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Love and Death

For other uses, seeLove and Death (disambiguation).

Love and Deathis a 1975 Americancomedy filmwritten and directed byWoody Allen.It is asatireonRussian literaturestarring Allen andDiane Keatonas Boris and Sonja, Russians living during theNapoleonic Erawho engage in mock-serious philosophical debates. Allen considered it the funniest film he had made up until that point.[3]

Love and Death
Theatrical release poster
Directed byWoody Allen
Written byWoody Allen
Produced byCharles H. Joffe
StarringWoody Allen
Diane Keaton
CinematographyGhislain Cloquet
Edited byRon Kalish
Ralph Rosenblum
Production
company
Jack Rollins & Charles H. Joffe Productions[1]
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release date
  • June 10, 1975(1975-06-10)
Running time
85 minutes
CountryUnited States[1]
LanguageEnglish
Budget$3 million[citation needed]
Box office$20.1 million[2]

Plot

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About to be executed for a crime he never committed, Boris Grushenko recalls how he got into his present predicament. Initially scheduled to die at 5:00 am, Boris receives leniency—a delay in execution until 6:00 am.

Ivan, Mikhail, and Boris are three brothers grown to “full manhood,” with Ivan and Mikhail brawny and athletic, and Boris a scrawny 5'6 ". Since childhood, Boris has been in love with his cousin Sonja, with whom he has deep conversations. Sonja:" To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love, but then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy then is to suffer but suffering makes one unhappy; therefore, to be unhappy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down. "

Sonja tells Boris that she yearns for a man who embodies her three essentials of love: intellectuality, spirituality, and sensuality. Thinking that she is confessing her love for him, Boris is devastated when Sonja says she has been in love with Ivan all her life. Boris: "Ivan can barely write his name in the ground with a stick."

When Ivan announces that he intends to marry Anna Ivanova, a desolate Sonja immediately announces that she will marry Sergei Minskov, 81. Excited, Minskov immediately dies from a heart attack. Sonja then marries Leonid Boskovic, the herring merchant, who amuses himself with herring while Sonya dallies with a musician.

WhenNapoleoninvades Austriaduring theNapoleonic Wars,Boris, a coward andpacifist,is forced to enlist in the Russian army. Boris doesn’t believe in fighting for “Mother Russia.” Boris’s Mother: "I hope they put him in the front lines!"

Boris completes military training, including a “hygiene play” on condoms and venereal disease. On furlough, Boris flirts at the opera with the beautiful Countess Alexandrovna, whose current lover has killed several men induels.Countess: "You’re the greatest lover I ever had." Boris: "I practice a lot when I’m alone."

Unhappy in her marriage, Sonja recounts a long list of lovers. Boris offers to take her away, but Sonja asks after Ivan. When Boris tells her he is going to the front the next day, Sonja bids Boris, “have a nice time!” Boris inadvertently becomes a war hero when he falls asleep inside a large cannon and is fired into the French command tent, killing the officers. The regiment that started with 1200 men in battle thins down to 14 survivors; a message from theCzarencourages, “keep up the good work.” Ivan, a battle fatality, is bayonetted to death by a "Polishconscientious objector."

A Turkish cavalry officer impugns Sonja’s chastity. Boskovic dies accidentally while cleaning his pistol in preparing for a duel to defend her honor. Sonja laments she wasn’t kinder to him—perhaps even having sex with him once.

The Countess’s lover, Anton Lebedokov, challenges Boris to a duel. Boris returns and proposes to the widowed Sonja, who promises to marry him, thinking he will be killed in the duel. To her surprise and dejection, Boris survives the duel. Their marriage is filled with philosophical debates. Sonja: "Sex without love is an empty experience." Boris: "Yes, but as empty experiences go, it’s tough to beat." As time passes, he wins Sonja’s heart.

Sonja conceives a plot toassassinateNapoleon at his headquarters in Moscow. They debate the matter with philosophicaldoublespeak,and Boris reluctantly agrees. At an inn enroute to Moscow they encounterDonFrancisco and his sister, emissaries fromJoseph Bonaparteto Napoleon. Boris and Sonya waylay the Spaniards, taking their place. Unknowingly, they meet with Napoleon’s double, who attempts to seduce Sonja but is knocked out by her after Boris fails various attempts. Over the unconscious body, Sonya and Boris debate theethicsof killing Napoleon. While Boris vacillates, another intended Napoleon assassin shoots the double.

Sonja escapes arrest, but Boris is captured. Despite being told by a vision that he will be pardoned, Boris is executed. Boris's ghost bids goodbye to Sonja and the audience before dancing away withDeath.

Cast

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Production

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Allen shot the film in France and Hungary, where he had to deal with unfavorable weather, spoiled negatives, food poisoning, physical injuries and communication difficulties. Consequently, he swore never to shoot a film outside the United States again. However, starting in 1996 withEveryone Says I Love You,Allen did in fact shoot a number of films abroad.[3]

Style

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Coming between Allen'sSleeper(1973) andAnnie Hall(1977),Love and Deathis in many respects an artistic transition between the two.[3]Allen pays tribute to the humor ofThe Marx Brothers,Bob HopeandCharlie Chaplinthroughout the film.

The dialogue and scenariosparodyRussian novels, particularly those byDostoyevskyandTolstoy,such asThe Brothers Karamazov,Crime and Punishment,The Gambler,The IdiotandWar and Peace.[3]This includes a dialogue between Boris and his father in which each line alludes to, or is composed entirely of, Dostoyevsky titles.

The use ofProkofievon the soundtrack adds to the Russian flavor of the film. Prokofiev's "Troika"from theLieutenant Kijé Suiteis featured prominently, for the film's opening andclosing creditsand in selected scenes in the film when a "bouncy" theme is required. The battle scene is accompanied with music from Prokofiev'sAlexander Nevskycantata.Boris is marched to his execution to the "March" from Prokofiev'sThe Love for Three Oranges.[3]

Some of the humor is straightforward; other jokes rely on the viewer's awareness of classic literature or contemporary European cinema. For example, the final shot of Keaton is a reference toIngmar Bergman'sPersona.[3]The sequence with the stone lions is a parody ofSergei Eisenstein'sBattleship Potemkin,while the Russian battle against Napoleon's army heavily parodies the same film's "Odessa steps" sequence.[3]Bergman'sThe Seventh Sealis parodied several times, including during the climax.[3]

Reception

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The film grossed $20.1 million in North America,[2]making it the18th highest grossing picture of 1975in North America (theatrical rentals were $5 million).[4]

OnRotten Tomatoes,25 out of 25 critics gave the film a positive rating, witha 100% ratingand a average rating of 9.4/10. The site's consensus reads: "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 asLove and Death".[5]Metacritic,which uses aweighted average,assigned the film a score of 89 out of 100, based on 6 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[6]

Roger Ebertgave it three and a half stars and wrote: "Miss Keatonis very good inLove and Death,perhaps because here she gets to establish and develop a character, instead of just providing afoil,as she's often done in other Allen films... There are dozens of little moments when their looks have to be exactly right, and they almost always are. There are shadings of comic meaning that could have gotten lost if all we had were the words, and there are whole scenes that play off facial expressions. It's a good movie to watch just for that reason, because it's been done with such care, love and lunacy. "[7]

Gene Siskelawarded a full four stars and wrote: "Woody Allen is simply terrific inLove and Death.To my mind, it's his funniest film. He plays to his greatest strength (gag line dialog) and stays away from what has limited his other movies (an attempt to develop a story). "[8]Vincent CanbyofThe New York Timescalled the film "Woody Allen's grandest work" and "side-splitting."[9]Charles Champlinof theLos Angeles Timesdeclared: "Thin but likable just about sums it up."[10]Gary Arnold ofThe Washington Postfound the film "funny with remarkable and delightful consistency."[11]Penelope GilliattofThe New Yorkerthought that Woody Allen and Diane Keaton "have become an unbeatable new team at pacing haywire intellectual backchat. Their style works as if each of them were a less mock-assertiveGroucho Marxwith a duplicate of him to play against. For such a recklessly funny film, the impression is weirdly serene. "[12]Geoff Brown ofThe Monthly Film Bulletinwrote that "the occasional longueurs and dud jokes never prove fatal to the movie's overall success; to use the description Boris applies to his father, Woody Allen is a 'major loon' andLove and Deathprovides a fine showcase for his talent. "[13]

Comedian and filmmakerBill Hadertalked about his appreciation of the film, having listed it as one of his favorite films saying: "I love Diane Keaton in this movie so much. My first real movie crush. It's nonstop jokes, but it's played very real and loose, and it has the starkness of aBergmanmovie! It's insane, yet it completely works. "[14]

Accolades

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At the25th Berlin International Film Festivalin 1975, the film won theSilver Bear for outstanding artistic contribution.[15]

In September 2008, in a poll held byEmpiremagazine, the film was voted as the 301st greatest film out of a list of 500.[16]In October 2013, the film was voted by theGuardianreaders as the seventh-best film directed by Woody Allen.[17]

Soundtrack

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References

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  1. ^ab"Love and Death".AFI Catalog of Feature Films.Archived fromthe originalon February 13, 2019.RetrievedJuly 17,2016.
  2. ^ab"Love and Death".Box Office Mojo.Archivedfrom the original on January 28, 2012.RetrievedJanuary 22,2024.
  3. ^abcdefghStafford, Jeff."Love and Death (1975)".TCM.Archivedfrom the original on 2019-07-31.Retrieved2013-08-23.... he was able to pay homage to some of his favorite films: a battlefield hawker who sellsblinisto the troops recallsHarpo MarxinDuck Soup(1933), a dueling scene appears modeled on a Bob Hope routine inMonsieur Beaucaire(1946), the climax is a direct nod to Ingmar Bergman'sThe Seventh Seal(1957) and theScythian Suiteby Stravinsky is used as background music in one scene, just as it was in Sergei Eisenstein'sAlexander Nevsky(1938). Famous dialogue from the novels of Tolstoy likeWar and PeaceandAnna Kareninais also parodied along with in-jokes about the poetry ofT.S. Eliot.
  4. ^"All-time Film Rental Champs",Variety,7 January 1976 p 48
  5. ^"Love and Death".Rotten Tomatoes.Fandango Media.Archivedfrom the original on December 25, 2019.RetrievedMarch 1,2024.
  6. ^"Love and Death".Metacritic.Retrieved2024-07-18.
  7. ^Roger Ebert(January 1, 1975)."Love and Death".rogerebert.suntimes. Archived fromthe originalon July 13, 2015.RetrievedMay 19,2010.
  8. ^Siskel, Gene(August 4, 1975). "Film of Czarist Russia Woody Allen's funniest".Chicago Tribune.Section 3, p. 16.
  9. ^Canby, Vincent(June 11, 1975)."Film: 'Love and Death' Is Grand Woody Allen".The New York Times.p. 48. Archived fromthe originalon July 6, 2015.
  10. ^Champlin, Charles(June 11, 1975). "Woody in a Time Warp".Los Angeles Times.Part IV, p. 1.
  11. ^Arnold, Gary (July 3, 1975). "A Buoyant Parody Of Russian Epics".The Washington Post.C1.
  12. ^Gilliatt, Penelope(June 16, 1975). "The Current Cinema".The New Yorker.p. 107.
  13. ^Brown, Geoff (November 1975). "Love and Death".The Monthly Film Bulletin.42(502): 241.
  14. ^"Here are Bill Hader's 10 favorite movies".Time Out.29 July 2015.RetrievedJuly 13,2022.
  15. ^"Berlinale 1975: Prize Winners".Berlinale.Archivedfrom the original on January 7, 2017.RetrievedJuly 11,2010.
  16. ^"Empire's 500 Greatest Movies Of All Time".Empire.Archivedfrom the original on November 13, 2012.RetrievedAugust 23,2013.
  17. ^"The 10 best Woody Allen films".The Guardian.October 4, 2013.Archivedfrom the original on November 29, 2014.RetrievedNovember 22,2014.
  18. ^Harvey, Adam (2007).The Soundtracks of Woody Allen.US: Macfarland & Company,Inc. p. 75.ISBN9780786429684.
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