Love and Death - Anachronisms

Anachronisms

The film is full of deliberate humorous anachronisms:

• In a brief interlude, Boris works as a struggling poet, reading from a poem he eventually wads up and throws out he says, "I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas," a quote lifted from T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. ("Too sentimental," Boris decides as he throws out the poem.)
• Boris (Allen) retains his trademark glasses despite their anachronistic absurdity; at one point Boris says to Sonja after a diatribe, "Do you think God wears glasses?" and she replies, "Not with those frames!"
• In the war front against the French there are cheerleader girls wearing "Russia" t-shirts.
• A vendor, complete with New York accent and attired as if he were at a ballpark, is selling "red hots" to soldiers during a battle. Allen's character apparently offers him a large-denomination currency, and he remarks, "Hey, you got anything smaller? I just started!"
• Boris speaks to the audience: "There are some things worse than death. If you've ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman, I'm sure you know what I mean."