy responds by asking him if they can get along at this, the last event connected to her family that they will have to attend together. Clearly, Cliff has accomplished his goal and is on the verge of being free to pursue his romance with Halley. Judah and Miriam are also present. We see Judah pat Ben reassuringly on the arm as he tells Judah how happy he is that he is there.
Cliff tells his sister how his breakup with Wendy has saddened him despite its inevitability, and he jokes about how long he’s gone without sex. Judah, on the other hand, seems to have overcome his depression. We see him celebrating with Miriam as Sharon tells Chris that she expects him to get drunk and then argue with Ben about God. She also jokingly points out the similarities between Judah’s attitudes and those of his Aunt May.
We see Cliff standing uncomfortably as two women praise Lester for paying for his niece’s wedding because, we assume, the now-blind Ben is out of work and without an income. Suddenly, Cliff, a look of shock on his face, begins to move slowly away from the talking women and towards the entrance of the reception hall. Cliff is horrified to see Halley, all dressed up (and without her glasses), standing with an exuberant Lester. As Cliff stares at her grimly, Halley and then Lester greet him happily, and we overhear Lester introducing Halley as his fiancée.
Cliff, completely ignoring Lester, asks Halley when she returned (in the same stunned voice that he has used so often when confronted by betrayal). She says she returned just that morning and claims to have been trying to call him all day (an obvious fabrication). We overhear Lester telling the story of how he pursued her relentlessly in London, sending her white roses every day (just as Lou did to Tina in Broadway Danny Rose). Giving Halley a squeeze, he adds that he thinks it was the caviar that finally got her. The man listening to Lester remarks that he used to envy Lester for his harem of young, pretty starlets, but now he envies him even more.
Halley’s betrayal tops all of the past betrayals in Allen’s earlier films. Her lack of glasses suggests that she has overcome whatever earlier moral standards she might have had, and Lester’s comments about the caviar confirm our suspicion that Halley is marrying Lester primarily for his wealth and fame, as well as the career opportunities he can create for her. In this sense, Halley’s betrayal is most offensive because she betrays not only Cliff but herself. If we assume that she ultimately shares Cliff’s opinion of Lester, and that she was starting to fall for Cliff when she left for London, then she has chosen to sell her soul (just as Judah did) for the sake of material success. Earlier, Judah quoted Sol as saying that each little sin leads to deeper ones. Halley’s misdemeanors are different from Judah’s crime only in degree, not in kind.
The wedding ceremony now seems to mock Cliff as we see him sitting in the same row as Lester, Halley, and Wendy. Still shocked, he glances towards Halley in dismay, but she ignores him.
The scene shifts, and we see a woman telling Cliff’s sister Barbara that she knows the perfect man for her. When a suspicious Barbara asks what the hitch is, she learns that the guy will be in jail for the next few years serving a sentence for insider trading. In today’s society, with its lack of respect for the law and morality, his legal problems are actually considered an asset because they show that he knows how to work the system and “make a bundle.”
Halley approaches Cliff as he drinks alone in an alcove. She tries to convince Cliff that Lester is really a wonderful man, but Cliff refuses to listen. When Halley asks him to give her a little credit, he responds, “I always did before today.” She then returns his one love letter to her. Like Louis Levy, Cliff realizes that he really doesn’t have any more to say. By her actions, Halley has demonstrated what kind of person she is, and Cliff now has no interest in her. He shows his disdain by slipping into his impersonal comic persona, joking about the contents of his letter. When Halley says she hopes that they will always remain friends, we don’t have to see Cliff’s face to know his reaction; his silence speaks volumes.
A unidentified man dances Russian-style to the band’s loud music until he pulls a muscle in his leg. Two children steal bits of icing from the uncut wedding cake. Feeling the need to escape these antics, Judah slips down a hallway for a cigarette and encounters Cliff, sitting alone and drinking on a piano bench in near-darkness. Judah immediately starts talking to Cliff as though they were old acquaintances, even though there has never been any indication that they even know each other.
With the protagonists of the film’s two stories now together, Allen presents us with this dialogue:
JUDAH: I have a great murder story.
CLIFF: Yeah?
JUDAH: A great plot! {pause} Hey, I’ve had too many to drink, I mean, forgive me, I know you want your privacy.
CLIFF: No, it’s OK, you know, I’m not doing anything special.
JUDAH: Except my murder story has a very strange twist.
CLIFF: Yeah?
JUDAH: Let’s say there was this man who was very successful, he has everything…
As Judah tells Cliff his story, the scene shifts and we see Lester and Wendy happily discussing the fact that she’s met someone new and the irritating Cliff will soon be out of both of their lives. We then return to the dialogue between Judah and Cliff:
JUDAH: And, after the awful deed is done, he finds that he’s plagued by deep-rooted guilt. Little sparks of his religious background, which he’d rejected, are suddenly stirred up. He hears his father’s voice, he imagines that God is watching his every move. Suddenly, it’s not an empty universe at all, but a just and moral one, and he’s violated it. Now, he’s panic-stricken, he’s on the verge of a mental collapse, an inch away from confessing the whole thing to the police. And then, one morning, he awakens. The sun is shining and his family is around him, and, mysteriously, the crisis is lifted. He takes his family on a vacation to Europe and, as the months pass, he finds he’s not punished; in fact, he prospers. The killing gets attributed to another person, a drifter who has a number of other murders to his credit so, I mean, what the hell, one more doesn’t even matter. Now he’s scot-free, his life is completely back to normal, back to his protected world of wealth and privilege…. People carry awful deeds around with them. What do you expect him to do? Turn himself in? I mean this is reality! In reality we rationalize, we deny, or we couldn’t go on living!
CLIFF: Here’s what I would do. I would have him turn himself in because then, you see, then your story assumes tragic proportions because, in the absence of a God, or something, he is forced to assume that responsibility himself, then you have tragedy!
JUDAH: But that’s fiction, that’s movies, I mean, I mean, you’ve seen too many movies. I’m talking about reality! I mean, if you want a happy ending, you should go see a Hollywood movie. [chuckles]
At this point, Miriam comes upon them and tells Judah that they ought to be getting home. Judah jumps up and says goodbye to Cliff (“Nice talking to you, good luck to you!”). Happily, Judah puts his arm around Miriam’s shoulder as he tells her that they must plan a wedding like this for Sharon. Miriam tells him how happy he has made her tonight, and we see them stop and kiss as the romantic song “I’ll Be Seeing You” begins to swell up around them.
For many filmgoers, this pessimistic exchange is the end of the film. When Allen shows a blind Ben dancing with his daughter, followed by a montage of earlier scenes from the film, many in the audience probably start rustling in their seats and preparing to leave the theater. However, those willing to stay are presented with an audio excerpt from Louis Levy that was not heard earlier in the film, an excerpt that is considerably more optimistic about the future than the film’s apparent first ending:
We are all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points, but, we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. We wince and fall so unpredictably, so unfairly, human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying, and even to find joy, from simple things like the family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.
At these last lines, Allen returns us to the scene of Ben dancing sweetly with his daughter. As Levy’s voice fades out, so does the quiet music accompanying it. Ben and his daughter stop dancing, and she kisses his cheek as the crowd applauds approvingly. She is clearly the symbol of the future generation to which Levy refers. In her adoration for her saintly father, and the approval of the crowd, lives the suggestion that there are real reasons to hope for the future.
Levy’s soliloquy contains all the elements of a Sartrean existential analysis of the possibilities for authentic moral projects in an indifferent universe in which all meaning springs from the ways in which we exercise our ontological freedom and take responsibility for our acts. We can no longer expect an all-powerful God to intervene in human affairs to right our wrongs or cure the evils of society. If we wish to live authentically in accordance with moral principles which we construct for ourselves, then we must take the responsibility for creating the meaning for our own lives, and commit ourselves to act in accordance with those principles, even when this means making material sacrifices. Thus, at the film’s conclusion, Cliff may be down, but he is not out. He has maintained his integrity, and in this sense, Cliff still has a genuine chance to construct a fulfilling life by pursuing the very goals (family and work) which, Levy tells us, are the fundamental ingredients for a joyous life.
As for Judah, on the other hand, despite his assertions to the contrary, it is not at all clear that he has really escaped from his deep sense of guilt. If he had, then why would he have indiscreetly told Cliff, a virtual stranger, so accurate a version of his story? Obviously, if Cliff thinks about what he was told, he might very well come to realize the significance of Judah’s “murder story.” The details of what Judah told him would be easy enough to check: the trip to Europe with his family, the recent murder of one of his patients about which Judah was questioned by the police, the conviction of another man who had also been found guilty of other murders. While it may be unlikely that Cliff will be the one to investigate Judah’s “story,” there is no reason for us to think that Judah won’t repeat this incident again and again, telling strangers his murder plot every time he’s had too much to drink, until eventually he is taken seriously.
Even if this doesn’t happen (Judah would tell us we’ve seen too many movies), it is clear that Judah is lying, especially to himself, when he claims to have overcome his guilt. His life will always be tainted by his crime. While he might be able to force himself to pretend to enjoy his wealth and security, he admitted to Cliff that he is just rationalizing. Given what we have seen of his character, it is more likely that his high spirits at the film’s end are temporary, and that, in the long run, he will secretly torment himself for the rest of his life. In addition, we know that Judah cannot truly take pleasure from the primary source of human joy which Levy mentions, that of family. He can’t find joy in his family because he ultimately realizes, no matter how hard he tries to hide the truth from himself, that with them he wears a mask, he inauthentically hides his true nature.
How could he find joy in a relationship with a woman who bores him, whose idea of a birthday present is a treadmill? We know now that Judah is a sensitive and passionate person. How long will it be before he tires of the endless empty chatter of his home life and his wife’s desire to entertain guests he finds shallow and frivolous? Like Marion Post, he is trapped in a loveless marriage to a person who, like Ken, doesn’t realize how lonely he really is. However, unlike Marion, he is doomed to remain trapped for a lifetime. When he arranged to have Dolores killed, he destroyed any chance of beginning again authentically. His fate will now be more like that of the characters in Sartre’s No Exit, doomed to spend eternity in relationships with those who can only serve as tormentors.
In the end, Judah has failed to fulfill the obligations imposed on him when Sol named him after the great Jewish leader. Instead of defending the values of his heritage against the pagan hedonism of those who wished to oppress his people, this latter-day Judah has betrayed all for the sake of a material wealth which, in the long run, means very little to him.
Interestingly, Allen himself denies this interpretation. In response to a question I posed to him (see Appendix), Allen said, “You are wrong about Judah; he feels no guilt and the extremely rare time the events occur to him, his mild uneasiness (which sometimes doesn’t come at all) is negligible.” While the reader is free to accept Allen’s response as the final word on this point, I would argue that the film’s text gives stronger support to my interpretation. How could I possibly claim to have greater insight into Judah’s character than his creator? I would contend that in many instances artists do not possess privileged access to all of the nuances of their creations. Ernest Hemingway was famous for denying symbolic meanings in his novels, meanings that were obvious to his readers. Allen acknowledged that his audience may on occasion understand his work even better than he does when he told me in our interview that “Louis Levy was related to Primo Levi only unconsciously. I wasn’t aware of the similarity in name ’til long after the picture was out and someone pointed it out to me. I’m very aware of Levi’s writing, and he is probably present on an unconscious level” (“Questions and Answers with Woody Allen”).
Ultimately, I think Allen wants each of us to make our own decisions about the film’s meaning. He wants to affect us, to shock us, so that we will leave the theater thinking seriously about these issues, something we would be less likely to do if he had provided us with Cliff’s more traditional Hollywood ending.
It is appropriate that the film should end with a shot of Ben. Only by blinding ourselves to the so-called “truth” of the “real world” can one create a meaningful and fulfilling life. If the universe is fundamentally indifferent to our human capacity to love and create meaning for our lives, then we have absolutely no reason for choosing a truth that destroys life’s joy over the fulfilling subjective values we can create for ourselves. In this sense, Sol is right when he proclaims, “If necessary, I will always choose God over truth!”