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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1970s
    Movies - 1970s Movies - L 3 Mins Read

    Love and Death (1975)

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    Riffing on heavyweight Russian literature (Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment), Woody Allen doesn’t just mercilessly mock these hefty tomes but cheerfully takes down Russian filmmakers (Eisenstein), philosophers (Gurdjieff) and any other international figures – Ingmar Bergman, T.S. Eliot – who takes his fancy.

    An assassination plot in Tsarist Russia might seem a bleak backdrop, but on a gag-per-minute ratio, this – closely followed by sci-fi spoof Sleeper (1973) – is probably Allen’s most densely packed comedy.

    Not that Allen is content to stay in period, regularly free-associating and directly addressing the audience.

    We meet Woody as Boris Grushenko, languishing in a prison cell. He’s to be executed at six in the morning, he tells us – it was to have been five, but he has a good lawyer.

    To explain his predicament, he takes us back to his childhood in Mother Russia, where he didn’t entirely fit into the noble, heroic, darkly poetic tradition of the classic novels.

    His Dad didn’t fit in too well either. He cared only for his valuable piece of land, explains Woody, and the film cuts to Papa, fondly stroking a lump of dirt he keeps hidden away inside his jacket . . .

    Young Boris, vehemently protesting his cowardice, is thrust into war at an early age. “I’m not the army type,” he pleads. “I had to have the light on in my room till I was 30.”

    Still, he is dragged off with his butterfly collection under his arm to be initiated – in a series of side-splitting scenes – into the puzzling rites of army life. “If we kill more Frenchmen, we win,” explains his sergeant. “What do we win?” asks wide-eyed Boris.

    And thence to war, with stops along the way only for Woody the great lover. “My room at midnight,” husks a lush countess. “Perfect,” replies supercool Woody. “Will you be there?”

    Additionally, as is only fitting in a Russian saga, there are endless pauses for metaphysical discussions – dotty dialogues on the existence of God, the meaning of life and death and assorted other heavy matters, where profundity inevitably gives way to absurdity.

    Boris woos and wins his girlfriend Sonja (Diane Keaton – whose spacey naturalism again makes the perfect comic foil), and the two ultimately embark on an antic assassination attempt on Napoleon, though Woody can’t really see the point; “What’s the difference between the Czar and Napoleon? They’re both idiots – the Czar is just a little taller.”

    Boris Grushenko
    Woody Allen
    Sonja Volonska
    Diane Keaton
    Anton
    Harold Gould
    Countess Alexandrovna
    Olga Georges-Picot
    Voskovec
    Sol Frieder
    Natasha
    Jessica Harper
    Don Francisco
    Lloyd Battista
    Mikhail
    Féodor Atkine
    Rimsky
    Yves Barsacq
    General Lecoq
    Jack Berard
    André
    Yves Brainville
    Dimitri
    Brian Coburn
    Minskov
    Henri Coutet
    Ivan
    Henri Czarniak
    Uncle
    Nikolai Florian
    Ludmilla
    Jacqueline Fogt
    Uncle Sasha
    Harry Hankin
    Vladimir Maximovitch
    Tony Jay
    Pierre
    Tutte Lemkow
    Krapotkin
    Jack Lenoir
    Father André
    Leib Lensky
    Olga
    Anne Lönnberg
    Raskov
    Ed Marcus
    Anna
    Beth Porter
    Borslov
    Shimen Ruskin
    Berdykov
    Percival Russel
    Joseph
    Chris Sanders
    Father Nikolai
    C.A.R. Smith
    Jacques
    Clément-thierry
    Napoléon
    James Tolkan
    Madame Wolfe
    Hélène Vallier
    General Leveque
    Howard Vernon

    Director
    Woody Allen

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