Cheap Love and Death (DVD) (Woody Allen, Diane Keaton) (Woody Allen) Price

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Customer Reviews of Love and Death

Everything You Wanted To Know About Cinema,But Afraid to Buy
'You are a great lover'
'Yeah I practiced a lot on my own'...
Love and Death is the funniest Allen movie, and one of his best. Not different in its comic style from his early slapstick period, (Bannas, Sleeper..), but has much more depth as Allen takes full on the Russian revolution, and literature, God and war in a very intelligent and intellectual way. You can tell how Allen was developing his on camera one-liners, or his self analysis ramblings, that he used perfectly in Annie Hall and Manhatten.
He also pays tribute to Ingmar Bergman, especially in the Death scenes. (The Seventh Seal).
Diane Keaton delivers one of her best performances for Allen, along with his underrated masterpiece Interiors.
In France and Europe, they consider film directors as artists, in the same league as poets, composers and painters, and rank Woody Allen among the finest, and quite rightly so.
BUY Love and Death and you would really appreciate how great an artist Allen is.
'I love him like a brother, just not one of my own'.
This is great moviemaking, and very fuuny to boost!.

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Hot cockles and wheat
For me, "Love and Death" bridges together the slapstick satire of Woody's early movies with the grand verbal wit of the later movies. It never falls into the trap of relying too much on the former, and its reliance on the latter produces some of the silliest Woody dialogue I've ever heard. But it's the perfect mixture between the two that makes this my pick for funniest Woody Allen flick. So far.

I've always felt that the context (Russia in the 19th century and the Napoleonic Wars) and the content (pre-existentialist philosophy) were fine targets to satire. The opening scenes, where Woody as narrator introduces his screwball family, are truly looney-tuney. And the scenes where Woody (Boris) and Diane Keaton (Sonja) talk philosophy, serve more to make fun of the ridiculous gibberish they are engaged in than to further the philosophical discourse. The truer philosophical discussions come in the form of setup-punchline jokes delivered later on ("If it turns out that there IS a God, I don't think that he's evil; I think that the worst you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever"). This is all good stuff.

Woody's performance here reminded me a lot of really good Groucho Marx. His wiseguy retorts to oblivious inquisitors are done in the same winking/nod to the camera manner that Groucho mined for gold. And Woody, with his messy red hair and horn-rimmed glasses, looks every bit the sarcastic clown that Groucho did. There's one particular scene ("She's a great kidder... No, you're a great kidder... No, you're Don Francisco's sister") which mimics the Marx Brothers doubletalk style perfectly. In the film's second half, Woody takes a step back, to allow Diane Keaton some grand time in the Groucho persona. And she runs with it. Keaton is an underrated comic actress, usually overshadowed by Woody. Here, she rolls her eyes, grins goofily, has great comic timing, and appears to be having a gloriously good time delivering her dialogue. You can see Woody's pride as he stands to the side and watches her go great guns.

There are many truly hilarious scenes here (my favourite: Woody, drawn into a duel, is offered to choose his weapon from a pair of guns; he picks them both up, examines them for a moment, and then says "I'll take these"), the scenery is shot gorgeously, the music by Prokofiev is jubilant and fits in perfectly with the film, and there is never a down moment. Come to think of it, the pace reminds me of the joke-a-minute style "pioneered" by the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker "Airplane" movies. Only Woody, dear Woody, bestows such intelligence and wit upon the material that it is elevated to a divine state.

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my favorite Woody Allen movie!
this is woddy allen's best movie; and before i hear cries of protest from the "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan" fans, allow me to explain myself.

this movie is the perfect blend of his physical comedy (the silent bottle scene) and his quick witted, rapid-response dialogue ("Let's assaginate Neapoleon" "Yeah, okay, it's getting a little late sweetheart, you wanna start knitting dinner?"). The "War and Peace" paradoy also makes for great comedy, complete with the Esienstein soundtrack to the classic Soviet propaganda film "Alexander Nevsky".

Allen and Diane Keaton are at their best in this movie, i think because they're not pontificating the great love-releationship dilemma they they also perform brilliantly in "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan", they're just having a lot of fun!