Love and Death (PG.)
Directed by Woody Allen. 1975
Starring Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Olga Georges-Picot, Henry Czarnik and Harold Gould. 85 mins. Part of the Arrow Academy Woody Allen: Six Films 1971 – 1978.
We would come in time to despair of Allen's obsession with Ingmar Bergman and the giants of Russian literature - the Dosts and the Cheks, the Ovs and the Skys, Tols and the Oys – but forty years ago he could still see the funny side of them and this glorious send up is not just the last of The Early Funny Films, but also probably the funniest.
Allen is the man out of time, a contemporary New York Jewish man born into Russian family in the early nineteenth century. The contemporary-figure-in-a-period-setting comedy has ample potential to misfire, but the film plays it just about perfectly, probably because Allen's character never seems to question the oddness of this situation. The only time it gets a bit obnoxious is when he condemns his father – the one who owns a little bit of land that he keeps in his jacket – as a loon, and you think that that is a bit harsh seeing as he's a figure in a spoof and he’s accepted his anachronistic son with good grace.
Love and Death is probably Allen finest collections of one liners and routines. The great lines just keep coming and though, as with all his early films, the form begins to become repetitive, the jokes are so strong it doesn't matter. It is also the film that most clearly shows his debt to the Marx Brothers, all of them not just Groucho. There are gags and slapstick routines here that are just pure Marx.
Directed by Woody Allen. 1975
Starring Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Olga Georges-Picot, Henry Czarnik and Harold Gould. 85 mins. Part of the Arrow Academy Woody Allen: Six Films 1971 – 1978.
We would come in time to despair of Allen's obsession with Ingmar Bergman and the giants of Russian literature - the Dosts and the Cheks, the Ovs and the Skys, Tols and the Oys – but forty years ago he could still see the funny side of them and this glorious send up is not just the last of The Early Funny Films, but also probably the funniest.
Allen is the man out of time, a contemporary New York Jewish man born into Russian family in the early nineteenth century. The contemporary-figure-in-a-period-setting comedy has ample potential to misfire, but the film plays it just about perfectly, probably because Allen's character never seems to question the oddness of this situation. The only time it gets a bit obnoxious is when he condemns his father – the one who owns a little bit of land that he keeps in his jacket – as a loon, and you think that that is a bit harsh seeing as he's a figure in a spoof and he’s accepted his anachronistic son with good grace.
Love and Death is probably Allen finest collections of one liners and routines. The great lines just keep coming and though, as with all his early films, the form begins to become repetitive, the jokes are so strong it doesn't matter. It is also the film that most clearly shows his debt to the Marx Brothers, all of them not just Groucho. There are gags and slapstick routines here that are just pure Marx.
