Vanya on 42nd Street
With Julianne Moore, Wallace Shawn, Andre Gregory.
US, 1994, 35mm, color, 119 min.
In what would be his final film, Malle reprised his collaboration with theater director Andre Gregory and actor-director Wallace Shawn (stars of the hugely popular My Dinner with Andre) to create this wholly innovative, non-theatrical staging of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. Set in a decrepit Times Square theater with a dysfunctional stage and crumbling ceiling, the film documents the preparations for and performance of a David Mamet adaptation of the classic play. Initial scenes follow cast members walking the streets of New York and assembling at the New Amsterdam Theatre. Seamlessly, their banter transitions into dialogue from the play as the performance takes on a strikingly original immediacy. While no film has investigated the transition from theater to cinema with more insight and intellectual rigor, the pleasure of the performances, as the family of actors becomes the family of Chekhov's imagination, remains paramount.
