SHADOWS AND FOG got lost in its own intentions when it dropped like an anvil on glass in 1991. As its writer & director Woody Allen predicted “the film was destined for commercial doom”; it was a financial debacle, grossing $2,736,000 against a production cost of $14,000,000. Critics were lukewarm to dismissive, and 141st place for the year salted Allen’s post-mortem summation: “It’s not a bad idea but you have to be in the mood for it, and marketing tests showed it did not appeal to homo sapiens.”

“I – I should be alright. You know, apart from the fact that – that l’m wanted by a lynch mob and the police are after me and there’s a maniac loose and l’m unemployed, you know. Everything else is fine.”

A strangler on the loose. ‘Kleinmann’ (Allen) is summoned by vigilantes to help them look for the killer. During his involuntary service he encounters a circus performer who’s left her cheating husband, and they each receive dollops of worldly wisdom from the staff of a brothel. Metaphors on parade.

KLEINMANN: “I’ve never paid for sex in my life.”  PROSTITUTE: “Oh, you just think you haven’t.”

For his 16th time doing triple duty as writer, director & actor, Allen opts for black & white to summon the look and feel of the German impressionist films of the 1920’s and 30’s, in another seriocomic muse on the human condition, at least the perennial neurotic’s version of it. Though peppered with A-list actors, milling around reciting Allen’s words with requisite skill, all that emerges with distinction from the 85-minute ramble are Carlo di Palma’s superbly lit cinematography and Santo Loquasto’s production design.

Allen takes his nervous nebbish shtick and runs it to tatters this time; after ten minutes of taking the audience to the couch with him you hope the strangler leaves the supporting cast alone and gets to the whiner-in-chief. A few good lines aren’t enough to salvage an idea whose time never came.

“Men and women want very different things out of sex. They’ve never forgiven each other.”

Serving the plot and spouting synthetic psychobabble: Mia Farrow, John Malkovich (irritation alert), John Cusack, Lily Tomlin, Jodie Foster (wasted), Kathy Bates, Donald Pleasence, Julie Kavner, Madonna (barely there, marquee bait), Fred Gwynne, Kate Nelligan, Anne Lange, Kenneth Mars, Wallace Shawn, Kurtwood Smith, Victor Argo, David Ogden Stiers, James Rebhorn, Philip Bosco, Josef Sommer, John C. Reilly, William H. Macy and Peter Dinklage (21, uncredited debut).