Allen is not a stranger to the black and white formula. One look at MANHATTAN, for example, and you have a fantastic, classic film with first-rate performances and a focused story.
The story is typical Allen, with overlapping plots, people who in some way or other are interrelated to one another by the six-degrees-of-separation rule and only serves to somehow have Mia Farrow and Woody Allen converge in what seems to be a turning point, which later on, somehow fails to resolve itself satisfactorily. It's never known what European city this is, but the idea comes clear: Allen evokes the moody black and whites of German Expressionism (I kept thinking of M and its urban decay) and throws in some healthy amounts of Franz Kafka's THE PROCESS where a paranoia is the main theme and a man is to be convicted without knowing why.
Where SHADOWS AND FOG falters is not in the story per se: Allen packs this movie with so many big-name actors in barely there parts, there's no room to focus on the story which meanders as it is a little too much. There's a message to be expressed, but with so much satirical humor during the brothel sequence turning progressively dark once the focus goes back to the killer at large, it would have been better had there not been so much of the former and more of the latter. It remains something of a stand-alone oddity in a career filled with urban angst of the upper crust white intellectuals from his New York based movies.
The story is typical Allen, with overlapping plots, people who in some way or other are interrelated to one another by the six-degrees-of-separation rule and only serves to somehow have Mia Farrow and Woody Allen converge in what seems to be a turning point, which later on, somehow fails to resolve itself satisfactorily. It's never known what European city this is, but the idea comes clear: Allen evokes the moody black and whites of German Expressionism (I kept thinking of M and its urban decay) and throws in some healthy amounts of Franz Kafka's THE PROCESS where a paranoia is the main theme and a man is to be convicted without knowing why.
Where SHADOWS AND FOG falters is not in the story per se: Allen packs this movie with so many big-name actors in barely there parts, there's no room to focus on the story which meanders as it is a little too much. There's a message to be expressed, but with so much satirical humor during the brothel sequence turning progressively dark once the focus goes back to the killer at large, it would have been better had there not been so much of the former and more of the latter. It remains something of a stand-alone oddity in a career filled with urban angst of the upper crust white intellectuals from his New York based movies.