Movie Info

Woody Allen’s Love and Death is purportedly and satire of everything Russian, from Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky novels Sergei Eisenstein films, but it plays more like a spin on Bob Hope’s Monsieur Beaucaire. Allen plays Boris, the 19th century, a Russian who falls in love with his distant (and married) cousin Sonja (Diane Keaton). Pressed into service with the Russian army during the war against Napoleon, Boris accidentally becomes a hero, and then go on to win a duel against a cuckolded husband (Harold Gould). He returns the Sonja, hope it Settle down on the steppes somewhere, but Sonja Have Become fired up with patriotic fervor, insisting that Boris join a plot to kill Napoleon. Intellectual in-jokes abound in Love and Death, and other gags are basic Allen one-liners, for example, after being congratulated for HIS lovemaking skills, Boris replies nonchalantly, “I practice a lot when I’m alone.” The pseudo-Russian ambience of Love and Death is comically enhanced by Sergey Prokofiev compositions on the musical track.