Return To Weimar

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

SHADOWS AND FOG

Directed and Written by Woody Allen

Shadows and Fog is most obviously an exercise in style, a beautifully made tribute to the expressionistic cinema of 1920s Germany. It's all here: a homicidal maniac stalking the menacing night streets of a nameless, timeless city; a circus and a brothel populated by fringe figures who, naturally, are less hypocritical socially and sexually than the police, the church and the bourgeoisie; a score that features the music of Kurt Weill; lighting and a camera that pay homage to the whole Weimar school of cinematography.

In its way, this is an extremely daring work. The percentage of the modern movie audience that knows and values such an antique and, even in its day, exotic film tradition is minuscule. What does the rest of the audience care that it exerts a continuing influence on films noirs and, for that matter, on Batman? For those people, Allen has recruited an astonishing cast, from Madonna to John Malkovich, from Jodie Foster to John Cusack, and they ground their symbolic characters in a recognizable reality.

Most important, Allen has inserted his own screen character, the wise schlemiel, into the proceedings, this time as a clerk recruited by a variety of vigilante bands, each with a theory about how to catch the night stalker. The clerk supplies what expressionism always lacked -- jokes. And his increasingly tense situation provides a sharp commentary on the fecklessness of ideological debate when a crisis is at hand.

Shadows and Fog ends -- perhaps a little too abruptly -- as so many of ! Allen's recent films do, with a touch of magic realism. But that too achieves a surprisingly apt stylistic fit. The scope of this short piece may be small, but it is also a vivid, vigorous and often entrancing movie. R.S.