The Bloggomist: My Celluloid Fix
Love and Death (1975)

‘Tis the season for mass consumption and Hallmark-packaged nostalgia.  On this most celebrated of holidays, family members reunite after long stretches of silence and revel in merrymaking.  For some, Christmas poses a genuine test of true compassion or complete intolerance (depending on how dysfunctional their family has been the other 364 days.) For me, however, the colder holidays mean languorous days of feel-good movies, because gosh darn it, we deserve a bit of self-indulgence.

For the holiday mood, I proffer a hearty dose of the Russian composer Prokofiev with his vivacious number “Troika.” From the moment the suite prances into the opening credits of Woody Allen’s Love and Death, it brings to mind the rich tones of Old Mother Russia and old women wrapped up like Matrushkas-esque visions of sugarplums dancing.  Distant sleigh bells in the mix recall fleeting images of white, vaporized breath and chocolaty, warm reveries.

We’ve all had our Woody Allen obsession at some point.  When I first watched Bananas (1971), I marveled at Cossell announcing the assassination of a Latin American leader in a U.S.-installed government as if calling the historic fight of Ali vs. Frazier.  By then Woody’s longtime collaboration with Diane Keaton cemented him as a singular auteur with such classics as Annie Hall and Manhattan.  Even into 80’s and early 90’s, his films possessed emotional depth and insight in his later collaborations with ex-wife, Mia Farrow in The Purple Rose of Cairo and Husbands and Wives.

After the departure of his previous muses, Woody’s subsequent films sullied this wonderful celluloid memory I held so dear.  Although I once received his oeuvre with youthful fervor, it all but fizzled with the late 90’s in what I deemed his apparent decline.  He micromanaged his actors so much that they became neurotic, carbon-copied images of himself.  Great lines from scripts of his former glory began to resurface in his recent films (which I found too self-indulgent).  To top it off, his new muse, Scarlett Johansson, is nothing more than a vacuous vessel of physical perfection; a strange anachronism to the world that Woody so meticulously created.  I cringed when watching Match Point and didn’t bother seeing his subsequent film, Scoop.  And so my love affair with Woody regrettably waned.

LOVE & DEATH
I had a mild obsession with Woody that began when a bipolar art student unceremoniously dumped me.  My cosmic axis was off-kilter and suddenly I was at a loss with the world.  Only humor could bring me back to mental clarity.  I could have easily reached for the droll faces of silent geniuses — Buster Keaton, Rene Claire or Chaplin — or even turned to the clever plot twists of Preston Sturges or Ernst Lubitsch; but there was something about early Woody that resonated with me as a young, intellectually curious collegiate trying to figure out my lot in this world.

Whenever I’d feel the dark cloud of existential despair begin to precipitate, I popped in Love and Death. His neurotic psychoanalysis made sense of the confusion in my head.  It had a wonderful mitigating effect on me.  Then in the next instant, a joke delivered in typical Woody Allen fashion would leave me in stitches, barely able to restrain my laughter.  It became easy to make light of my emotional woes when another could make himself so vulnerable in cringingly awkward situations involving sex.

Love & Death possesses the marvelous spirit of comedy as well as Woody’s intelligent scriptwriting, fitting snugly between his two greats, the Orwellian comedy, Sleeper (which contains his best comedic invention ever – the orgasmatron) and the Oscar-winning Annie Hall.  L&D stars the lovely Diane Keaton (as Sonja) and Woody Allen (as Boris.)  The two embark upon an adventure, part philosophy, part slapstick comedy as they plot a scheme to assassinate Napoleon Bonaparte.

The scenes of the film begins and ends with Boris’ execution (for a crime he never committed.)  He quips in the opening lines of the film: “Isn’t all mankind ultimately executed for a crime it never committed? The difference is that all men go eventually, but I go six o’clock tomorrow morning. I was supposed to go at five o’clock, but I have a smart lawyer. Got leniency.”  Thus begins the hilarious, literary adventure in which he toys playfully with Dostoevsky titles, references Tolstoy’s War & Peace and even incorporates a fitting homage to Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (Woody’s self-professed favorite.)  Coupling that with Sonja and Boris’ philosophical digressions on the meaning of life and quotable one-liners and you have the perfect film to enjoy in the company of good friends and family.

That’s the final installation of My Celluloid Fix for the year. Stay tuned in 2010 as I explore more of my favorite films.  From a Czech town overrun by lecherous vampyres to a mind-bending labyrinth invoked by an ancient Spanish manuscript, there will be no rock left unturned in the quest for great cinema!  In the meantime, Happy Holidays!

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To see more from Sylvia Adams, visit: http://evilmonito.com/author/sylvia/

Published on 21 December 2009 | |