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Love and Death Movie Review

Love and Death is a 1975 comedy film directed by and starring Woody Allen. It’s not the funniest movie out there, but it’s still very enjoyable and entertaining.

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“You are the greatest lover I’ve ever had.

Well, I practice a lot when I’m alone“

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In czarist Russia, a neurotic soldier and his distant cousin formulate a plot to assassinate Napoleon. This movie was never as funny as Allen’s ‘Sleeper’ was, but it has its very amusing moments interspersed throughout. It’s quite uneven for sure, but the anachronistic jokes worked out best as those are always hilarious in a period setting.

Woody Allen is his usual self here – nerdy, weak, talkative and hysterical. His performance is the highlight of the entire picture and he’s very funny at times, but I did wish that he injected more of his Jew jokes into the proceedings as they were lacking here. Overall, there was too much sex comedy that got repetitive pretty quickly.

Diane Keaton as Sonja is also excellent. Her delivery was superb here and the two got terrific chemistry together. It’s a great dynamic that is among one of the movie’s highlights. The film’s Napoleon and his double were wonderful as well, but for the most part the supporting characters were underrealized as it’s all about Sonja and Boris.

Love and Death has a slower beginning, but the rest of the movie is quickly paced and quite entertaining. The costumes are great, the sets are memorable too and the editing is terrific. The direction from Allen is also pretty good, though the runtime could have been a bit longer. The score is fantastic and fitting for the material as they included Prokofiev prominently and that led to a stirring, epic feel to the film.

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The literary allusions to various classics of 19^th century Soviet Union are wonderful with the nod to ‘Crime and Punishment’ being particularly memorable to me. The movie also perfectly parodied these sprawling books with overly intellectual dialogues and monologues, though the monologuing got a bit repetitive in the second half with a couple of them being amazing, but others being less effective at bringing laughter. It’s an uneven movie throughout.