Love And Death [DVD]

Love and Death (1975), Woody Allen's fifth movie as writer/director/actor, is my pick for Funniest Film Ever Made. The last of the pure slapstick comedies, it finds him in transition, verbal comedy going all guns (the only misfire being that musket blow-up, hehe), philosophical abstractions and literary parodies in full swing. The next one was Annie Hall (1977). Two years later came Manhattan (1979). And so ended the period in Allen's cinema that absolutely everybody loves, the 1970s.IMDB gives the locations as Paris and Budapest, but the story destination is Russia in the era of Napoleon. Woody plays Boris, a middle-aged son of a gentleman with no talent for war. Actually, the narrative begins with his voice-over telling us he is awaiting execution on the morrow. We then review his life, going back to an early encounter with Death, then his becoming a war hero, how he fights a duel and marries the girl of his dreams (much to her dismay), and then when Napoleon marches into battle once more Boris faces his greatest challenge yet. Will luck be on his side once again? This is a big costume comedy with a cast of hundreds, special effects, wide-open spaces and for all its spoofing of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy it is supremely, ingeniously, kidney-displacingly funny.Diane Keaton once again displays her brilliant gift for comic acting, and what a pair these two were. This is the smiling mask of the theatre, in contrast to the doldrums mask worn during the years of Muse Mia. She plays Sonja, Boris' cousin and his great love. You might also recognise some faces from the musical, Fiddler on the Roof. Her rapport with Allen is a thing of joy, and since nothing he has done since this movie is as relentlessly funny, one can only be more amazed at it. Every kind of joke is here, all sorts of puns and pratfalls, fantasies and anachronisms. I was about to start making a list of unforgettable scenes, but we'd be here all day.Allen's 1980s flicks carry more admiration because they are more overtly serious, especially towards the end of the decade, but his true metier is comedy, being funny. When he brought both together, his aspirations towards drama and his flair for comedy, a masterpiece might ensue, such as Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), but let's not get distracted by discussions of which decade was best, whether Chris Rock's view that Woody makes 'dramas with jokes in them' is correct, or whether there has been a genuine falling-off since the turn of the millennium. Love and Death was a box-office success, taking in six times what it cost to make. I seem to recall it making the Top 10 for at least one film critic asked about his favourite films. I don't know when Allen adopted his familiar refrain about always screwing up his movies and never realising his grandiose dreams for artistic triumph, and consequently never watching them again. I choose to imagine that at this early stage he was still hopeful. Love & Death doesn't make it onto his own list of films that he got right, in fact none of his films with Keaton are on the list. He was never a very good judge of his own work, famously wanting to withold Manhattan because of its failure (it is surely the best loved of them all!). Maybe he has mellowed in recent years, become more accepting of his true gift, one that we all know by now is much harder to master than its opposite, the gift of being funny.Fifty films down, and No.5 is still the biggest laugh of them all.Funny is serious, Woody. And in Love and Death you are seriously funny.

The film stars frequent co-star Diane Keaton opposite Woody Allen and it's my personal favourite among their collaborations. Allen himself is particular fun as the pacifist who becomes an accidental hero in the Russian army. The plot is a wonderful spoof of pretty much every work of classical Russian literature paired with all the insecurities and angst of Allen's world. There are a good few belly laughs about the obvious jokes and a lot more smiles about the more subtle references to history and literature. Entertaining little film.

Love And Death is Woody Allen's 1975 film which provides a very funny, although not entirely successful, parody on Russian literature (including Dostoevsky and Tolstoy's War and Peace) - even to the extent of staging mock battle scenes reminiscent of (although, unsurprisingly, not as convincing as) those in Bondarchuk's 1967 film of the Tolstoy novel. Being the Allen film which immediately preceded the Oscar-winning Annie Hall, I regard Love And Death as acting as something of a bridge between Allen's 'early funny ones' (Take The Money And Run, Play It Again Sam, Bananas, Sleeper - albeit there were some moments of philosophising in these early films) and his subsequent, more mature and 'serious' films.Whilst Love And Death has a very high joke content (almost as high as what is, for me, Allen's funniest out-and-out 'straight comedy', Play It Again Sam) and thus succeeds admirably from a purely comedic standpoint, as a parody of Russian 19th century literature and society it is less convincing. Whilst there are numerous scenes and examples of dialogue where Allen hits the mark (e.g. when confronting the main reasons why the Russians must avoid defeat by the French - 'Do you want all that rich food, heavy sauces and croissants?', 'No!'), much of the film's depiction of this 'alien culture' becomes rather 'clunky', and, at times towards the end, descends into unconvincing farce. I have found this difficulty relating to the convincing portrayal of foreign cultures (albeit in an admittedly comedic setting) to be something of a bugbear with Allen - one that is (to some extent) evident with his later Shadows and Fog, and reaches catastrophic proportions with the later, UK set, films Match Point and, worst of all, Cassandra's Dream.However, having said all of the above, my four star rating for Love And Death reflects the fact that the plus points of the film largely outweigh the negative ones. Great lines of dialogue abound. Getting to the heart of the film, Allen's character Boris Grushenko asks Sonja (an impressive Diane Keaton) whether she is scared of death, 'Scared is the wrong word; I'm frightened of it', 'Interesting distinction' frowns Boris in reply. And as Boris stares into the distance, lamenting 'Nothingness, non-existence, black emptiness', and when asked by Sonja what he was saying, responds 'I was just planning my future'. There are also hilarious moments where Boris and Sonja are in the middle of some significant action (e.g. attempting to assassinate Napoleon) and then veer off into an extended and convoluted philosophical discussion (rather reminiscent of one of those old film reviews that used to appear -20 years ago - in Sight and Sound) on the meaning of life or the existence of God.Performance-wise, Allen is Allen and Keaton is typically impressive. Similarly, Jessica Harper in a minor role as Natasha delivers one or two great scenes, including that with Keaton towards the end of the film, where Allen creates a shot of the two actresses' faces at right angles to each other, as a tribute to the shot from Bergman's Persona. Mention should also be made of the excellent James Tolkan in his studied portrayal of Napoleon.Allen chose an appropriate soundtrack for the film featuring music by Prokofiev, particularly the Lieutenant Kije Suite. This music accompanies a brilliant final scene, where Boris dances down a tree-lined road alongside Death, in the form of a figure clothed in white and brandishing the traditional sickle (a la The Seventh Seal).In summary, something of a mixed bag, but a very funny (and cinematically interesting) film nevertheless.

I'm not surprised this was rumored to be Allen's favorite film. I'd say it's the best of his flat out comedies. All the strengths he was gathering as a filmmaker came together in this brilliant satire of (among other things) 19th century Russian literature, war, epic films about war, Ingmar Bergman, etc. etc. It's very very smart, and very very funny.An amazing mix of sophisticated intellectual verbal comedy, parody, low and high-brow visual gags (from speeded up film of bopping a character repeatedly over the head with a bottle, to homages to great images from early Russian films) , terrific cinematography, and some real ideas, both political and philosophical.Diane Keaton is wonderful, and fully comes into her own as Allen's on screen equal partner. And the look of the film shows the deep visual sophistication that would become a hallmark of the next phase of Allen's career; Annie Hall, Manhattan, etc.With this film Allen completed his journey from brilliant joke teller to brilliant director-writer. It would be his next film, Annie Hall, that would make the world realize he was a world class filmmaker. But you can see the all groundwork laid here, and have a lot of fun in the process.