Love and Death (1975)

The pure joy one gets from watching Love and Death often amazes me. It's not just me, I know of several people who watch this movie repeatedly, time and again, just to smile for a little while. Take the Money and Run, Bananas, and Sleeper showed us that Allen was a truly great screen comedian, but Love and Death is the penultimate film of his earlier, "funny" movies. His comic timing was right on the mark, his chemistry with Diane Keaton continued to grow, and the writing and style of the film showed us an intelligent man able to both pay homage to and satirize the Russian literature and Bergman films he so obviously loved.

Love and Death would ultimately be the last pure comedy Allen would write or direct for several years, as he followed it up with the much more dramatically structured comedy Annie Hall and wouldn't return to the earlier, chaotic, zanier style of comedy for quite some time. And in that case, with Love and Death, he definitely chose to exit the genre on a high note.

The story takes place in 19th century Russia, marking the last time a film of Woody's would be set outside of NYC for over five years. Allen plays Boris, a rather neurotic Russian peasant who finds himself in love with his beautiful cousin, Sonia (Keaton). Boris is an anti-war pacifist but is nonetheless forced to go and fight when his country calls him to duty. Thinking that he will surely die in the war, Sonia takes pity on Boris and agrees to marry him, hoping to make his last days pleasant and memorable. So of course, Allen survives, and accidentally becomes a national hero in the process. Upon his return, his marriage still intact, Boris reunites with Sonia - only to find that she has taken many lovers in his absense (and shows no signs of stopping any time soon). However, these are all rather random plot devices, as the main point of the film is undoubtedly the humor: the intellectual jabs at Dosteovesky, Tolstoy, God, and Bergman, mixed with the occasional dose of good old fashioned slapstick. In the case of Love and Death, the story is often in service of the jokes, whereas in subsequent films Allen would move away from this style and begin to focus a great deal more on plot, character development and theme. Thankfully, though, he left us with Love and Death before he decided to move on, as it is an hour and a half of zany comedic pleasure whose joys are rarely matched in American film.

Release Date: June 10, 1975

Domestic Total Gross: $20,123,742

Distributor: United Artists

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