THE SCREEN:
Jr, Colin L Westerbeck
WOODEN ALLEN THE SCREEN In Woody Allen's Love and Death, as in Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, the first thing you have to get straight is the plot. Woody's plot, luckily, is the easier one to...
...The failed parody reminds one of Buster Keaton...
...In fact, Woody has tried to make a parody not only of a good half dozen fat Russian novels, but of all the films of Sergei Eisenstein as well...
...A forefinger with blunt-bitten nail roots in the corner of his mouth while he tries to collect his thoughts, or take up a collection to buy himself some thoughts...
...Indeed, Woody's parody of Russian art has almost the scope and energy of Russian art itself...
...Woody's parody cringes, kvetches and rambles on at great length, but it is only an occasional self-interruption that is funny...
...Woody's theme music is that which Prokofiev wrote for Alexander Nevsky, and at certain moments Woody alludes to Eisenstein's work by recreating key shots from his films-the bullet-shattered eyeglasses from the Odessa Steps sequence in Potemkin, for instance...
...They have to be...
...COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR...
...It is his own personality, a neurotic combination of the helpless and the querulous, that he is always trying to escape or vanquish...
...The result is that Love and Death is more than a little tedious at times...
...His nose begins to redden from the base of his nostrils forward, rather than the tip backward, like some insane inversion of the effects of alcoholism...
...If Woody's mugging and gesticulation don't amuse you in themselves-if Woody in himself, inside himself, doesn't do so-then nothing in this Woody Allen movie will...
...If this plot sounds familiar, it's only because it is the same plot that all Woody Allen movies have...
...His freckles seem to turn to liver spots and his hair to grow thinner and wispier even as we watch...
...But the comparison between them is still more revealing for the differences it exposes...
...His own personality is the central event, the impossible dilemma, the mainspring of the plot, in his films...
...In Woody's case, however, the trouble all arises from within...
...In The Three Ages Buster tried to poke fun at Griffith's Intolerance as Woody has tried here, and in Bananas, to poke fun at Eisenstein...
...In like manner, the mock-romantic intrigues of a night at the opera have nearly lost our attention when Woody begins to have hilarious trouble maneuvering his sword and scabbard through the crowded lobby...
...The fixed expression on Buster's face reflects the impassivity with which he reacts to his troubles...
...I goosed that lady," he confides to us with a perfectly balanced mixture of apology and delight...
...This is why Love and Death only really has a chance to be funny when Woody quits being Boris, the subject of his parody, and lapses into pure Woody again...
...Woody's plot, luckily, is the easier one to summarize: beneath Woody's lips his lower teeth jut forward in consternation as if he had sprained his jaw exhaling...
...I suspect that Woody thinks of himself as being like Buster too...
...The problem in Love and Death is that good moments like these come only during asides, solecisms and lapses of character...
...His eyes widen in hope, anticipation, desire, greed, determination, yearning-in short, in panic...
...He reacts this way, never taking his troubles personally, because they are always external...
...And his eyebrows, actuated by all the strength which his inner being still has it in its power to summon, shrug...
...They are the only part of the comic action that shows, the only visible sign of what we're supposed to be laughing at...
...But unfortunately all of that, as I was saying, is beside the point...
...The only real drama, and the only real comedy, is the one acted out on Woody's twitching face...
...What is more, the comedy is in them, in the ridiculous catastrophes that befall him and the impossible acrobatics with which he escapes from them...
...When he does a take-off of the sort of monologue on death that is found in Russian novels, for example, the scene is already over before it provides a line really worth a laugh as Woody commands, in protest against his own fade-out, "Wait, I've got more on the Valley-of-the-Shadow part...
...They are imposed on him from without by circumstance or blind misfortune...
...This is not to say that there aren't a great many episodes in this movie dealing with the Napoleonic Wars, the social evolution of Russia and the sweep of history...
...This is also why Woody's features, unlike Buster's, are always very animated...
Vol. 102 • July 1975 • No. 8
