• Post category:Movies
  • Post last modified:October 18, 2020

Love and Death

THE COMEDY SENSATION OF THE YEAR!

loveanddeathNapoleon is about to invade Russia; a coward (Woody Allen) is forced to join the army, and is eventually caught up in a plot to kill the French leader.Ā A film much in the same vein as the directorā€™sĀ BananasĀ (1971); this is slapstick comedy for New York intellectuals everywhere. It plays like a love letter to philosophy, Russian literature, French and Swedish movies and counts on its audience to also have a sense of humor about it. Not for all tastes, and not all jokes are successful, but thereā€™s a steady stream of them and I certainly laughed. The lightness of Prokofievā€™s music also helps. Diane Keaton is fun as Allenā€™s slutty wife.

1975-U.S. 82 min. Color. Produced byĀ Charles. H. Joffe. Written and directed byĀ Woody Allen. Cast: Woody Allen (Boris Grushenko), Diane Keaton (Sonja), Harold Gould (Anton Inbedkov), Alfred Lutter, Olga Georges-Picot, Zvee Scooler.

Quote:Ā ā€œIf I donā€™t kill him heā€™ll make war all through Europe. But murderā€¦ What would Socrates say? All those Greeks were homosexuals. Boy, they must have had some wild parties. I bet they all took a house together in Crete for the summer. A: Socrates is a man. B: All men are mortal. C: All men are Socrates. Means all men are homosexuals. Hehā€¦ Iā€™m not a homosexual. Once, some cossacks whistled at me. I, I have the kind of body that excites both persuasions. You know, some men are heterosexual and some men are bisexual and some men donā€™t think about sex at all, you knowā€¦ they become lawyers.ā€ (Allen considers murdering Napoleon)

Last word: “He has never been a formal filmmaker. He’s just like [quickly], ‘Okay, here we are, we’re going, let’s go’. It just threw me off in the beginning. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, at all. It just didn’t seem like this was what my idea of making a movie was. Because I had done ‘The Godfather’, which was more formal. Woody was just going so fast. I just didn’t understand his technique at that point.” (Keaton, The Hollywood Interview)

 

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