Love and Death (1975)

Director: Woody Allen

Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Jessica Harper, James Tolkan

Have I Seen It Before: Ok. So, here’s what happened. Two years before even starting these movies reviews, I went to go see Cafe Society (2016). And I have yet to watch a Woody Allen movie since. I suddenly felt like I had a grown past his frantic romanticizing of infidelity. I may have grown up.

And then the accusations against him from the 90s were renewed again. Where I had previously hidden behind the “He was never charged” defense, the notion that it was less a lack of charges and more a lack of wherewithal on the part of prosecutors to get bring charges, I never really looked back.

Then Diane Keaton died. She had defended him in the ensuing years, which was never quite good, but she was great in other movies for years, and I had a hankering to watch one of her movies.

And, damn it, I missed this one. Time was, I had watched it at least once a year. Although not even remotely a Christmas movie, the score adapted from Prokofiev just feels like Christmas in my head.

Although probably not anymore.

Did I Like It: As much as one can still “enjoy his earlier, funnier films” this one does still hold up. Filled with enough references to Russian literature and non sequitur to nimbly switch gears between the silly and the profound, I found myself laughing frequently. One forgets how on equal footing Allen and Keaton were as performers, and she is far more than “the girl” in this movie. I’m glad I picked this one as a RIP Keaton screening, as opposed to Annie Hall (1977) or, worse yet, Manhattan (1979).

And yet…

Someone once described Manhattan—where Woody in his early forties dates a seventeen year old (Mariel Hemingway)—as the filmmakers version of the O.J. Simpson book If I Did It. That’s pretty funny, because its mostly true. In my naïveté of several hours ago, I figured I was safe of having to seriously process whether or not Allen is just a creep, or a thorough monster.

Then Keaton’s Sonja goes to seek wisdom from Father Andre (Leib Lensky) after Boris (Allen) has grown inexplicably suicidal. Senile because insanity is the film’s default point of mockery, the priest tells her the secret to longevity and life is “blonde twelve year old girls, two of them whenever possible.”

Sonja expresses her disappointment (not horror) with the Priest, as if he had said something uncouth, and proceeds with the absurdity of the story.

Blech. Doubt I’ll be coming back to this one any time soon. He’s probably confessed a little bit throughout most of his films. Best to leave them where they are. Maybe try The Godfather - Part II (1974) if you’re feeling some Diane Keaton nostalgia.

Casino Royale (1967)

Director: John Huston, Ken Hughes, Val Guest, Robert Parrish, Joe McGrath

Cast: Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress, David Niven, Woody Allen, Orson Welles*

Have I Seen It Before: Yes, as one of those rogue Bond-films (I’m using each of those three words rather generously) it wasn’t one of those that I was exposed to on regular TBS Bond-a-thons, but somewhere along the way curiosity alone brought me to it. I remember my mother had a fondness for it, but I’m prepared to write that off mostly to Burt Bacharach. I thought at the time that there were a few laughs, but the whole thing dragged on far too long, which wasn’t especially damning. As a child I thought that about plenty of comedies of the era.

It's entirely possible I didn’t stick around to the end. In fact, that ending being what it is, I’m pretty sure I didn’t. Years later I came back to it. Now I know.

Did I Like It: Let’s start with the positive. A farce revolving around the idea that the world so desperately needs a James Bond that they’ll hand the name and number out to just about anybody isn’t a bad concept. Twenty years ago, if you had asked me what film desperately needed to be remade, I’d put this at the top of the list. Now that we live in a world where Casino Royale (2006) exists, one might think the case would be closed. But a conceptual remake is aching to be done, too. Just leave the Fleming canon right where it is, thank you.

What else… What else? Oh. The DVD includes a 1954 episode of the anthology series Climax!** which was the first attempt to adapt the first Fleming novel. It’s not especially good, either, but is ultimately fascinating. A completist like myself would be incomplete without both of these on his shelf.

That’d be about it. There are a fitful few laughs on display here. I’m even trying to remember them now, and they slip away the moment the film is over. Woody Allen as one of many Bond’s isn’t a bad pitch for 1967, but even that one ought to stay on the shelf in the here and now. Thin material culminates in a brief epilogue taking place in heaven, when one of the Bonds gets his final revenge on the villain of the piece. I’d say I wouldn’t identify the turn here for the sake of spoilers, but you probably wouldn’t believe me if I decided to go the other way.

This may be the most overwrought, overproduced film to be unleashed from an editing bay. I may start petitioning for the retirement of the phrase “too many cooks” and replace it with “too many directors making Royale.” It’s more words, but it feels like more descriptive. I’m paraphrasing, but Gene Siskel once described a good test of the worth of a movie is whether or not you’d rather see a documentary of the same cast having lunch. With Welles and Sellers, that’s an automatic decision from me. The movie may well have been doomed from the start.

*If I’m going to have to list five separate directors, I really ought to be allowed to list a fifth actor. Especially that one.

**Try getting that one by the censors today.