Dim and Dimmer: “Shadows and Fog” (1992)

      One of the antagonizing characteristics of Woody Allen’s professional career is that instead of focusing on his unique and admirable strengths, he continually strives to emulate the works of his idols. In “Shadows and Fog” his imitative goals are two-fold:  first to create an homage to German Expressionist cinema, especially the works  Murnau, Pabst and Lang, secondly, to emulate the absurdist, existential satire of Franz Kafka. In both paths he fails miserably. Visually, the film is almost impenetrably foggy…and dark. So dark, in fact, the visual design lapses the film into a pointless obscurity so severe it neither usefully functions as homage nor as parody; it simply becomes impossible to discern what is going on under all of the colossal murk.

 

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