Love and Death [Blu-ray]

Director: Woody Allen Woody Allen

Overview

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.

Product Details

Release Date:	09/20/2022
UPC:	0850035985656
Original Release:	1975
Rating:	PG
Source:	Sandpiper Pictures
Language:	English
Time:	1:25:00
Sales rank:	11,730

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Woody Allen	Boris Dimitrovich Grushenko
Diane Keaton	Sonja
Harold Gould	Anton
Despo Diamantidou	Mother
Edmond Ardisson	Priest
Georges Adel	Old Nehamkin
Frank Adu	Drill Sergeant
Albert Augier	Waiter
Yves Barsacq	Rimsky
Lloyd Battista	Don Francisco
Jack Berard	Gen. Lecoq
Eva Bertrand	Woman in Hygiene Class
George Birt	Doctor
Yves Brainville	Andre
Brian Coburn	Dimitri
Harry Coutet	Sergei Minskov
Henri Czarniak	Ivan Grushenko
Luce Fabiole	Grandmother
Florian	Uncle Nikolai
Jacqueline Fogt	Ludmilla
Sol Frieder	Leonid Voskovec
Olga Georges-Picot	Countess Alexandrovna
Harry Hankin	Uncle Sasha,Uncle Sasha
Jessica Harper	Natasha Petrovna
Tony Jay	Vladimir Maximovitch
Tutte Lemkow	Pierre
Jack Lenoir	Krapotkin
Leib Lensky	Father Andre
Ann Lonn Berg	Olga
Roger Lumont	Baker
Alfred Lutter	Young Boris
Ed Marcus	Raskov
Jacques Maury	Second
Denise Peron	Spanish Countess
Beth Porter	Anna
Alan Rossett	Guard
Shimen Ruskin	Borslov
Percival Russel	Berdykov
Chris Sanders	Joseph
Zvee Scooler	Father
C.A.R. Smith	Father Nikolai,Soldier
Clement-Thierry	Jacques
Alan Tilvern	Sergeant
James Tolkan	Napoleon
Helene Vallier	Mme. Wolfe
Howard Vernon	Gen. Leveque
Jacob Witkin	Suskin
Féodor Atkine	Mikhail Grushenko
Gérard Buhr	Servant
Georges Adet	Old Nehamken
Patricia Crown	Cheerleader
Sandor Eles	Soldier #2
Aubrey Morris	Soldier #4
Glenn Williams	Soldier

Technical Credits

Woody Allen

Woody Allen	Director,Screenwriter
Miriam Brickman	Casting
Charles H. Joffe	Producer
Martin Poll	Executive Producer,Producer
Juliet Taylor	Casting
Kit West	Special Effects
Blanche Wiesenfeld	Casting
Fred Gallo	Producer
Daniel Brisseau	Sound/Sound Designer
Al Gramaglia	Sound/Sound Designer
Peter Dawson	Special Effects

Editorial Reviews

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.

All Movie Guide - Mark Deming