- Actors: Wallace Shawn, Phoebe Brand, George Gaynes, Jerry Mayer, Lynn Cohen
- Directors: Louis Malle
- Writers: Andre Gregory, Anton Chekhov, David Mamet
- Producers: Alysse Bezahler, Beverly Karp, Fred Berner
- Classification: U
- Studio: Artificial Eye
- VHS Release Date: 9 May 1995
- Run Time: 119 minutes
- ASIN: B0000583BQ
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 7,403 in Video (See Top 100 in Video)
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21 reviews
35 of 37 people found the following review helpful
Mamet and Malle make a winner!
30 Sep 2002
Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase
I remembered loving this "small" film when I saw it in the theater, so I knew I'd be happy with the DVD, whether it had any extras or not (it doesn't). Although Julianne Moore has made it big since making Uncle Vanya ("Boogie Nights," "Nine Months," "The End of the Affair"), and her lovely face dominates the DVD cover, "Uncle Vanya on 42nd Street" is truly ensemble acting at its best. Wallace Shawn as the title character does a powerful job of holding the viewer's interest, even though his Vanya is riddled with smugness, envy, self-pity, and lethargy. There are things about his performance that make you wonder if Louis Malle wasn't thinking of "Uncle Vanya" as a sequel to "My Dinner with Andre" (especially since Andre Gregory plays the director who has gathered his troupe of actors to rehearse Uncle Vanya in the falling down New Amsterdam Theater in New York City). In both movies, Shawn plays a man facing a mid-life crises, plagued with self-doubt and floundering around, looking for reasons to go on.
What struck me on my recent viewing of the film was how timeless Checkhov's story really is. Like Jane Austen, he has a great ability to find the universal in the pettiness of highly-controlled domestic life. In comparing Mamet's rendering with Paul Schmidt's excellent recent translation, it seems Mamet did a good job of crafting speakable lines. He modernized the play without wrenching it from its original time or setting. Since the performance we see is a final run-through, not a dress rehearsal, we receive no visual clues as to when the play within the movie actually begins. Malle's light hand in this regard only reinforces the dubiousness of the distinction between theater/art and reality (a much discussed subject in "My Dinner with Andre").
The decision to film "Uncle Vanya" in the decaying New Amsterdam Theater was an inspired one. When Dr. Astrov (Larry Pine), the play's most forward-looking character, bemoans the cultural and spiritual devastation caused by deforestation and human indifference to the environment, one can't help but think of the plight of 42nd Street itself. The New Amsterdam's resurrection--thanks to Disney dollars--as the current home of "The Lion King" is not without it's ironies. As all of the characters in "Uncle Vanya" are painfully aware, our futures are always purchased at a very high price. And the losses we are likely to experience as we move towards those futures may be greater than any of us will be able to bear.
"Uncle Vanya on 42nd Street" is one of those great works of art, like Eugene O'Neill's "A Long Day's Journey into Night," that makes you stop and take stock of your life.
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
A complete and total surprise
14 Sep 1999
I have never been a major fan of art films. I literally stumbled onto this film while channel-surfing. Although it was in the middle of the film, and I only saw a few minutes at a time until I resumed channel-surfing, I always landed back on this unusual film, which looked like a group of people going through a rehearsal. Eventually I was intrigued, and went to find out more info (like the name). After a while, I checked out the film, and saw it beginning to end.
I was amazed by what I saw. A group of performers (Wallace Shawn, Julianne Moore, George Gaynes, et al.) performing a classic Russian play in front of a small group of people, including the play's director, Andre Gregory. It looks like the group is really just rehearsing the play in their normal clothes, in an abandoned theater with minimal props. But NO! That's the actual performance they did! And by doing "Uncle Vanya" in this way, one can picture the events occuring any time, any place. I was astounded.
The biggest surprise to me was Wallace Shawn. Before I had seen him with recurring roles in "Murphy Brown" and "Star Trek: DS9," with my favorite performance as Vizzini in "The Princess Bride." Wallace Shawn as Vanya totally surprised me, and completely changed my perception of him as an actor.
I honestly believe that this film started me on a different path as to what films I watch now. I cannot recommend it enough.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
A tremendous feat of cinematic and theatrical imagination.
10 Sep 2000
Director Louis Malle, a decade or so after My Dinner with Andre, teamed once again with Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn to create Vanya on 42nd Street, and the second film is even more brilliant than the first. To help actors keep up their acting chops between jobs, Gregory staged recurring performances of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya in a decrepit, abandoned Broadway theater (since renovated by Disney to accommodate The Lion King) and inviting selected guests to witness the proceedings. As filmed by Malle, this performance comes as close to smashing the barriers between film and theater as any films ever made (even Olivier's films of Henry V and Hamlet didn't succeed quite as well). Although the performances of Wallace Shawn, Julianne Moore and other New York actors are uniformly impressive, the standout is Brooke Smith, an actress of whom I know little (save for a guest shot on "Law and Order"). This movie shows us what a genius we lost when Louis Malle died, much too young.
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