Love and Death

Writer-director-actor Woody Allen spoofs 19th century Russian lit (think Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky) in this intellectual comedy, rumored to be his favorite. A faint-hearted hero (Allen) is drafted for war and convinces his beautiful cousin (Diane Keaton) to marry him. She thinks he's doomed, but he manages to survive a sure-death duel. Now, a plot to assassinate Napoleon is the only thing that can keep them together.

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» Reviewed by 4 people

This movie is now 30 years old, and it is still every bit as hilarious as it must have been when first released. Woody Allen's comedies are almost all classics, but his farces like Sleeper and Love and Death are SO funny.
- LB in Idaho

Cute farce based on War and Peace... there were some great laugh out loud moments in this movie. I'm not a big Woody Allen fan, but this movie showed me why so many people are. Definitely worth renting, if you have seen or read War and Peace.
- amerynth

Woody Allen’s satire of Russian film and literature (such as Tolstoy and Eisenstein) is one of Allen’s best early satires. It’s one of Allen’s most intelligent comedies. His performance is pretty standard for Allen, he’s a bumbling, pseudo-intellectual who can’t ever seem to escape mishaps and unforeseen adventures. The film is a little sprawling, but it works with the kind of slapstick parody that Allen is going for here. It is one of Allen’s best films, and a forgotten gem in his filmography.
- Dlukenelson

This is Woody Allen's comedy about the Russian Empire as well as his take on the works created by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky but with the trademark style of his early comedies. Again he's taking something most people consider to be high art and intelligent (Russian lit) and infusing it with sight gags and one-liners. There are inspired and funny scenes and scenes of beautiful choreography and set direction where you can see that his style is both expanding and wearing thin. He's outgrowing these early films. It's the end of his first movement of filmmaking, one defined by the Marx brothers inspired lunacy and the slapstick of the early silents. It's a pivotal time where Allen's early style ends and a more sophisticated and darker period begins (then again it's hard to get more sophisticated than paying homage to Bergman within a more or less slapstick comedy).
- Paul Logan