Love and Death

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Love and Death

PG

1975

1h 25m

Comedy

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100%

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26 Reviews

90%

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10,000+ Ratings

In Woody Allen's comic take on 19th-century Russian philosophical novels and the Soviet-era epic films made from them, Boris (Woody Allen) is a simple Russian villager who pines from afar for his beautiful cousin Sonja (Diane Keaton). Forced against his will into joining the Russian army during the Napoleonic Wars, the cowardly Boris accidentally becomes a military hero. But when his beloved Sonja comes to him with a dangerous patriotic scheme, Boris debates his desires and beliefs.

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Critics Consensus

Woody Allen plunks his neurotic persona into a Tolstoy pastiche and yields one of his funniest films, brimming with slapstick ingenuity and a literary inquiry into subjects as momentous as Love and Death.

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Penelope Gilliatt

The New Yorker

03/05/2024

Love and Death strikes me as majestically funny: the most shapely piece of cinema that Woody Allen has yet made, and one of comedy's hardiest ripostes to extinction.

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Paul D. Zimmerman

Newsweek

01/19/2024

It sparkles with an unremitting succession of terrific moments, if not the soaring, sustained stretches of Sleeper.

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Joy Gould Boyum

Wall Street Journal

08/10/2022

It’s good-natured laughter, too, deriving in large part from simply sharing in Allen’s sheer pleasure in travesty, in being slightly disrespectful to what we have learned to revere.

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Grant Watson

Fiction Machine

Oct 22

7/10

It is a fun Allen film all told, giving his original comic sensibilities one of their final hurrahs, while pointing to a more interesting and sophisticated writer/director in the future.

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Sean Axmaker

Stream on Demand

02/03/2024

... he last of [Allen's] genre parodies with scripts that string gags together rather than tell stories, and the first to really engage his love of philosophy, literature, and the existential drama of Bergman movies.

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Matt Brunson

Film Frenzy

02/13/2023

3.5/4

The picture is packed front to back with cheery bon mots --- to say nothing of rollicking slapstick sequences, spoofy film homages, and other modes of merriment guaranteed to keep viewers in perpetual guffaw.

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ed M

@RT80499164 2d

A lot of great lines. Not Woody Allen's best, but a funny movie.

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Levi J

@Lev77 Mar 29

Underrated, hilarious, early Woody Allen movie! And yes, the Prokofiev and Diane Keaton add a little special something. :)

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Stephen C

@bob25009 Oct 15

Funny in 1 hour and 25 minutes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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alan g

@agenser Sep 2

Tolstoy send up. Prokofiev music essential.

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john h

@RT11274104 Jun 5

Woody Allen's detached, full-of-fun film Love and Death is unlike the rest of his pictures. Still having existential slants like many of his works, they feel more free and enjoyable by both the director, actors and watchers.

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Alain E

@AlainE 04/22/2025

Frankly, impressive that one person imagined everything that happens and said in this movie. Extremely entertaining. Although we see many faces of love, death remains obscure. I guess Woody Allen wants us to have something to look forward to.

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Synopsis

In Woody Allen's comic take on 19th-century Russian philosophical novels and the Soviet-era epic films made from them, Boris (Woody Allen) is a simple Russian villager who pines from afar for his beautiful cousin Sonja (Diane Keaton). Forced against his will into joining the Russian army during the Napoleonic Wars, the cowardly Boris accidentally becomes a military hero. But when his beloved Sonja comes to him with a dangerous patriotic scheme, Boris debates his desires and beliefs.

Director: Woody Allen
Producer: Charles H. Joffe
Screenwriter: Woody Allen
Production Co: Jack Rollins & Charles H. Joffe Productions
Rating: PG
Genre: Comedy
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Jun 10, 1975, Limited
Release Date (Streaming): Sep 16, 2008
Runtime: 1h 25m

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