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 [show more]
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Woody Allen's parody of Russian literature follows the adventures of the cowardly scholar Boris Dimitrovich Grushenko (Allen) after he is press-ganged into the Russian army during the Napoleonic Wars. Inadvertently becoming a hero, Boris returns home to marry his true love Sonia (Diane Keaton) and then embarks on an attempt to assassinate Napoleon, spoofing Tolstoy, Eisenstein and Ingmar Bergman along the way.
The experiences of Boris a timid Russian soldier in the Napoleonic Wars provide the viewer with top-notch intellectual comedy Boris expounds on the meaning of life and existential philosophy while being involved in a plot to assassinate Napoleon
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