Love and Death

Love and Death (Woody Allen, 1975) - A

Not sure I've ever seen a movie that takes so much joy in absurdity, really exemplified by the closing shot of Allen and the Grim Reaper jigging across the screen. Self-serious 19th Century Russian lit is vulnerable to the introduction of anything remotely modern, and Allen's sarcastic, hyperactive schlub is the perfect poison, dismantling the genre by introducing 20th Century neuroses (thereby also rebuffing, it seems to me, the view that Dostoyevsky et al. cannot be criticized except from the (necessarily imaginary) perspective of their contemporaries). Everything hits, from the straight-up Airplane!-style silliness ("No, YOU are Don Francisco's sister") to the often non sequitur wordplay ("Are you scared of dying?" "Scared is the wrong word. I'm frightened of it." "Interesting distinction.") to the bits that play more like Woody stand-up. Not a dull minute; endlessly energetic and pretty much perfect.