Crimes and Misdemeanors

Allen makes use of classical and jazz music in many of the film's scenes. The soundtrack includes Franz Schubert's String Quartet No. 15 (a recording by the Juilliard String Quartet), which is used in the scenes leading up to Dolores' death, and Judah discovering her body.

The outline of Judah's moral dilemma - whether a person can continue everyday life with the knowledge of having committed murder - evokes[5] the pivotal idea of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866), despite suggesting a resolution nearly opposite to that of the novel. Allen would revisit the theme in his films Match Point, Cassandra's Dream and Irrational Man.

The film grossed a domestic total of $18,254,702.[2]

Crimes and Misdemeanors received mostly positive reviews. It currently holds a 94% "Certified Fresh" rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 47 critics, with an average rating of 7.93/10.[7] It also holds a 77/100 weighted average score on Metacritic, based on 10 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[8]

Vincent Canby of The New York Times lauded the film, remarking:

The wonder of Crimes and Misdemeanors is the facility with which Mr. Allen deals with so many interlocking stories of so many differing tones and voices. The film cuts back and forth between parallel incidents and between present and past with the effortlessness of a hip, contemporary Aesop. The movie's secret strength - its structure, really - comes from the truth of the dozens and dozens of particular details through which it arrives at its own very hesitant, not especially comforting, very moving generality."[9]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four stars, writing:

The movie generates the best kind of suspense, because it's not about what will happen to people - it's about what decisions they will reach. We have the same information they have. What would we do? How far would we go to protect our happiness and reputation? How selfish would we be? Is our comfort worth more than another person's life? Allen does not evade this question, and his answer seems to be, yes, for some people, it would be.[10]

Though normally a fierce critic of Allen's work, John Simon of National Review declared the film to be "Allen's first successful blending of drama and comedy, plot and subplot," and also wrote:

The chief strength of the movie is its courage in confronting grave and painful questions of the kind the American cinema has been doing its damnedest to avoid.[11]

Variety gave the film a more mixed review, however, writing, "Woody Allen ambitiously mixes his two favoured strains of cinema, melodrama and comedy, with mixed results in Crimes and Misdemeanours."[12]

In 2016, film critics Robbie Collin and Tim Robey ranked it as the second best movie by Woody Allen.[13]

The film was met with critical acclaim, and was nominated for three Academy Awards: Woody Allen for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, and Martin Landau for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

In Empire magazine's poll of the 500 greatest movies of all time, Crimes and Misdemeanors was ranked number 267.[14] In 2010, it was the first film to win the 20/20 Award[15] for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay (Woody Allen), and Best Supporting Actor (Martin Landau). It also received three additional nominations, for Best Director (Woody Allen), Best Supporting Actor (Jerry Orbach) and Best Supporting Actress (Anjelica Huston). In a 2016 Time Out contributors' poll, it ranked second only to Annie Hall among Allen's efforts, with Dave Calhoun praising it as "the film in which Woody's comic and serious sides most comfortably align".[16] The film achieved the same rank in an article by The Daily Telegraph critics Robbie Collin and Tim Robey, who wrote, "Here [Allen is] thinking deeply about moral choice, the question of whether guilt in your own eyes or the eyes of the world matters more. This bubblingly wise film, rich with beautifully dovetailing metaphors about blindness and conscience and the perils of self-knowledge, [...] is Allen on soaring form, gliding so elegantly through its maze of ideas it's as if the spirit of Fred Astaire gave it lift-off."[17] Crimes and Misdemeanors was also named Allen's second best by Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly[18] and Barbara VanDenbergh of The Arizona Republic,[19] third by Darian Lusk of CBS,[20] and fourth by Zachary Wigon of Nerve.[21] In a 2015 BBC critics' poll, it was voted the 57th greatest American film ever made.[22]

In October 2013, the film was voted by The Guardian readers as the third best film directed by Woody Allen.[23]

Crimes and Misdemeanors was released through MGM Home Entertainment on DVD on June 5, 2001. A limited edition Blu-ray of 3,000 units was later released by Twilight Time on February 11, 2014.[24]