LOVE AND DEATH
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1996 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
(1975) **1/2 (out of four)
It's hard to imagine a Mel Brooks movie inspiring a Woody Allen movie, but I'm convinced that's exactly what happened with LOVE AND DEATH. Now, hear me out. It's not just that they're both period piece comedies set in the 19th century with wacky battle scenes, it's that BLAZING SADDLES was released in 1974 and became a huge hit, pioneering the NAKED GUN / AIRPLANE! genre of Joke-a-Second parodies. Riding on the coattails of that film, Woody released LOVE AND DEATH the next year, his only foray into full-scale parody territory.
Yes, Woody's done his take on just about every type of movie, but LOVE AND DEATH is a direct parody of Russian literature like BROTHERS KARAMOZOV and DR. ZHIVAGO with liberal rips on extentialist philosophy thrown in. This movie is loaded with the cheap sight gags the JAS parodies are known for, but it's also the only Allen film where serious dialogue is overdone to the point where it becomes funny (a la Leslie Nielson) and terrible jokes and puns abound (again, Nielson's films come to mind). He also must have been watching too many "Get Smart" reruns because his comedic delivery here is almost identical to that of Don Adams.
Woody plays a Russian thinker who has pseudointellectual debates with his cousin Diane Keaton, who by this point had adopted Woody's mannerisms. (She probably should have realized she'd been living with him too long when she started picking up twelve-year-old girls.) Being Woody, he's also in love with her, but she doesn't return the feelings, opting instead to be more promiscuous than Papa Karamozov himself. At one point in the movie, Woody is about the only person in Russia she hasn't slept with -- and that's a huge country.
This is all mostly a setup for Woody to work in his usual one-liners and sitcom-like situations. Some of the more comedically- notable are the scene where Woody is challenged to a duel, the sequence where Woody flirts with a woman at the theatre, Diane seducing Napoleon while Woody tries to shoot him in the background, Woody's execution scene, his frequent brushes with Death and the big battle scene where nearly all the Russians are killed. There are a lot of memorable moments in LOVE AND DEATH but a lot of forgettable ones as well. No other Allen film has quite so many dreadfully bad jokes. It's a good thing Woody stopped imitating his comedic inferiors and instead aimed higher with his follow-up film, ANNIE HALL, which I think you might have heard of.
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