Woody Allen was a prolific filmmaker who shared with two other prolific filmmakers, Billy Wilder and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, a preference for character and plot over spectacle, which is what most American directors do instead, even though through his career he was particularly good at filming places such as New York City, Paris and Barcelona. What stands out about all three of these directors is that they were adept at tussling with moral dilemmas, Wilder was the most cynical of the three, as when he dealt with the fine points of the moral ambiguities to be found in “The Apartment”. Sure, Fred MacMurray was a louse, but was the Shirley Maclaine character any better even if Jack Lemon fell for her? Or was that just another side of his weakness as a human being? Fassbinder gives away that his movie “World on a Wire” is about the nature of identity in that most of the people at a party at the beginning of the movie seem like mannikins. So the question is what is a mannikin and what is a human being. “Crimes and Misdemeanors”, which is one of Woody Allen’s most memorable films, has a message, as do many of them. In this case, it is not the claim that there is no justice, which is what some critics at the time of the release of the film in 1989 said was the case. The thesis of the movie is that people can be forgiven for their crimes but are never forgiven for their misdemeanors. That is a morality far harsher than any other I know of, and is very carefully arrived at and so, I would suggest, Allen makes a contribution to thought far greater than film directors are usually credited with, however much Allen himself has many times said he only retails what he has read in one book or another during his career of self-education.