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
