Woody Allen‘s Love and Death (’75), a satire of early 18th Century Russia and the philosophical issues that weighed heavily upon the brooding types of that era, is a very clever and inventive film. Thick with allusions to Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy and the plots of War and Peace, The Gambler, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment. Shot with some difficulty in France and Hungary but handsomely produced, it’s…what’s a fair description?…decently diverting.
The only problem with Love and Death (which I caught in June ’75 at the Westport Fine Arts Cinema) is that it’s not really “funny.” Okay, I silently snickered three or four times but snickers don’t count.
Actually, I laughed once. Woody’s “Boris Grushenko” and Diane Keaton‘s “Sonja” are married and starving and forced to eat melted ice and snow. One evening Sonja announces that they have a special treat for dinner — sleet. “Oh, fantastic…sleet!,” Boris enthuses. Why has this one 47-year-old joke resonated? It’s the only one I can vividly recall.