ABSTRACT
Woody Allen, in two serious and philosophically challenging movies—one made in the late twentieth century, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and the other in the early twenty-first century, Match Point—challenges the moral order of the universe. In Match Point, Allen, closely following Fyodor Dostoevsky's story-line, creates a similar cloud of suspicion around his protagonist, Chris, the murderer who comes very close to being caught. In Crimes and Misdemeanors, Allen presents Judah, a successful and wealthy ophthalmologist, whose mistress of two years threatens that if he does not keep his promise to divorce his wife and marry her, she will reveal both their relationship and his shady financial dealings. Unlike Raskolnikov, who despite his misguided state of mind could not bear life without a search for meaning, Judah is in search of a philosophy that supports his wish to have his cake and eat it too.
