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Ombres et brouillard
Genre: Comedy
Run Time: 85 minutes

Film Synopsis

A beautifully filmed and intriguing tribute to German Expressionism, Shadows and Fog takes a look at both the Central European sensibility between the World Wars, as well other themes like magical realism.

A bookkeeper, Max Kleinman, is recruited by neighbors to find a strangler who has been killing victims in town. He loses his friends, but finds Irmy, who is in town with the circus.

Main Cast

• Michael Kirby .... Killer
• Woody Allen .... Max Kleinman
• David Ogden Stiers .... Hacker
• James Rebhorn .... Vigilante
• Victor Argo .... Vigilante
• Daniel von Bargen .... Vigilante
• Camille Saviola .... Landlady
• Tim Loomis .... Dwarf
• Katy Dierlam .... Fat Lady
• Mia Farrow .... Irmy
• John Malkovich .... Clown
• Madonna .... Marie
• Dennis Vestunis .... Strongman
• Donald Pleasence .... Doctor
• Lily Tomlin .... Prostitute

Full Cast & Credits

Film Remarks

No other Woody Allen film has ever been hustled into oblivion faster than this black-and-white mlange of Mittel-European nightmare, absurdist farce, and homage to German expressionism--sort of Woody Allen meets Franz Kafka in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, set to Kurt Weill's score for The Threepenny Opera. Yet the daft experiment is not without charm and, as the title suggests, oodles of atmosphere.

In a murky, seriously deranged cityscape only a studio art department could create, a giant bald strangler (Michael Kirby) is going around killing people with piano wire. The authorities are powerless (though he stomps about freely, occasionally declaiming speeches), so vigilante posses start roving the streets. For some reason, they dragoon a noisy nebbish named Kleinman (Allen) to assist them. So Kleinman goes into the fog, kvetching, and meets Irmy (Mia Farrow), a circus sword swallower whose clown of a husband (John Malkovich) is two-timing her with the strongman's wife (Madonna). Add an "et cetera" here, because the big, mostly wasted cast also includes Kenneth Mars as the strongman, Donald Pleasence as a philosophical coroner, John Cusack as a student who mistakes Irmy for a prostitute, and Kathy Bates, Jodie Foster, and Lily Tomlin as the real prostitutes in whose company she happens to be at the time. None of this adds up, and the whole thing moves and feels less like a film than one of Allen's oddball New Yorker sketches. Still, as the fever dream of an art-house addict, it has its moments.

--Richard T. Jameson of Amazon.com

Movie Trivia & Awards:

Many fans already know that Shadows and Fog included a great many well-known actors playing the film's small roles. But did you also know....

$2.735m (USA)
Production Dates: November, 1990 - July, 1991
Release Date: March 20, 1992 (USA), February 12, 1992 (France - Ombres et brouillard), March 17, 1992 (Sweeden), February 28, 1992 (Finland), July 30, 1992 (Australia)