Love and Death (1975)

(Traveling through the films of Woody Allen)

Title: Love and Death
Release Date: 10 June 1975
Directed by: Woody Allen
Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, James Tolkan
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073312/
My Rating: (5/10) ★★★★★✩✩✩✩✩

"I was walking through the woods thinking about Christ. If he was a carpenter I wonder what he charged for bookshelves..." Woody Allen is a neurotic soldier in Czarist Russia, a pacifist, and haplessly in love with his 2nd cousin (twice removed). Together they formulate a plot to kill Napoleon but the true story lies in the courtship of Sonja by Woody Allen's nervous Boris Grushenko. Together, these cousins philosophize as sport and challenge each other's world views. It's no wonder Boris falls for his cousin.

In the chronology of Woody Allen films, this holds a bizarre place. His next film, hailed as the first film from a more mature filmmaker, will win the academy award while his last five films were all jam-packed-with-as-many-jokes-as-they-can-handle comedies. Love and Death perhaps shows a softer side of Allen, content not to lay it on so thick. He actually speaks directly to the camera in several moments of the film and it seems in these sequences Woody himself is struggling to exhibit the meaning in his film. Showing the audience that there is a deeper level here, not just the comic but also the tragic. That they are connected, do not exist without each other. And while this film doesn't quite work for me (though some of my favorite lines are here), in the context of the greater whole this dissatisfaction with making light, comic films devoid of "meaning" will lead to much greater things.