Style
The dialogue and scenarios parody Russian novels, particularly those by Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, such as The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, The Gambler, The Idiot, and War and Peace. This includes a dialogue between Boris and his father with each line alluding to or being composed entirely of Dostoevsky titles.
The use of Prokofiev for the soundtrack adds to the Russian flavor of the film. Prokofiev's "Troika" from the Lieutenant Kijé Suite is featured prominently, for the film's opening and closing credits, and in selected scenes in the film when a "bouncy" theme is required. The battle scene is accompanied with the music from Sergei Eisenstein’s film Alexander Nevsky, Prokofiev's cantata for Alexander Nevsky.
Some of the humor is straightforward; other jokes rely on the viewer's awareness of classic literature or contemporary European cinema. For example, the final shot of Keaton is a reference to Ingmar Bergman's Persona, the sequence with the stone lions is a parody of Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. Bergman's The Seventh Seal is quoted throughout, and the Totentanz at the end is comparable to that film's final scene.
Allen pays tribute to the humor of The Marx Brothers, Bob Hope and Charlie Chaplin throughout this film.
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Famous quotes containing the word style:
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—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)
“One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!”
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)
“A style does not go out of style as long as it adapts itself to its period. When there is an incompatibility between the style and a certain state of mind, it is never the style that triumphs.”
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