David H
I saw this movie when it first came out. I had just moved to Fresno, California, and I was the new kid at school. Some kind individual from the church I attended, whose name was Steve, invited me to see it with him.
***
I knew virtually nothing about Woody Allen at that time, and it wasn’t a film I would have chosen to see. All those years since, I’ve had the impression it was a deep, philosophical film that I would really have needed to have studied Dostoevsky or Tolstoy to have adequately grasped. In the intervening years, I’ve learned a lot more about the world so, when I got the chance to see the film again recently, I jumped at the opportunity because I wondered how my older, better educated self would respond to it.
***
The film was mildly entertaining. I was surprised to learn that the plot wasn't actually very complicated at all, and that it had little or nothing to do with Russian literature. So I'm sure that my 16-year-old self grasped the plot just fine. Sometimes we think we remember something perfectly but then, when we revisit it, it turns out we didn't remember it all that well after all. Chalk this up to just another instance of that.
***
A couple of things surprised me about the film. First, Woody's character makes some comment in a conversation with Sonja (or possibly another character) about how the love between two women is his very favorite kind. I don't think I would have had any idea what he was talking about at that time, so the comment probably just sailed right over my head back then. This time, I was a little shocked or, at the very least, surprised.
***
Even more shocking, however, was another scene where a rabbi, if I remember right, makes a comment about how good it can be to have two 12-year-old girls. I don't remember exactly how he expressed it, but the meaning was clear. You certainly couldn't get away with a comment like that in a movie today, and I'm actually surprised that they were able to get away with it then. (In his next film, Annie Hall, the reference was to two sixteen-year-old twins. Slightly less unacceptable perhaps, but certainly not anywhere near tolerable in today’s climate.)
***
In any case, this was Allen’s last movie before Annie Hall and a string of other hits that came in the late ‘70s and into the ‘80s. And it wasn’t a great film, so it's not surprising that it's not widely available. The only way I could get it was to rent a VHS copy from the university library in my town, whereas his better known films are available on DVD, BlueRay and several different streaming services.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
10/06/24
Full Review
Matthew B
The title of Woody Allen's final film from his ‘funny' period is one that could have been applied to almost any film that Allen made. It reflects two of his leading neurotic preoccupations – the need for love, and the suffering that it causes; and the transitory nature of life that ends in a question mark.
These themes are so universal that Allen can bring them into any of his works without difficulty. Indeed the subject matter of Love and Death, a movie set in nineteenth-century Russia, is eerily similar to that of his previous movie, Sleeper, where the action takes place in America 200 years in the future.
The reason why this particular film has the title Love and Death is that Allen is thinking about Russian literature, and the title carries echoes of a number of famous Russian novels, notably Crime and Punishment and War and Peace. The latter novel is the single biggest influence on the film.
The jokes that Allen makes offer no condescension to the viewer. He assumes in advance that he can bring in as much intellectual content as he likes, or that he can throw in a nod to other works, and that the audience will either get the reference, or still find it funny without knowing the context.
Even the slapstick humour is modelled on that of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, and the throwaway jokes recall Bob Hope and the Marx Brothers. While there are plenty of gags that are amusing in themselves, others have a strong literary meaning. Aside from War and Peace, Allen throws in allusions to works by Chekhov and Dostoevsky. He even includes a quotation from T.S. Eliot.
The erudite music score is also part of the joke. Allen chooses music by Prokofiev because it sounds sufficiently jaunty to not detract from the comedy in the film. At another point, he uses Beethoven's ‘Spring' violin sonata as the basis of a joke. Two clandestine lovers keep pretending to play the piece when the husband walks in, but they keep forgetting who is playing the piano and who is playing the violin.
Aside from literature and music, Allen includes references to other movies. There are a couple of subtle allusions to Battleship Potemkin, notably an image of a man being shot in the face. Allen copies the imagery and composition of one of his favourite directors, Ingmar Bergman. Boris's conversations with Death recall The Seventh Seal. More subtly, the final scene with Sonia and her cousin is framed in a way that imitates the merging of the two women's faces in Persona.
In some ways, Love and Death looks like an arthouse film, but Allen is using the language of the art movie for comic purposes. There are dreams scenes, cod-philosophical discussions and lyrical passages, but all of these are used as the basis for a joke.
The film is peppered with similar mock-gloomy comments. "To love is to suffer", "What if we're just a bunch of absurd people who are running around with no rhyme or reason?" "Life is unbearable", "I'm just racked with guilt and I'm consumed with remorse and stricken with suffering for the human race."
Of course we do not take any of these observations seriously, because they are in context amusing and undermined by surrounding jokes. In any case, while Woody Allen might be slipping a few of his own neurotic observations about life into the story, Love and Death does not feel depressing. Allen's film is told with verve, and a genuine delight in making the movie as funny as he can. To my mind, it is the best of his early comedies.
I wrote a longer appreciation of Love and Death on my blog page if you would like to read more: https://themoviescreenscene.wordpress.com/2020/10/22/love-and-death-1975/
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
08/28/23
Full Review
Audience Member
another one of Woody Allen's earliest works with a much more humorous take on human history seeing this trailer I was asking what am I watching? it looked like one of those spoof pictures from the 1970's and I wasn't too far off knowing that Allen directs this shows his level of humor a lot of the imagery is in here is so surreal and unbelievably silly from coffins to Britain soldiers in combat to Death wearing white instead of black Allen as Boris is a Russian villager learning about religion, manhood, and love He has affection for his distant cousin Sonja played by Diane Keaton, all of this during the Napoleonic Wars Sonja does all she can to convince Boris that God may actually exist and that he shouldn't dismiss all possibilities but can his morals and beliefs be improved or tossed out? with a director like Allen it also shows what happens when someone who's a patriot ends up becoming a hero without any real intent I love how this whole thing plays off like a Monty Python sketch or something along the lines of 'Naked Gun' truly had me laughing in so many spots but the movie still has its discussions involving politics, war, love, whether or not God may exist and life/death's true meanings for us all it's somebody like Boris that sees both sides of a situation; one thing is positive while another seems destructive, nothing seems logical, maybe it's possible violence is justified in the name of mankind when it comes to war there's plenty of satire of Russian literature and mores that Allen balances with comedy along with visual gags tickling the funny bone non-stop even a young Diane Keaton herself has some good comedic timing with a lot of her lines such a laugh-out-loud romp with this one by a still very creative director with a lot of wit
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
06/23/23
Full Review
Mark K
One of the greatest absurdist comedies ever made. I don't know if I've seen a movie with more one liners than this. Hilarious!
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
04/22/23
Full Review
Audience Member
This was actually great and so ahead of it’s time 3.9
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
03/17/23
Full Review
Taylor L
In Love and Death, Woody Allen is enamored with his cousin. The man is nothing if not consistent in the romantic pursuit of his own family members.
The same bit of historical absurdism that Monty Python and Mel Brooks would ride to international acclaim and classic status with films like Life of Brian and History of the World, Part 1 was practically pioneered by Woody Allen in Love and Death, with solid production value made to contrast with constant machine gun fire of jokes, a sense of pervasive anxiety, and a nebbish, timid delivery. While there's a lot of familiar comedy from the writer-director, who seldom changed his style in his run of beloved comedies (if it ain't broke, don't fix it), but the material is tweaked to play off of the stuffy sensibilities of the period of frock coats and snuff boxes. Diane Keaton is a riot, a comedic talent that's more than just the wall for Allen to bounce his humor off of, and the brisk pace combined with the high frequency of jokes means that you'll never be bored. Love and Death might not have the same degree of name recognition as other bits of historical fantasy comedy, but that's mostly by virtue of Allen simply having such a large body of work; despite being a bit thinner than some of his other projects, there's still humor galore here.
Allen's insistence on exploring absurd comedies of manners that lean heavily on human nature means most of his films have stayed timeless. (3.5/5)
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/05/23
Full Review
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