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Along with Twain's Innocents Abroad or Jones' What's Opera, Doc?, an act of artistic debunking that reaffirms the importance of art. Woody Allen meets Dostoyevsky to compare misanthropic librettos, the world is "an enormous restaurant," God is "an underachiever," "subjectivity is objective," etc. The Napoleonic Wars provide the sweeping canvas, the "militant coward" enlists most grudgingly: "What good is war? We kill a few Frenchmen, they kill a few Russians, next thing you know it's Easter." His beloved is the "half saint, half whore" cousin (Diane Keaton), who entertains lover after lover while her husband retires to the bedroom with herring in hand. Accidental triumph on the battlefield, a fling with the countess (Olga Georges-Picot), pistols at dawn with the jealous dybbuk (Harold Gould). Even the beauty of Ghislain Cloquet's cinematography cannot soothe the neurotic soul so the protagonist gets the noose dangling, at the last minute changing his mind to take up poetry and, later, political assassination. "Goddamn, you love Russia, doncha?" Allen builds on the Brooks of The Twelve Chairs for a continuous burlesque of the intellect, right down to musings on the word "jejune." Duck Soup, The Great Dictator, Prokofiev music and Eisenstein's stony lions. Napoleon (James Tolkan) demands more cream for the pastry that will bear his name, a dash of The Prisoner of Zenda gives the double amid palatial intrigue crashed by the anachronistic vaudevillian. The Angel keeps no promises but the Reaper certainly does, thus Allen's direct existential cry ("I got screwed!"). Jean Renoir warmly praised the film, which means he recognized La Règle du Jeu in the gag of the Bonaparte twins wrestling in the back of the frame. "Well, I'm out of clichés now." Barry Lyndon is felicitously concurrent. With Jessica Harper, Henry Czarniak, Féodor Atkine, Sol Frieder, Lloyd Battista, Howard Vernon, and Alfred Lutter.
--- Fernando F. Croce |