"Shadows and Fog" begins like a student film example on how to shoot a black-and-white film in a studio with deep shadows and lights that illuminate European streets and bridges. The look of the film is meant to evoke German Expressionism, though it also evokes Universal Horror films (which of course drew from German Expressionism). Woody Allen's homage also serves to complement Ingmar Bergman's beautiful classic films such as "The Seventh Seal." Still, the homage ends there, visually, since it is a Woody Allen comedy only with Kafkaesque tones.
Kleinman (Allen, with more European-type spectacles) is rousted from bed in the middle of the night by a group of vigilantes trying to trap a strangler in the cobblestoned streets. They want Kleinman to join though they are rude and insensitive to him, treating him like an inferior, weak, meek-looking man (Typical Allen line: "I have the strength of a small boy...with polio.") The trouble is that Kleinman has no idea what he is supposed to or what his role is in entrapping this serial killer. Kleinman become a wandering novice, seeing shadows everywhere deep in the night and cat noises up in alleyways and near bridges. Nobody should be walking the dangerous foggy streets yet he finds other wanderers like a circus sword swallower named Irmy (Mia Farrow) who has left her cheating boyfriend. She and Kleinman have a discussion about the stars in the night sky with the absence of fog permitting. Then they catch his own boss peeking at a woman undressing, which almost costs Kleinman his job!
Prior to her meeting Kleinman, we are introduced to Irmy who first ends up in a brothel with some voluptuous women, including Jodie Foster and Kathy Bates. A rich college student comes into play (an excellent John Cusack) who finds her to be the most desirable woman ever and pays her a sum of $700. Meanwhile, Irmy's boyfriend (John Malkovich), a circus clown who believes family is death to an artist, is looking for her recognizing his adulterous mistakes. When he finds her, he's mad that she sold her body and hates her and then says, "Come HOME!" I could not stop laughing at Malkovich who plays it straight.
Woody's nebbish fool doesn't want to discuss existential matters and can't perform sexually when he also ends up at the brothel. There is a litany of guest stars throughout the film who pop in and out so quickly, you'll probably miss most of them. Kate Nelligan is Kleinman's fiancee who shouts at him from a second story window, though you can barely make out that it is Nelligan. You have to be on high alert to catch William H. Macy as a police officer. Some roles truly stand out like Donald Pleasance's coroner bit, or the always magnificent Kenneth Mars as a drunk magician.
"Shadows and Fog" is both haunting and remarkably funny with deep existential passages about life, love and death. I saw the film back in 1992 at the Jean Cocteau cinema in Santa Fe, NM, and let me say that it was the perfect, intimate venue for this film. It is one Woody Allen film I love to return to, to return to that world of darkness where there isn't much meaning other than trying to stay alive. It is an unnamed European town drenched in vivid atmosphere where anything can be around the corner. It also has the typical Allenisms about relationships and discussions on God while there is a killer on the loose. No classic and not a great movie but it is an original and tightly paced. One of the rare Woody Allen experiments that truly satisfies.
