Vanya on 42nd Steet

Vanya on 42nd Steet
by Louis Malle

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DVD details

Actor: George Gaynes, Jerry Mayer, Julianne Moore, Lynn Cohen, Phoebe Brand
Director: Louis Malle
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: Chinese (Subtitled); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Korean (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); Taiwanese Chinese (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 119 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-09-24
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Sony Pictures

DVD Reviews of Vanya on 42nd Steet

DVD Review: What are you people thinking?!
Summary: 2 Stars

I think the only reason this is given such high reviews is owing to the fact that it is such a great play. The performances here are frankly mediocre, and Wallace Shawn is just not that good in the role. Vanya is in the middle of a nervous breakdown and Shawn plays him tired and resigned. PLEASE see the BBC Chekhov collection with Kenny Jones as Vanya to see what this really could be. PLEASE. At least for an English version; curiously, there is no Russian version of this anywhere on DVD.

DVD Review: Stark, moving, and brilliant!
Summary: 5 Stars

This is how Chekhov was meant to be performed! The setting is bleak, dark, heavy, honest, and so are the performances - but the stand out is clearly Brooke Smith. Her portrayal of Sonya is raw and lyrical, and it lit a small fire in my heart that burned brighter as the film progressed. She literally glows in the flame that she kindled. Something in her makes my emotions dance to whatever song her face and eyes are singing, and I was left groaning and sighing with inexplicable ache and hope.

This is what theatre and cinema are meant to be. I want to be transported outside of myself in order to recognize my deepest places reflected back at me through a character. Brooke Smith shows me the deep places that exist in all of us, even if we're too bound up to reveal them to each other.

Buy, buy, buy Vanya on 42nd Street! And then take a deep breath, surrender to the truth and beauty of Chekov, the universal ache and loneliness of Brooke Smith as Sonya, and come to the understanding that we are most alive when our heart aches for that which we can never have.

DVD Review: Vanya on 42nd Steet
Summary: 5 Stars

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.

DVD Review: Louis Malle's swan song: Uncle Vanya on 42nd Street.
Summary: 5 Stars

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 clothes for a performance of Chekhov's major play Uncle Vanya (as translated by David Mamet) in the rat-infested, 1903 New Amsterdam theater on NYC's 42nd Street, while Gregory supervises the workshop rehearsals. Their performance of Chekhov's tragicomedy about "the wasted life" is intended for an invitation-only audience. This film will appeal to anyone with an interest in Checkov. His popular play has also been adapted into three equally hard-to-find films on DVD: Dyadya Vanya, Sam Neill's Country Life, and Sir Anthony Hopkins' August.

G. Merritt

DVD Review: Vanya on 42nd Street
Summary: 5 Stars

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 curtain to view at close quarters the practice and discipline of acting.

Description of Vanya on 42nd Steet

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

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