Woody Allen

Diane Keaton

Harold Gould

Olga Georges-Picot

Zvee Scooler

Despo Diamantidou

Sol Frieder

Jessica Harper

Lloyd Battista

Alfred Lutter

Georges Adet

Frank Adu

Edmond Ardisson

Féodor Atkine

Albert Augier

Yves Barsacq

Jack Bérard

Eva Betrand

George Birt

Yves Brainville

Gérard Buhr

Brian Coburn

Henri Coutet

Patricia Crown

Henri Czarniak

Sandor Elès

Luce Fabiole

Florian

Jacqueline Fogt

Harry Hankin

Tony Jay

Tutte Lemkow

Jack Lenoir

Leib Lensky

Anne Lonnberg

Roger Lumont

Edward Marcus

Jacques Maury

Narcissa McKinley

Aubrey Morris

Denise Péron

Beth Porter

Alan Rossett

Shimen Ruskin

Percival Russel

Chris Sanders

C.A.R. Smith

Fred Smith

Clément Thierry

Alan Tilvern

James Tolkan

Hélène Vallier

Howard Vernon

Glenn Williams

Jacob Witkin

Bernard Taylor

Rebecca Potok

Norman Rose

Andrée Tainsy

Ron Kalish

Ralph Rosenblum

Charles H. Joffe

George B. Hively

Martin Poll

Ghislain Cloquet

Willy Holt

Paul Feyder

Blanche Wiesenfeld

Bernard Cohn

Jean-Marie Durand

Claude Reytinas

Marie-Jose Testard

Miriam Brickman

Juliet Taylor

Jean Brunet

Renée Guidet

Michel Vocoret

Dan Sable

Gérard de Lagarde

Paul Apoteker

Suzanne Wiesenfeld

Daniel Brisseau

Philippe Houdart

Marie-Madeleine Paris

Anatole Paris

Felix Giglio

Patrick Gordon

Marc Frédérix

Al Gramaglia

Guy Testa-Rossa

Kit West

Fred T. Gallo

Peter Dawson

Adele Sanders

Daniel Vogel

Catherine Prévert

Marilyn McLaren

Gladys de Segonzac

Louis Boussaroque

René Strasser

Andree Demarez

Zsuzsa Szemes

Michael Kirchberger

Gábor Piroch

Imre Béres

Sergei Prokofiev

Comedy

Love and Death

United Artists

Jack Rollins & Charles H. Joffe Productions

United States of America

CinemaSerf

All this really needed was someone like Emil Jannings to add a bit of imperialist, silent-film, gravitas to proceedings as a pair of slightly self-obsessed intellectual ne’er-do-wells get caught up in the Franco-Russian war. Unfortunately for the Czar, with Napoleon clamouring at his borders, he must rely on the likes of the neurotic and yellow-bellied “Boris” (has to be Woody Allen, doesn’t it?) to enlist in his army. He is about as much use as that wrong calibre stuff they had in the Crimea, but he determines that his best plan for a swift exit back to his equally up-herself cousin “Sonja” (Diane Keaton) is to assassinate the Frenchman and end the war in one stroke. Meantime, his manipulative cousin is safely at home playing a cat and mouse game with his brother “Ivan” (Henri Czarniak) who isn’t remotely interested in returning her amorous intentions. Regardless, she isn’t going to let his disinterest save her from an unwanted marriage with “Boris”. His hapless army skills just happen to coincide with historical fact and so when the French arrive in a largely abandoned Moscow, the pair have a chance to reunite and whilst dodging the bullets they are metaphorically shooting at each other, unite to achieve their murderous goal. Fans of Tolstoy and/or Dostoevsky will see plenty of similarities, parodies even, of their more earnest tales of revolution, grand philosophising and unrequited love and for much of the time these references are only very thinly veiled, if at all! It is also an out-and-out comedy with more than an few shades of the bawdiness of a “Carry On” movie peppered with a few double-entendres and the humour comes thick and fast amongst all the fake blood and fabulous examples of the costumiers art. Of course, like most daft comedies there is a twist and this one comes from left field and entirely tops off this enjoyable romp through history - or literature’s interpretation thereof, and is one of my favourite Woody Allen scripts as it levels just about everything from religiosity to pomposity before it. Good fun.

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