Love and Death

I watched the old Woody Allen movie Love and Death the other night on Comcast On Demand. I hadn’t seen that movie since I was teenager, but remember loving it. Not too long ago I was extolling it’s virtues as a funny movie to a friend of mine and remarked “Of course, I haven’t seen that movie in ages. I wonder if I’d still find it funny now.”

Boy did I.



Sure a lot of the plot is just a loosely hung excuse for Woody Allen to do bits that seem straight out of a stand-up comedy routine, but it’s still funny. He and Diane Keaton have amazing chemistry, and this movie was made after they’d stopped dating.

Say what you will about Woody Allen. Some of his movies are great. Some of them terrible. He’s unnaturally obsessed with teen-aged girls, and the details of his split with Mia Farrow are more than a little disturbing, but… He directs a move every year. Every year… for the last 40 years. I can’t help but admire that work ethic and sheer prolificness. (Is “prolificness” a word? What word do I mean here?)

Since he made his directorial debut in 1966 with What’s Up, Tiger Lilly, the only years he hasn’t released a movie that he directed were 1967 (but he wrote and appeared in the Bond spoof Casino Royale that year), 1968, 1970, 1974, and 1981. That’s 28 consecutive years since 1981. In fact that’s 30 feature films and 1 TV movie in the last 28 years. He directed 2 films in 1987, 1989, and 1 film and 1 TV movie in 1992. If I’m counting right, Whatever Works, due out this year, will be his 40th film. That’s insane.