Luck, Guilt and the Absence of Justice in Woody Allen’s Films
Essay
The ball can fall either way.
Murderers prosper, innocent people suffer and a guilty conscience may disappear with enough time. In Woody Allen’s darker films, chance settles the questions that justice cannot.
The opening image
One bounce changes everything.
A tennis ball strikes the top of the net. For a second, it hangs in the air. It may drop forward or fall back, and no amount of talent or preparation can decide which.
That image opens Match Point and contains the whole film. Chris Wilton’s future will eventually depend on another object hitting a barrier: a stolen wedding ring thrown towards the Thames.
The ring strikes the railing and falls onto the pavement. It looks like the mistake that will expose him. Instead, a drug addict picks it up and is later found dead with it in his possession. The police accept the burglary theory, and Chris walks free.
Woody Allen keeps returning to the same unpleasant question: what if people don’t get what they deserve?
His darker films offer no reliable connection between virtue and reward. Murderers prosper. Innocent people suffer. A guilty conscience may disappear with enough time and comfort.
Allen’s characters often talk about fate, yet his films tend to show something colder. Fate suggests a pattern, perhaps even a purpose. Luck has neither. It simply happens.
Crimes and Misdemeanors · 1989
Waiting for punishment.
Judah Rosenthal begins Crimes and Misdemeanors as a respected ophthalmologist with a comfortable family life and an affair he wants to end.
Dolores, played by Anjelica Huston, threatens to tell his wife about their relationship and expose his questionable financial dealings. Judah responds by turning to his brother Jack, who arranges her murder.
The expected ending is easy to imagine. Judah will confess, be caught or destroy himself through guilt. For a time, he appears to be heading towards one of those outcomes.
His religious upbringing returns to him. He remembers his father’s belief in a moral universe where every action is seen. He becomes frightened, distracted and close to collapse.
Then the fear passes.
Months later, Judah is still free. The murder has been blamed on a criminal with a record. His marriage survives, his career remains intact and his guilt has faded into an occasional unpleasant memory.
At a wedding, he tells Cliff Stern about the crime as though pitching a film. Cliff insists that the murderer would have to confess. Otherwise, the story has no tragic meaning. Judah dismisses the idea as something that happens in films.
That exchange gives Crimes and Misdemeanors its sting. Cliff believes stories should impose the justice missing from life. Judah has discovered that life requires no such ending.
His escape isn’t entirely a matter of luck. Money, reputation and family connections protect him. Jack knows how to arrange the killing. Judah’s public standing makes him difficult to suspect.
Chance helps him, but privilege gives chance plenty to work with.
Match Point · 2005
The ring falls the wrong way.
Chris Wilton expresses Judah’s view with greater clarity: he would rather be lucky than good.
A former professional tennis player, Chris enters a wealthy family through a series of useful encounters. He meets Tom Hewett at an exclusive London tennis club, begins a relationship with Tom’s sister Chloe and acquires a well-paid position through her father.
Chris has charm and discipline. Chance puts him in the right room.
His affair with Nola Rice threatens that new life. When she becomes pregnant and demands that he leave Chloe, Chris chooses murder. He shoots Nola and her neighbour, steals jewellery and drugs, and arranges the scene to resemble a robbery.
The wedding ring appears to betray him when it bounces away from the river. Detective Banner also begins to suspect Chris after finding his name throughout Nola’s diary. The case seems to be closing around him.
Then the ring turns up in the pocket of a dead drug addict.
The evidence supports Chris’s fabricated robbery, and the police abandon the correct theory.
Allen makes the reversal especially cruel because the ring’s first bounce appears unlucky. Had it fallen into the Thames, it would have disappeared. Its return to the pavement creates a new chain of events that clears Chris far more convincingly.
Chance doesn’t reward him for intelligence. His murder plan is hurried and leaves obvious risks. He survives because an unrelated man happens to find an unrelated piece of jewellery before dying.
The final family gathering celebrates the birth of Chris and Chloe’s son. Someone wishes the child luck. Greatness can wait.
Cassandra’s Dream · 2007
Conscience changes the odds.
Cassandra’s Dream follows two South London brothers, Ian and Terry, who buy a boat with money Terry wins at the dog track. They name it after the winning greyhound. Their good fortune is there in the title before the trouble begins.
Both brothers need money. Ian wants to impress his new girlfriend and pursue business plans in California. Terry has gambling debts.
Their wealthy uncle Howard offers to solve their problems if they kill Martin Burns, a former associate who may send him to prison.
They agree, and the murder succeeds. What follows separates them.
Ian convinces himself that life can continue. Terry cannot. He drinks, takes drugs and talks about confessing. His guilt becomes a practical danger to Howard and Ian, so Ian plans to poison his brother during a trip on their boat.
He loses his nerve, attacks Terry in a panic and dies in the struggle. Terry then drowns himself.
The plotting is heavier than in Crimes and Misdemeanors or Match Point. Philip Glass’s score tells us almost immediately that doom is approaching, while the boat’s name provides a fairly obvious warning.
Still, the comparison between the brothers and Allen’s other murderers is useful.
Terry’s conscience ruins him.
Judah learns to live with murder. Chris pushes his guilt aside. Terry remains unable to do either.
The universe doesn’t punish him. His own mind does.
Allen’s films never treat conscience as a dependable form of justice. Some people possess enough of it to suffer. Others adjust.
Coup de Chance · 2023
Chance changes sides.
The title Coup de Chance means “stroke of luck”, making its subject unusually plain.
Fanny meets Alain, an old school friend, by chance on a Paris street. The encounter becomes an affair. Her wealthy husband Jean discovers it and arranges Alain’s murder.
Jean resembles Judah and Chris. He is rich, controlled and used to getting his way. He also appears to have escaped suspicion over the earlier death of a business associate. Murder has become another problem he can pay somebody to remove.
Fanny’s mother, Camille, begins to suspect him. Jean plans another killing during a hunting trip, intending to make her death look accidental.
As he raises his rifle towards her, another hunter mistakes him for an animal and shoots him.
For once, chance kills the murderer.
There is satisfaction in Jean’s death, though it shouldn’t be confused with justice. No investigation uncovers the truth. Nobody makes a brave moral choice. A stranger fires at the wrong shape in the woods.
The ending reverses Match Point. Chris is saved by an absurd accident; Jean is destroyed by one. Neither outcome reveals a moral order. A stray bullet carries no judgement.
Who gets away with it?
No one
gets what
they deserve.
Judah survives because his guilt weakens and his protected life remains in place. Chris survives through an extraordinary coincidence. Ian and Terry collapse because neither can manage the consequences of murder. Jean believes he has mastered chance until it turns against him.
Allen’s sharpest observation is that guilt varies from person to person. We may want conscience to act as an internal court, punishing anyone who escapes the real one. Crimes and Misdemeanors refuses that comfort. Judah discovers that remorse can fade.
Match Point goes further. Chris can recognise the horror of what he has done and carry on anyway.
This is why luck in Allen’s films feels so disturbing. It decides who pays for murder.
The ball touches the net. Everything depends on which side it lands.