HotToastyRag If you're a film student, you've got a much better chance of liking this movie. I've read that Woody Allen made this as an homage to German Expressionist filmmakers, like F.W. Murnau. It's a black-and-white movie, utilizing the two elements in the title, Shadows and Fog, to make the scenes extra spooky and European-looking. For the rest of you out there, this probably won't be your favorite Woody Allen movie. The plot is jumbled and hap-hazard, with a bookie in charge of solving a string of murders and a travelling circus coming into town.All in all, this one's a little sinister and confusing, but if you like Woody Allen's darker movies, or you just like renting all his movies no matter how good they are, you might want to rent this one. Just don't expect a joke fest. The famous faces you'll see in this one besides Woody himself and his sweetie-pie at the time, Mia Farrow, are David Ogden Stiers, Jodie Foster, Kathy Bates, James Rebhorn, John Malkovich, Donald Pleasence, Madonna, Wallace Shawn, Julie Kavner, John Cusack, Fred Gwynne, Lily Tomlin, William H. Macy, Philip Bosco, Kate Nelligan, and John C. Reilly.

smatysia Woody Allen is annoying as usual, playing a Kafka-inspired role set in Germany or Central Europe in the early twentieth century. (Electric light is commonplace, but no automobile is ever seen) Allen's shtick was original and amusing in the early Seventies, but it palled many decades ago. The plot is fairly boring, and never really ties together very well. There is a sort of "all-star cast" that is largely wasted. And the film (and plot) had no real ending, it just kind of quit. However, there were some good things. The mood was set very well with the fog, the black-and-white photography, the music. Nice performances from some of the cast, especially Mia Farrow, John Cusack, John Malkovich, and even the much-maligned Madonna. Some of Allen's direction was effective, such as the 360 shot around the table at the brothel. But overall, the film was boring, and I cannot recommend it.

RisingStar12 A warning before I begin: So far, in my quest to see all Woody Allen films, I have only seen the following: Annie Hall, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Manhattan, Vicky Christina Barcelona, Whatever Works, and Hannah and Her Sisters. I felt that I should have stated that before I went any further. While I enjoyed this film, it was not my favorite that I have seen of his. There were some great moments, but it did not feel like an instant Allen classic. The plot is very simple, yet very complex at the same time. Woody's character has been woken up in the middle of the night and is told that he is a part of a plan which he knows nothing about. The viewers do not know anything more than he does, and so we constantly learn with him. From what we do know: there is a killer on the loose, the killer only attacks when there is fog on the island, and there is currently fog on the island. Woody is then thrown into the adventure, completely unsure of what will happen next. It is very much a circus film, in which anything can happen. Not all films are able to maintain that spontaneity, yet—in this film—it works. The supporting cast is wonderful. There are a ridiculous amount of cameos. Because of the spontaneity described above, however, I did not feel that WA was trying to "star up" his film in the hopes that more people would go see it. Madonna as a curly-haired adulterer? Kathy Bates, Jodie Foster, and Lily Tomlin as hookers? Mia Farrow as the wife of a sword swallower? Whatever. It works. There were, however, some elements which did not fit as easily together. The tone changed several times throughout the film. Because of the fact that the film was about a killer on the loose, it would have made more sense for the paranoia and fear aspect to travel throughout the entire course. Instead, it seemed that there were interruptions of philosophical moments. While this great in films like Crimes and Misdemeanors, they felt like Woody Allen was reading philosophy books during the writing of the script and became temporarily distracted. I was hoping for the moments in which characters question reality to fit more with the plot. They did not, and the film suffered because of it. Mind you, the rest of the film was created in a fashion where these small slips were forgivable. This film was not a mess in any way and is still better than much of the material that is being released today. In the film, we are introduced (or have we already been introduced) to what WA has said is his personal belief: that we are destroyed by the absence of illusions in life. To those who have not read that much on WA, this may be a very great concept. For those who have heard it before, however, it feels a little...ordinary. Though what do I know?

jzappa Shadows and Fog belongs with the Woody Allen canon of endeavors in other vanguards, along with Interiors, Stardust Memories, Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Another Woman and Alice by the time he made this film. It is another base he's covering, seeing how well he can make it come off, and moving on. It follows the aesthetic conventions and classic set design and lighting techniques of German Expressionist horror films from the silent era and pre-WWII German cinema. He reminds us of Fritz Lang's intense social crime dramas and Robert Wiede and F.W. Murnau's Gothic silent classics. It is a fascinating lost genre of movies, one of the most evocative film movements so far seen. It provides Allen and present DP Carlo DiPalma with a dark, antiquated European atmosphere and the expectation of sharp angles, great heights, long shadows and lots of symbolism using geometry and symmetry. It fulfills most of them and otherwise goes in its own direction. Nevertheless, it still remains his very darkest film.Allen draws from his own one-act play Death, and defines it and landscapes it into a wandering mystery, much more than any prior film save Stardust Memories, interweaving some expected intermittent Woody gags, romance with Mia Farrow and Kafka-esquire philosophizing with a story about a meek employee named Kleinman, played by Allen of course, being awakened from a deep sleep and coerced by a vigilante mob. They claim to be looking for a killer who strangles his victims. In the ghostly town's arbitrary commotion, he is then left wandering without knowledge of his function in their plan, and has little luck in the way of anybody telling him. It is a metaphorical and symbolic journey that becomes not only his but that in which he is not involved, and thus out of his control, such as Irmy, the Mia Farrow character, a circus sword swallower whose love entanglements with her egotistical boyfriend, the circus clown, played by a rather underused John Malkovich, preoccupy her mind as she searches the city after packing her bags and running away in anger, or an unexpected and considerably eery scene where the killer shares a brief dialogue with his next victim before killing him; both characters' faces are obscured by the incidental placement of certain objects.It is, indeed, enormously affected, and pretentious. That's a given no matter how one approaches this project. Essentially, it is a kind of movie Woody had never made before, and it's unlikely he will ever again. That in itself makes it a gem, because it is a rare treat. As many films as he has made, and in such a consistent time, and as often as he seems to repeat or parody himself, which he has often done, each film is wholly its own story with its own characters, visual approach and mood. Shadows of Fog is proof of that. If not that it just has a mind-blowing, immaculate cast---John Cusack, Madonna, in case you ever wondered if Woody would ever work with her for any reason whatsoever, Donald Pleasance, Lily Tomlin, Kathy Bates, Jodie Foster and Daniel Von Bargen appear indefinitely throughout in purely odd roles---it is too hypnotic and cryptic to be just an exercise.