Themes: Nothing Goes Right, Unlikely Heroes, Unrequited Love
Main Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Harold Gould, Sol Frieder, Olga Georges-Picot
Release Year: 1975
Country: US
Run Time: 85 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
Woody Allen's Love and Death is purportedly a satire of all things Russian, from Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky novels to Sergei Eisenstein films, but it plays more like a spin on Bob Hope's Monsieur Beaucaire. Allen plays Boris, a 19th century Russian who falls in love with his distant (and married) cousin Sonja (Diane Keaton). Pressed into service with the Russian army during the war against Napoleon, Boris accidentally becomes a hero, then goes on to win a duel against a cuckolded husband (Harold Gould). He returns to Sonja, hoping to settle down on the Steppes somewhere, but Sonja has become fired up with patriotic fervor, insisting that Boris join a plot to kill Napoleon. Intellectual in-jokes abound in Love and Death, and other gags are basic Allen one-liners; for instance, after being congratulated for his lovemaking skills, Boris replies nonchalantly, "I practice a lot when I'm alone." The pseudo-Russian ambience of Love and Death is comically enhanced by the Sergey Prokofiev compositions on the musical track. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Before Woody Allen made Annie Hall, the first in a long series of romantic comedies and/or personal dramas about neurotic New Yorkers (and, to a large degree, himself), he made a series of wildly funny absurdist comedies, of which Love and Death was probably the best. Dominated by knowing parodies of Russian literature with a dollop of Ingmar Bergman on the side, Love and Death is that rare satire that wears its smarts on its sleeve while still going for the belly laugh. While you have to be quite well-read to catch every literary reference, the movie still works if you don't get them, and for every joke about the philosophical nature of being and nothingness, there's another one along the lines of father's "valuable piece of land" (a chunk of sod he carries with him), and the dialogue is delightfully silly more often than it's profound. This is also where Allen's acknowledged fondness for Bob Hope gets its strongest public airing; Woody's performance as Boris Grushenko, "the young coward all St. Petersburg is talking about," owes a lot to the mixture of bravado and jumpiness that marked Hope's best work, and the story bears more than a passing resemblance to Hope's Monsieur Beaucaire (1946). While this wasn't the first film Allen made with Diane Keaton, it was the first one in which she seemed to be on an equal footing and not just a girlfriend-turned-leading lady. Keaton's an able straight woman for Allen's gags, and she fields a number of her own with a delicious deadpan aplomb (most notably distracting a Spanish dignitary with the question, "I'm having trouble adjusting my belt -- do you think you could come over here and hold my bosom for a while?"). Allen's next film was his Oscar-winning breakthrough Annie Hall, and, while his subsequent work was often more personal and emotionally involving than his early films, he was never funnier than in Love and Death. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Henri Czarniak - Ivan Grushenko; Despo Diamantidou - Mother; Féodor Atkine - Mikhail; Alfred Lutter - Young Boris; Jessica Harper - Natasha; James Tolkan - Napoleon; Georges Adet - Old Nehamken; Frank Adu - Drill Sergeant; Edmond Ardisson - Priest; Albert Augier - Waiter; Yves Barsacq - Rimsky; Lloyd Battista - Don Francisco; Yves Brainville - Andre; Gerard Buhr - Servant; Brian Coburn - Dmitri; Patricia Crown - Cheerleader; Sandor Eles - Soldier #2; Luce Fabiole - Grandmother; Florian - Uncle Nicolai; Jacqueline Fogt - Ludmilla; Larry Hankin - Uncle Sasha; Tony Jay - Vladimir Maximovitch; Jack Lenoir - Krapotkin; Leib Lensky - Father Andre; Jacques Maury - Second; Aubrey Morris - Soldier #4; Denise Peron - Spanish Countess; Beth Porter - Anna; Shimen Ruskin - Borslov; Zvee Scooler - Father; C.A.R. Smith - Father Nikolai; Alan Tilvern - Sergeant; Howard Vernon - Gen. Leveque; Tutte Lemkow - Pierre; Fred Smith - Soldier; Roger Lumont - Baker; Glenn Williams - Soldier; Chris Sanders - Joseph; Jack Berard - Gen. Lecoq; Ed Marcus - Raskov; Helene Vallier - Mme. Wolfe
Credit
Willy Holt - Art Director, Juliet Taylor - Casting, Miriam Brickman - Casting, Gladys de Segonzac - Costume Designer, Paul Feyder - First Assistant Director, Woody Allen - Director, Ron Kalish - Editor, Ralph Rosenblum - Editor, Marie-Madeleine Paris - Makeup, Ghislain Cloquet - Cinematographer, Fred T. Gallo - Producer, Charles H. Joffe - Producer, Martin Poll - Producer, Peter Dawson - Special Effects, Kit West - Special Effects, Daniel Brisseau - Sound/Sound Designer, Al Gramaglia - Sound/Sound Designer, Woody Allen - Screenwriter, Sergey Prokofiev - Featured Music
The bulk of this CD consists of a dozen demos that Bolan did in 1966, augmented by plenty of additional full rock instrumentation and backup vocals added in 1981, several years after Bolan's death. In other words, only Bolan's vocal and his acoustic guitar were recorded in 1966; the rest was overdubbed 15 years later. It is very rare indeed that this approach yields satisfactory results, and this is one more in the long line of misbegotten attempts to make material never intended for release suitable for the contemporary market with inappropriately modern arrangements. Bolan's songs weren't too substantial at this point anyway -- "You Scare Me to Death" was actually a proposed television jingle for breath tablets -- although he would re-record "Hippy Gumbo" as his third solo single. At any rate, if Bolan fans want to check out his warbling folk-pop ditties at this formative stage, they would probably have much preferred to hear them in their original bare-bones state, regardless of any shortcomings in fidelity or performance, than listen to these gussied-up concoctions. Not only is the production not good, but the overlays often nearly bury the original voice and acoustic guitar tracks. As a bit of a saving grace, the disc also includes both sides of his 1965 Decca debut single, "The Wizard"/"Beyond the Risin' Sun" (without any overdubs), a weird and unmemorable pop-folk-rock release, as well as "Rings of Fortune," also licensed from Decca and presumably recorded around the same era, although it wasn't released in the mid-1960s. Scraps of spoken observations from Bolan comprise the final track, "Recorded Quotes from the Book (You Scare Me to Death)." ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide
Marc Bolan (Guitar (Acoustic)), Marc Bolan (Guitar), Marc Bolan (Vocals), Marc Bolan (Main Performer), Simon Napier-Bell (Arranger), Simon Napier-Bell (Producer), Simon Napier-Bell (Liner Notes), Simon Napier-Bell (Editing), Dyan Birch (Guitar (Acoustic)), Dyan Birch (Vocals), Frank Collins (Guitar (Acoustic)), Frank Collins (Vocals), Bernie Holland (Guitar (Electric)), Peter Hughes (Engineer), Graham Jarvis (Drums), Paddy McHugh (Vocals (Background)), Brian Odgers (Guitar (Bass)), Dave Siddle (Engineer), Graham Todd (Piano), Steve Prestage (Engineer), James Wolf (Artwork)
Love and Death is a 1975 comedy film by Woody Allen. Starring Woody Allen and Diane Keaton, Love and Death is a satirical take on Russian epic novels. Coming in between Sleeper and Annie Hall, Love and Death is in many respects an artistic transition between the two. It is the last of Allen's movies that tries to get as many laughs as possible, but despite this it contains a lot of commentary on philosophy and this balance is possibly why Allen considers it one of his best and most personal films.[citation needed] Keaton and Allen, as Sonja and Boris, Russians living during the Napoleonic Era, engage in mock-serious philosophical debates.
The dialogue and scenarios parody Russian novels, particularly those by Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, such as The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, The Gambler, The Idiot, and War and Peace. The use of Prokofiev for the soundtrack adds to the Russian flavor of the film. This includes a dialogue between Boris and his father with each line alluding to or being composed entirely of Dostoevsky titles. Prokofiev's "Troika" from the Lieutenant Kije Suite is featured prominently, for the film's opening and closing credits, and in selected scenes in the film when a "bouncy" theme is called for.
Some of the humour is straightforward; other jokes rely on the viewer's awareness of classic literature or contemporary European cinema. For example, the final shot of Keaton is a reference to Ingmar Bergman's Persona, the sequence with the stone lions is a parody of Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin and the plotline involving the Countess, her jealous lover and his duel-gone-awry with Allen's character is an homage to Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night. Bergman's The Seventh Seal is quoted all throughout, and the Totentanz at the end is lifted entirely.
Allen pays tribute to the humor of the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope and Charlie Chaplin throughout this film. In one particularly funny portion of the movie, Allen and Diane Keaton parody a scene taken from Animal Crackers, a Marx Brothers film, which itself was a parody of a Eugene O'Neill play.
Plot summary
When Napoleon advances to invade the Russian Empire during the Napoleonic wars, Boris Grushenko (Allen), a coward and pacifist scholar, is forced to enlist in the Russian Army, desperate and disappointed hearing the news that his cousin Sonja (Keaton) is to wed a herring merchant. He inadvertently captures a group of enemy soldiers, but to no avail, as the French army reaches Moscow immediately afterward. He returns and marries the recently-widowed Sonja (who really does not want to marry Boris, but promises him she will when she thinks he is about to be killed in a duel), a marriage filled with philosophical debates, and no money. Boris thinks that the French invasion of Moscow should put an end to the war. His narcissistic wife, angered that the invasion will interfere with their plans to start a family that year, conceives a plot to assassinate Napoleon at his quarters. Boris and Sonja debate the matter with some degree of philosophical double-talk, and Boris reluctantly goes along with it. Miraculously (or perhaps not), Sonja escapes arrest while Boris is not so lucky.
Anachronisms
The movie is full of deliberate humorous anachronisms:
In a brief interlude, Boris works as a struggling poet, reading from a poem he eventually wads up and throws out he says, "I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas," a quote lifted from T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. ("Too sentimental," Boris decides as he throws out the poem.)
Boris (Allen) retains his trademark glasses despite their anachronistic absurdity; at one point Boris says to Sonja after a diatribe filled with exasperation and self-loathing, "Do you think God wears glasses?" and she replies, "Not with those frames!"
A vendor, complete with New York accent and attired as if he were at a ballpark, is selling "red hots" to soldiers during a battle. Allen's character apparently offers him a large-denomination currency, and he remarks, "Hey, you got anything smaller? I just started!"
A blackDrill Instructor puts Boris through his paces. "You love Russia, don't you?" "Yes sir!" "I can't hear you!" "Yes sir!"
In the era in which the film is set, the motion picture had not been invented yet, so the Russian Army stages a short "Hygiene Play" on the dangers of venereal disease, after which Boris "reviews" the 30-second play in the verbiage of a modern theater critic.
Boris speaks to the audience: "There are some things worse than death. If you've ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman, I'm sure you know what I mean."
"Polish jokes" were popular in the early 1970s, wherein the Pole was presumed to be an idiot or to "get it wrong", as with blonde jokes in the current generation, "Sven and Ole" jokes in the upper midwest, etc. Allen included one of his own invention:
"My brother was killed in the line of duty; bayoneted to death by a Polish conscientious objector!"
Famous quotes
"I was walking through the woods, thinking about Christ. If he was a carpenter, I wondered what he charged for bookshelves." – Boris
"If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. I think that the worst you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever." – Boris
"I do believe that this is truly the best of all possible worlds." - Sonja "Well, it's certainly the most expensive." - Boris
"We have to take our possessions and flee. I'm very good at that. I was the men's freestyle fleeing champion two years in a row." – Boris
(Examining a wound after being shot in a duel) "Does this come out, from dry cleaning, or is it like gravy?" - Boris
"I'm dead, they're talking about wheat." - Boris
Soldier: He was from my village. He was the village idiot.
Boris: Yeah, what did you do, place?
"I shall walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Uh, in fact, now that I think of it, I shall run through the valley of the shadow of death, cause you get out of the valley quicker that way." - Boris
Sonja: "Violence is justified in the service of man."
Boris: "Who said that?"
Sonja: "Attila the Hun."
