Love and Death Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Love and Death Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown May 22, 2025

Originally made available by Twilight Time in 2015 as part of the distributor's Screen Archives Entertainment Exclusive collection and as a (since sold out) Limited Edition release of 3,000 copies, filmmaker Woody Allen's 'Love and Death' (1975) returns to Blu-ray courtesy of Sandpiper Pictures. It offers solid video and audio but only the barest of supplemental features... not that the Twilight Time edition included much.

"But murder? The most foul of all crimes. And not just abstract murder like shooting an unknown enemy on the battlefield. But standing in a closed room with a live human being and pulling the trigger. Face to face. And a famous human being, a successful one, one who earns more than I do... my God, you figure Napoleon has gotta be good for 10,000 francs a week... that's minimum. That's without tips or extras. Nothing like that. And me? What am I? He's a great man. He thinks like the superman. And I'm just a worm, an insect... some kind of crawling, disgusting, creeping little vermin!"

The “death” part of Allen’s bifurcated title is alluded to almost right off the bat in the film, as Allen’s own distinctive voice narrates the upcoming demise of his character, the hapless Boris Grushenko. Boris is the typical Allen hero, a twitching, neurotic, sex-obsessed guy who just so happens to be living in Imperial Russia at about the time Napoleon decides he needs a bit more elbow room. Boris’ history, delivered via a series of punchline invested flashbacks, is completely in line with some other typical Allen male youths, though being a 19th century Russian, little Boris interacts more with Death than with any decoder ring appointed secret agent. That interaction with the symbol of mortality indicates early on that Boris is a questioning soul, and Love and Death repeatedly interrupts its narrative flow to have both Boris and, later, his distant cousin Sonja (Diane Keaton) simply stop to indulge in philosophical ruminations about life, love and, yes, death in what are mock serious attempts to divine something akin to that aforementioned “Russian soul.” Boris is of course head over heels in love with Sonja, but both the incursions of Napoleon (James Tolkan) as well as Sonja’s upcoming nuptials to an elderly fish monger (a desperate choice after her first elderly suitor doesn’t quite make it past the wedding announcement) stand in the way of “happily ever after.”

Click here to read the rest of Jeffrey Kauffman's glowing review of the film, which he calls "one his favorite Allen films." Adding that "it has the flat out goofiness of early, more nonchalant, entries like Bananas while beginning, if only jokingly most of the time, to address some substantive issues like, well, you know, love and death. Allen and Keaton play their stereotypical roles here, but they play them to the hilt, and Love and Death has a rather unexpectedly epic and sumptuous feel for such an otherwise proto-indie feeling film.

Love and Death Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Love and Death fares pretty well on Blu-ray, with a solid 1080p/AVC-encoded video transfer bolstered by strong coloration, vivid primaries and deep, inky blacks. Skintones are a tad flushed on occasion but largely lifelike, while hints of crush and ringing are the only things that creep in to spoil the presentation. Detail is quite good, at least once the opening credits are a thing of memory, and fine textures are well-resolved, without anything in the way of heavy-handed artificial sharpening. Significant banding and blocking are MIA as well, though eagle eyed viewers will note some compression limitations here and there when things get chaotic.

Love and Death Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Likewise Sandpiper's DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track is decent, with well-supported voices, fairly precise prioritization, and good fidelity. A few sequences do sound a touch canned, with some tinniness in sound effects in particular, but nothing is too far out of sorts or a major distraction.

Love and Death Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only extra included is Love and Death's theatrical trailer.

Love and Death Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

"The question is: have I learned anything about life? Only that... only that human beings are divided into mind and body. The mind embraces all the nobler aspirations, like poetry and philosophy, but the body has all the fun. The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter. You know, if it turns out that there IS a God, I don't think that He's evil. I think that the worst you can say about Him is that, basically, He's an underachiever. After all, you know, there are worse things in life than death. I mean, if you've ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman, you know exactly what I mean. The key here, I think, is to... to not think of death as an end, but think of it more as a very effective way of cutting down on your expenses. Regarding love, heh, you know, what can you say? It's not the quantity of your sexual relations that count. It's the quality. On the other hand, if the quantity drops below once every eight months, I would definitely look into it."

Love and Death is a chatty Woody Allen comedy, which is to say a Woody Allen comedy, but one that rises above much of his early silliness with a sense of sweeping sumptuousness that plays well with the literary hilarity. Video and audio are solid, supplements are bare, but the movie is worth a watch.