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Vanya on 42nd Street
Price: $29.99 Prices subject to change.
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Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786303499185
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
ISBN: 630349918X
Label: Sony Pictures
Languages: English (Original Language), Analog
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Sony Pictures
Release Date: April 23, 1996
Running Time: 119 minutes
Studio: Sony Pictures
Theatrical Release Date: October 19, 1994
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Editorial Review:
This stirring 1994 work by Louis Malle brought the legendary French filmmaker into another collaboration with actors-writers-directors Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, scribes and stars of the great My Dinner with Andre. The situation here is that Shawn and Gregory were participants in a years-long, informal project remounting a production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya every few months for select friends and the general worthiness of the idea. Wearing street clothes and strolling to a crumbling New Amsterdam theater on Broadway, actors Shawn, Julianne Moore, George Gaynes, Brooke Smith, Larry Pine, Phoebe Brand, Lynn Cohen, and others would do a full run of the text (as sharply translated by David Mamet) while a beaming Gregory (the play's director) looked on. Malle--who died following this film--spent a few days transforming the theatrical experiment into a viable film that maintained the company's unusual purpose and spirit. The result is something between a narrative feature and a documentary about an acting workshop, and is both highly entertaining and cinematically enthralling. A terrific final note in Malle's distinguished career, this is a must-see for anyone who cared about his work or who has a passion for Chekhov. --Tom Keogh
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Vanya on 42nd Steet
Magnificent? May be it can be a word to define it. A bunch of great actors get together around a worn table in a decrepit and abandoned theater. They start a play. They are all dressed as you or me would be. They have no make-up. But they have themselves.
And in minutes they capture you; they inmerse you in the Chekhov's world. They show you art in its more elevated sense.
This is Vanya on 42nd Steet.
Rating: - Louis Malle's swan song: Uncle Vanya on 42nd Street.
Vanya on 42nd Street is a 1994 film collaboration between French director Louis Malle and actors-writers-directors Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn. The three had previously worked together on the must-see 1981 film, My Dinner with Andre. This film was the last of Malle's career. (He died of lymphoma following filming.) The engaging film features a cast of actors including Shawn, Julianne Moore, George Gaynes, Brooke Smith, Larry Pine, Phoebe Brand, and Lynn Cohen, who rehearse in their street ... Read More
Rating: - Vanya on 42nd Street
Pared down, offbeat approach to rendering of Chekhov may inflame purists, but actually makes the playwright's dark, depressing work more accessible. We get the full treatment, with no flubbed lines or distractions to break the dramatic tension of the piece. And though Shawn and Moore may not be ideal casting, they turn in holding performances which transport us to that bleak, far-away time in rural Russia. A daring and intelligent piece of work from the late Malle, which takes us behind the velvet ... Read More
Rating: - a beautiful film that showcases ensemble work on the stage......
VANYA ON 42ND STREET was my introduction to director Louis Malle's body of work. This 1994 film was the last film Malle completed before he passed away, and it is a great tribute to his talent for storytelling, as well as a great vehicle for his very talented cast. Basically, the film takes place on a stage, where the cast (including Julianne Moore and George Gaynes) is doing a read thru of Anton Chekhov's UNCLE VANYA. Together, they capture the dismal reality that Chekhov's characters live in, and ... Read More
Rating: - How can a fruitless life be regarded pure?
This statement belongs to a clever dialogue between the doctor and Vanya's niece in the middle of the night. Few directors along the history of the cinema have been able this brilliant and enviable opportunity to express with major solemnity, supreme conviction and admirable honesty, his last creative Op. like Louis Malle, a very prominent director who adapted the powerful, incisive and even neo existential play of Chejov around a crumbling and abandoned theater in Manhattan, where Malle accents and carves ... Read More
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