Film Review

I want to thank Dr. Galdi for her gracious invitation to be the editor of this new section of the Journal. It is certainly fitting that we include psychoanalytically oriented film reviews in our journal.

Our Institute has long supported the use of literature, theater, and films as vehicles for understanding character dynamics. Horney set this precedent in her books and papers where she frequently used literary allusions as illustrative examples of certain dynamic forces. In that tradition, the Institute used to regularly sponsor courses at the New School for Social Research in which literary characters were “analyzed” from a Horneyan perspective. For many years as well, the Association has sponsored a Friday night film program where classic films were shown, followed by discussions about the characters and dynamic factors at work in the material.

I felt it most fitting that Dr. Gene Papowitz contribute the inaugural review for this section since Dr. Papowitz was for many years a corner stone of that film series and also led a number of film discussions at faculty retreats. And what more appropriate a subject for a psychoanalytic film review than a film by Woody Allen?

In Crimes and Misdemeanors Woody Allen raises the question of whether a man can commit murder and then go about his life as if nothing had happened. The man is not a psychopath or professional criminal. He is Judah Rosenthal, M.D., a successful and highly regarded ophthalmologist, a devoted husband and caring father, a philanthropist, a pillar of his community. For 2 years, however, he has been having an extramarital affair with a woman named Dolores. We also learn that he has embezzled funds from the charitable foundation that he runs in order to pay for his own stock losses, although he paid them back in full with interest. As the movie opens, he is being honored for his accomplishments at a dinner while secretly he is trying to end the relationship with