45 years of Love and Death
June 10, 1975 in New York (USA) the premiere of the film «Love and Death». Director Woody Allen.
The very name of the film contains an allusion to the connection between the content of the film and Russian literature, since the most famous works of Russian literature in the West have names based on the antinomy: “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy, “Crime and Punishment” by Fedor Dostoevsky. This tradition was continued in Soviet literature: “Alive and Dead” by Konstantin Simonov, “Men and Women” by Boris Mozhaev, etc.
Perhaps this is why Woody Allen’s film is often interpreted as a parody of the works of Russian literature. For example, this is how the IMDB website claims: «The movie is considered a spoof of the Russian novel, particularly the works of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, particularly "The Idiot", "The Gambler", "War and Peace", "Anna Karenina", "Crime and Punishment", and "The Brothers Karamazov".
And, perhaps, for this reason, Soviet censorship did not allow this film on the screens of Soviet cinemas.
However, a number of Russian film critics consider a very superficial view of this film as a parody of only Russian literature. According to these critics, “Love and Death” is a parody of not only and not so much on Russian classical literary works as on Western adaptations of these works.
So, Sergei Kudryavtsev in his review of the film wrote: “The plan is very funny: to parody (except for the novel War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy) in general Russian literature and culture of the XIX century. But to be exact - to ridicule Western, American ideas about Russia, which are reflected in the mass of serious and not very serious adaptations on the Russian theme: from Anna Karenina in 1935 with Greta Garbo to, for example, the eccentric comedy 12 Chairs (1970) by Mel Brooks.»
According to Yegor Belikov, “Externally, this is a parody of various examples of Russian culture that penetrated the United States in one form or another: Tolstoy and Dostoevsky’s novels, as well as their Hollywood adaptations. But it turns out that Allen treats this entire heritage with great respect and parodies only stereotypical details: pompous and difficult to understand dialogs, the search for the deep meaning of life, and so on ... This is a real Russophile film, no matter how it seemed initially.”
Vladimir Gordeev believes that "the film Love and Death brings to light the numerous clichés and ideas of the West about Russia of the 19th century, but it turns out that these ideas are also inherent in the Russian person who has read at school Tolstoy’s novels and has seen enough of "export" movie production like War and Peace by Sergey Bondarchuk.”
In my opinion, the viewer must himself conclude what exactly is parodied in the film. But this can only be done by a viewer who has read the above-mentioned works of Russian literature and has watched foreign adaptations of these works.
The film Love and Death participated in only one film forum - the Berlin Film Festival in 1975, at which it was awarded the far from the most significant prize of the UNICRIT.
However, the commercial success of the film was very significant: with a budget of $ 3 million, the film raised more than $ 20 million.
The audience’s success of the film is also obvious: 65% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated the film from 8 to 10.
Based on the above, according to FilmGourmand’s version, the film has a rating of 7.869 and takes 890th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
