List Price: $14.98You Pay Only: $12.99 You Save: $1.99 (13%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: DVD
Brand: ALLEN,WOODY
EAN: 9780792846093
Format: Anamorphic, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0792846095
Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code: 1
Release Date: July 05, 2000
Running Time: 85 minutes
Sales Rank: 11075
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Theatrical Release Date: June 10, 1975
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Editorial Review:
Description:
Woody Allen reinvents himself again with the epic historical satire that is a 'wonderfully funny and eclectic distillation of the Russian literary soul' (New York Magazine). One of his most visual, philosophical and elaborately conceived films, Love and Death 'demonstrates again that [Allen] is an authentic comedy genius' (Cosmopolitan). Cowardly scholar Boris Grushenko (Allen) has the hots for the beautiful Sonja (Diane Keaton), but cold feet for the Napoleonic Wars. Devastated by news of Sonja's plans to wed a foul-smelling herring merchant, Boris enlists in the armyonly to return home a penniless hero! Finally agreeing to marry him, Sonja settles down with poor Boris, to a rich life of philosophy, celibacy and meals of snow. But when the French troops invade Russia and Sonja hatches a zany scheme to assassinate Napoleon, Boris learnsin a hilariousbut fatal coup attemptthat God is an underachiever, there are no girls in the afterlife and thatthe angel of death can't be trusted!
Amazon.com essential video:
Writer-director Woody Allen's 1975 comedy finds the familiar Allen persona transposed to 19th-century Russia, as a cowardly serf drafted into the war against Napoleon, when all he'd rather do is write poetry and obsess over his beautiful but pretentious cousin (Diane Keaton). A total disaster as a soldier, Allen's cowardice serves him well when he hides in a cannon and is shot into a tent of French soldiers, suddenly making him a national hero. After his cousin agrees to marry him, thinking he'll be killed in a duel he miraculously survives, the couple must hatch a ludicrous plot to assassinate Napoleon in order to keep the coward Allen out of yet another war. Allen and Keaton show what a perfect comic team they make in this film, even predating their most celebrated pairing in Annie Hall. Working so well as the most unlikely of comedies, of all things a hilarious parody of Russian literature, Love and Death is a must-see for fans of Woody Allen films. --Robert Lane
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Another uneven `near' masterpiece...
As everyone who has read my reviews regularly knows, I am a newfound Woody Allen fan; but that newfound love has set afire in my heart and he has quickly risen to the tip top of my favorite directors list. I've made it a point to research and watch as many of his films as I can get my hands on and this one is yet another in the long line of wonderful reasons to continue researching and adoring his work. It's witty, clever and poignant, for Allen always inserts tidbits of reality and humane understanding into his humor.
His films always feel important.
Truth be told, this is not the best Allen film, but it is truly delightful for the most part, and Keaton and Allen have amazing chemistry; the kind of chemistry that makes any movie worth seeing at least once.
Taking a stab at Russian literature, Allen weaves a (for the most part) hilarious tale of Boris, a dopy loser of a man who has fallen in love with his cousin Sonja who only has eyes for Boris's brother. After a freak accident during wartime makes Boris a hero he makes his feelings for Sonja known. She agrees to marry him (thinking he is soon to die) but she winds up falling in love with him, and when war threatens the peace of their family they plot to kill Napoleon.
Many know Allen and Keaton are marvelous together based on their Academy Award nominated (winning for Keaton) performances in `Annie Hall' alone, but one should experience them here to see an early tell tale sign that they ... Read More
Rating: - Death Be Not Proud
Are you looking for shear intellectual discussion about the nature of existence and the quirkiness of our universe a la My Dinner With Andre? Are you looking for a Cecil B. DeMille historical epic of obviously heroic proportions with the figure of Napoleon as the centerpiece? Are you looking for solely slapstick on the order of the Marx Brothers (not Karl)? Well, look elsewhere. However if you want a fairly entertaining movie from the early days of Woody Allen's seemingly endless array of cinematic efforts that combines all of these in one film then this may be for you?
Woody has always, even in his poorer productions, had flair for language and for pointing out the myriad human foibles that make human existence funny, and on occasion tragic. Here Mr. Allen has a love/hate relationship with the classics of 19th century thought and literature, specifically the Russian variant. By my account he ran through every possible thought or literary gem that any of the great Russian writers of that century put forth from Pushkin to Dostoyevsky to Tolstoy. From intellectual nihilism to various gradients of pacifism and Tolstoyan non-resistance to evil. And for what purpose? Well to discuss, in his own slapstick way, the vagaries of love and death just like the title of the film advertised.
Naturally, Woody cannot do this in a totally serious way, nor would we want him to. The story line is the not uncommon one with Allen- unrequited and messy love. Here Allen plays the misbegotten ... Read More
Rating:  - Great movie
Though not my favorite Woody Allen film, I would definitely recommend this one. Perhaps not to start, but once you've seen his more iconic films (Annie Hall, Manhattan, etc.). It also helps (but definitely isn't essential) to see some of Bergman's movies, because Allen tends to spoof those a bit. 4 and 1/2 stars.
Rating: - Good Woody
It's an odd thing to experience art fresh and then re-experience it with greater knowledge about it and its sources. As example, as a Woody Allen fan I'd watched his terrific 1975 satire Love And Death, filmed in Hungary and France, probably ten or twelve times, fully getting all the references to Fyodor Dostoevsky's and Leo Tolstoy's works, but I had never been in the position of viewing the film having knowledge of all the sly European cinema references; especially those which poke fun at Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman's canon.
Love And Death was the last `purely comedic' Woody Allen film before he entered his great Golden Age, starting with 1977's Annie Hall and ending with 1992's Husbands And Wives. It was a romp, or as one of the aliens in 1980's Stardust Memories said, `We enjoy your films. Particularly the early, funny ones.' It was also a great showcase of his comedic talents in synch with those of Diane Keaton. No other foil- male nor female, has ever come close to the chemistry that duo exhibited. Of course, like almost all his films, Allen wrote, as well as directed this film. and it represented a step up from his earlier works, like Bananas, Take The Money And Run, or Sleeper.... The film succeeds and holds relevance today because its references and humor are timeless, but also because it works whether you get the references or not. Thus, it is both low and high comedy, and no one has ever done that better than Woody Allen- be it getting shot out of a canon, or psychobabbling with ... Read More
Rating: - Woody Allen: The Golden Years
"Love and Death" truly belongs in the Pantheon of comedy classics. A send-up of every Russian novel that you should have read, but probably didn't, the film, as the name implies, in particular spoofs Tolstoy's "War and Peace." Boris Gruschenko (Allen in Kulak blouse plus his customary horn-rimmed glasses) is hopelessly in love with his cousin Sonja (Diane Keaton) when the Napoleonic Wars intrude on their lives. Between gags, the characters burst into ecstasies of philosophical discourse on the nature of ontology and wheat. The film was shot in Hungary, and the costumes and sets provide a magnificent background for this high-flown nonsense, as does the musical score by Sergei Prokofiev [who might well be spinning in his grave with laughter]. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments even though one has seen the film half-a-dozen times.
Among my favorites is an episode in which Boris' aged parent--a "major loon"--confides that he owns a little plot of land [He keeps it in his pocket.] upon which he is going to build one day, and that he will leave it to his son. Allen also pays homage to Ingmar Bergman's "Seventh Seal" in his dance with a scythe-wielding Death, a frenetic pas de deux with which he ends the movie.
Although I always get a kick out of Allen--even in his later, far lighter, fare--in "Love and Death" he has approached, if not reached, the zenith of his creative powers--his golden age, as it were, in which his movies cast a shadow so long that it adumbrates his later ... Read More
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