Director: Woody Allen; List Price: $61.96; Format: VHS; Rated PG/PG-13; June 2001; Closed Captioned; 459 minutes; B&W/Color; UPC: 027616-86277-8; Extra Info: 5-Tape Boxed Set. Condition: BRAND NEW. STILL FACTORY SEALED.

Synopsis
This collection brings together a collection of films from writer-director-star Woody Allen's late-1980's, early-1990's period, a time for serious Bergman-esque drama married with bitter comedy. The set includes the delightful ALICE, the moving ANOTHER WOMAN, the nearly-flawless CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, the penetrating SEPTEMBER, and the surreal SHADOWS AND FOG. See below for individual movie descriptions.

Alice
Woody Allen's character study of a well-kept, upscale Manhattan woman (Mia Farrow) takes the title character on a journey through a Wonderland of her own making, in which she learns some truths about herself, her relationships, and the universe in general. Alice leads a comfortable life, except for some nagging aches and pains. But when she visits the mysterious Dr. Yang (Keye Luke), he discovers that what really ails Alice is her own lack of true human experience. Alice has been married for sixteen years to Doug (William Hurt), an emotionally detached stockbroker, and she lives a perfectly maintained life in a perfectly maintained apartment with a pair of children and the requisite support staff. All that changes when a curious encounter with the ghost of a former lover (Joe Mantegna) leads Alice to consider an affair. Dr. Yang, seizing the opportunity, gives Alice herbal potions that make her both invisible and seductive while allowing her to free herself from her inhibitions. Plunging into her new fantasy world, Alice ultimately comes to terms with her family, her husband, and her life.

Another Woman
Grad-school administrative head Marion Post (Gena Rowlands) is in the midst of writing a book. The walls are thin in the apartment she's taken for work purposes, and soon Marion begins listening to the sessions conducted by her neighbor, an analyst. One of the patients is Hope (Mia Farrow), whose marriage is in tatters. As Hope prattles on, Marion begins flashing back to highlights (and lowlights) of her own marriage. Her musings are constantly interrupted by the memory of the man (Gene Hackman) she'd once ardently loved. Later on, chance encounters with old friends force Marion to face the fact that she has lived her life sheltering herself from her true emotions. Director Woody Allen's career-long indebtedness to Ingmar Bergman is underlined in Another Woman via Bergman's frequent cinematographer Sven Nykvist.

Crimes and Misdemeanors
Woody Allen spent most of the 80's and 90's veering between comedy and drama. He rarely combined the two with greater success than in Crimes and Misdemeanors, which weaves together two stories--one deadly serious, one often funny, and both ending in sadness. Martin Landau plays Dr. Judah Rosenthal, a prominent ophthalmologist with a successful practice, a loving family, and a reputation for generous charity work. But Rosenthal also has a secret: his mistress Dolores (Anjelica Huston). It seems that what began as a casual fling has become uncomfortably intimate. As he tries to break off the relationship, Dolores threatens to expose his infidelity to his wife and some unorthodox financial arrangements to his colleagues. Fearful that Dolores will make good on her threats, Judah confesses his secret to his brother Jack (Jerry Orbach), who has ties to organized crime and offers to "make the problem go away". Meanwhile, Cliff Stern (Woody Allen) is a filmmaker working on his pet project, a documentary about philosopher and professor Louis Levy (Martin Bergmann). Since films on this topic don't pay the rent, Cliff's wife Wendy (Joanna Gleason) arranges for him to make a documentary for public television about her brother Lester (Alan Alda), a famous TV comedian whose vapidity is exceeded only by his arrogance. While Cliff tries to bite the bullet and finish the film, he finds himself falling in love with PBS producer Halley Reed (Mia Farrow).

September
A weekend stay at a Vermont summer house provides glimpses into the lives of six unhappy people, plagued by unrequited feelings, thoughts, and desires. Mia Farrow plays Lane, a troubled woman who hides from a terrible childhood memory. She's in love with Peter (Sam Waterston), who is tempted by her good friend Stephanie (Dianne Wiest). As the summer days come to a close, resentments and anger come to the surface, many of them related to Lane's relationship with her actress mother (Elaine Stritch).

Shadows and Fog
Woody Allen's black-and-white curiosity piece is a mixture of influences--from German silent film expressionism, to Franz Kafka's nightmare worlds, to the contemporary fables of Wim Wenders. Allen plays the nebbish clerk Kleinman (in a throwback to his characters from Sleeper and Love and Death), who is awakened in the middle of the night by a vigilante group wanting him to help capture a serial killer on the loose. Kleinman reluctantly agrees, but when he gets to the street, the vigilantes are gone. Kleinmen thereafter spends most of the film wandering the shadowy back alleys in search of the citizen's brigade. Meanwhile, a circus is in town. When sword-swallower Irmy (Mia Farrow) catches her creepy clown husband (John Malkovich) getting familiar with trapeze artist Marie (Madonna), she packs her bags and heads for town. There she meets up with Kleinman, which sets up a number of plot lines that has Irmy befriending a trio of prostitutes (Jodie Foster, Lily Tomlin, and Kathy Bates) at the local brothel and accepting $700 from a university student (John Cusack) who wants to sleep with her.

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