Countess Alexandrovna (played by Olga Georges-Picot): “You are the greatest lover I've ever had.”
Boris (played by Woody Allen): “Well, I practice a lot when I'm alone.”—Love and Death (1975), written and directed by Woody Allen
This parody of Russian literature, which opened on this date in 1975, concludes what might be thought of as the early period of Woody Allen’s career, the one most marked by slapstick. (You know—the same one satirized in Stardust Memories, where the running joke to Allen’s director stand-in is that his fans—even visiting aliens—like his early, funny films the best.)
Not only Allen's literary influences (most obviously, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace) but also his cinematic ones (the rat-a-tat-tat one-liners, reminiscent of the Marx Brothers, and the cowardly serf Boris, another of his tributes to the Bob Hope persona) are most on display in Love and Death.
In the mid-1980s, Russian literature would exert itself again, albeit more subtly, in what I believe is Allen’s finest film: Hannah and Her Sisters. The locale might be the Upper West Side, not St. Petersburg, and the time the late 20th century rather than the Czarist period. But in its nearly seamless Chekhovian mix of humor and rue and its density of character and plot line, you can see the outlines of the great Russians.
The adulterous affair between Elliott (played by the Oscar-winning Michael Caine) and Lee (Barbara Hershey) nearly splits the family, as Stiva’s did in Anna Karenina. Moreover, if Tolstoy’s sprawling novel featured a sizable subplot involving angst-ridden, death-obsessed Levin, Hannah also has a counterpart: Mickey (played by Allen), who walks around in a fog for much of the film after his cancer diagnosis.
This parody of Russian literature, which opened on this date in 1975, concludes what might be thought of as the early period of Woody Allen’s career, the one most marked by slapstick. (You know—the same one satirized in Stardust Memories, where the running joke to Allen’s director stand-in is that his fans—even visiting aliens—like his early, funny films the best.)
Not only Allen's literary influences (most obviously, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace) but also his cinematic ones (the rat-a-tat-tat one-liners, reminiscent of the Marx Brothers, and the cowardly serf Boris, another of his tributes to the Bob Hope persona) are most on display in Love and Death.
In the mid-1980s, Russian literature would exert itself again, albeit more subtly, in what I believe is Allen’s finest film: Hannah and Her Sisters. The locale might be the Upper West Side, not St. Petersburg, and the time the late 20th century rather than the Czarist period. But in its nearly seamless Chekhovian mix of humor and rue and its density of character and plot line, you can see the outlines of the great Russians.
The adulterous affair between Elliott (played by the Oscar-winning Michael Caine) and Lee (Barbara Hershey) nearly splits the family, as Stiva’s did in Anna Karenina. Moreover, if Tolstoy’s sprawling novel featured a sizable subplot involving angst-ridden, death-obsessed Levin, Hannah also has a counterpart: Mickey (played by Allen), who walks around in a fog for much of the film after his cancer diagnosis.
No comments:
Post a Comment