Vanya on 42nd Street (1994)
Louis Malle's last film was an eye-opener for me. My friend, Larry, took me to the Music Box theater in Chicago to see an art film. I had seen art films before, but they were all older than I was. This was the first contemporary art film that I would see. Something whose value I could determine myself without its greatness having been previously established by critics and scholars.
Vanya on 42nd Street wasn't shown on the main screen, but rather on a second screen which had recently been added to the Music Box. It is a very small side theater built into an adjacent storefront off the lobby and decorated to appear as if you are outside in a courtyard. Aptly, it felt more like a private screening than a trip to the movies.
Vanya was filmed in New York at the derelict New Amsterdam Theatre on Broadway. This is pre-Disney Times Square complete with peep shows and drug dealers. Three years after Vanya on 42nd Street was released, Disney would renovate the crumbling, rat-infested New Amsterdam as the centerpiece for a redeveloped Times Square. Louis Malle's last film also fittingly documented the seedy Times Square of the 1970s, 80s and early 90s. As I write this the New Amsterdam is currently presenting Disney's Aladdin, "The Hit Broadway Musical." Tickets start at $115.
The film is a performance of Chekhov's play, Uncle Vanya. Louis Malle directs the film, Andre Gregory directs the play that was adapted by David Mamet. The story behind the film was that Gregory and talented cast were privately rehearsing and performing the play with no intent to ever perform it on the stage. It was an exercise of pure craft and interpretation, often performed in living rooms for a select audience of friends. Malle and Gregory decided to make a film of this extraordinary process.
I can remember falling into this film the way that one falls asleep when you are desperately trying to stay awake. Before you know it, reality has changed. You are in a different time and place. And the rules are different. The powers of these words and these actors are staggering. I remember Wallace Shawn's despair and Julianne Moore's radiance. I remember how moved I was by their performances. This film expertly pulls you under its spell. Then it occasionally shakes you awake so that you can marvel at what a potent and intoxicating brew they have crafted.