Olde Review: Love and Death

This was part of a series of reviews of the ASUW Film series back in the '70's. Except for some punctuation, I haven't changed anything from the way it was presented, giving the kid I was back in the '70's a break. Any stray thoughts and updates I've included with the inevitable asterisked post-scripts.

Love and Death (Woody Allen, 1975) Let no one get the idea that I don't like Woody Allen. I really do. There was a time in my life that I was completely absorbed in the Allen "persona." For a time I was even writing term papers in his style (luckily I was a freshman and no one knew the difference). But even though I like Allen a great deal, it doesn't prevent me from not being too enthralled with Love and Death, for there are too many times when Allen forgets that he is making a moving picture, and does a monologue much like the ones he did in his old night-club days. Indeed, there are times, when "Love and Death" becomes merely an illustrated version of his writings in "Getting Even" and "Without Feathers." *

The best Allen movie is still Play it Again, Sam which, coincidentally, is being broadcast by CBS Friday night). Allen wrote it, based on his hit stage play, but Herbert Ross directed it. And one of the reasons that it is more successful is because the Allen "schlemiel" character is rooted to the present time. In "Love and Death," the movie takes place at the time of the Napoleonic Wars and the jokes come easily...too easily. All Allen has to do is put together an anachronistic scene--very easy to do and he still gets the yoks! (Cheerleaders on the battleground, indeed!**) Play it Again, Sam and its current scene forced Allen to come up with genuine funnies, not anachronistic ploys. Sleeper was successful because it worked with our knowledge of the present with our ignorance of the future. Love and Death is less so because it worked our knowledge of the present against our knowledge of the past. The two don't work together.***

Broadcast November 4th and 5th, 1976

Love and Death would prove to be the last of what Allen cheekily labeled "his earlier, funny ones" (in Stadust Memories). At the time this review was written, Allen was polishing the edit of what was at that time called "Anhedonia," which would become the Best Picture Oscar-winning Annie Hall, and Allen would never go back to making his anachronistic "easy-laughs" kind of film, and started taking the craft of making films a lot more seriously. Love and Death was Allen's "Long Goodbye" to that style of sketch-comedy film-making.

Actually, Love and Death was his "transition" film, a bridge between those two styles--for example, how Allen shot a couple things became the joke—his classically framed "lions-roar" that he ripped from Eisenstein's Potemkin, for example. His camera set-ups began to take on the spare look of an Ingmar Bergman film (he also took the Death figure from The Seventh Seal). The script was a mess (as all his early films were)--this time an amalgram of Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy and Sleeper, but it was funny stuff, and a lot less episodic than Bananas, or Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex***** One dismisses the craft of comedy in film at one's own peril, because there are enough well-shot comedies that can't eke out a laugh to save their box-office lives. If one is looking at the photography more than enjoying the jokes is that anhedonia? 

The bottom line is, though, "is it funny?"

After Love and Death, Allen began to take the films—and himself—more seriously, burying the schtick and overt clownishness and embedding the jokes in the material, leaving them unsupported by buffoonery; he was getting older and the mugging at some point would look childish. He also stopped hiding behind satire to make his points. Oh, the influences were still there—they are there for every film-maker—he just wouldn't call attention to their sources so nakedly. When one does that, one's work has nothing to hide behind and leaves it open to all sorts of criticisms, charges of pretension, and the usual huffiness of the professional (or non-professional) critic. One can no longer just slip on a banana peel and wink "just kidding..."

So, I was wrong here, but not as wrong as I would be, and Allen would leave the blandly Ross-directed Play it Again, Sam (which is offensive now with its casual "rape" jokes) behind, with such classics as Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Crimes and Misdemeanors, and a lot of gems along the way. Every economically-made five or six films or so, Allen will make a great film. That's a fine batting average in the Biz.

* These are collections of Allen's essays for "The New Yorker."

** I guess I forgot the scene where the hot-dog vendor is yelling "Red Hots!" on the battle-field.

***Crap! Of course, they can work together!

***** But were Afraid to Ask!