of Death of Love

During World War II, a Jewish woman saves her life thanks to a love affair with a doctor in charge of human experiments in a Nazi concentration camp. The woman then marries and moves to New York, where she raises two emotionally stunted sons. The eldest son battles his sense of disconnection from life while working at a scam modeling agency, where he befriends a charming young co-worker who begins to restore in him a sense of excitement and purpose. The neurotic younger son is locked in a compulsive, co-dependent relationship with his mother.

Woody Allen's Love and Death is purportedly a satire of all things Russian, from Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky novels to Sergei Eisenstein films, but it plays more like a spin on Bob Hope's Monsieur Beaucaire. Allen plays Boris, a 19th century Russian who falls in love with his distant (and married) cousin Sonja (Diane Keaton). Pressed into service with the Russian army during the war against Napoleon, Boris accidentally becomes a hero, then goes on to win a duel against a cuckolded husband (Harold Gould). Intellectual in-jokes abound in Love and Death, and other gags are basic Allen one-liners. The pseudo-Russian ambience of Love and Death is comically enhanced by the Sergey Prokofiev compositions on the musical track.

Based on the successful play by writer Peter Nichols (Georgy Girl, The National Health), the focus of this dark comedy-drama is the struggle of a British couple to cope with the day-to-day strain of caring for their ten-year-old disabled daughter, Jo. Critically acclaimed actor Alan Bates is tremendous as the father, who recounts the outlines of the couple's life before and since Jo's birth and diagnosis with cerebral palsy in comic asides, which lighten, but never diminish, the delicate handling of this difficult subject matter. As they confront the collapse of their marriage, the couple debates the alternatives for their daughter.

It’s 1988 and at the height of the Iran-Iraq War, Tehran is bombed relentlessly. The days that pass are full of foreboding, and yet love, affection, hope and life itself manage to sweep away the fear of death from those surrounded by it. Love may often be difficult to comprehend, but death is a horrible certitude. Bomb, A Love Story shows how, even when faced with the darkness of death, love and hope will find a way.

While clashes between demonstrators and police are raging in the streets of Tokyo, a young man takes refuge at his policeman brother's house. The two brothers soon come to blows, but the intervention of the policeman's wife leads to the death of her husband by his own gun. The young man and the wife cover up the murder by making it look like a suicide. They become lovers and flee north into the Tohoku area, as if they were being pursued by the ghost of the murdered husband, their sexual passion and the pulse of the changing times.

In the Salinas Valley, in and around World War I, Cal Trask feels he must compete against overwhelming odds with his brother Aron for the love of their father Adam. Cal is frustrated at every turn, from his reaction to the war, to how to get ahead in business and in life, to how to relate to estranged mother.

Based on a centuries old tale with roots in real events, Chikamatsu Monogatari [A Tale From Chikamatsu, aka The Crucified Lovers] tells the hauntingly tragic story of a forbidden love affair between a merchant’s wife, Osan (Kyoko Kagawa), and her husband’s employee, Mohei (Kazuo Hasegawa), in an era when the punishment for adultery was crucifixion. When a series of innocent events lead to the false accusation of an affair between Osan and Mohei, the accused pair are forced to flee an almost certain death sentence. On the run, the outlaw couple grow closer together, drawn inexorably towards the romantic crime of which they are accused. In the hands of Mizoguchi, Chikamatsu Monogatari depicts two people caught up in a constricted world where true love and social obligation are at odds. His portrayal of the lovers’ dilemma lead famed director Akira Kurosawa to describe the film as “a great masterpiece that could only have been made by Mizoguchi.”
The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Mizoguchi’s films for the first time on home video in the UK - Chikamatsu Monogatari is only available as a twinpack with Uwasa no Onna.