April 8, 2014 (Series 28: 10) Louis Malle, VANYA ON 42ND STREET 1994, 119 minutes)

Directed by Louis Malle Written by Anton Chekhov (play “Dyadya Vanya”), David Mamet (adaptation) and Andre Gregory (screenplay) Cinematography by Declan Quinn Phoebe Brand ... Nanny Lynn Cohen ... Maman George Gaynes ... Serybryakov Jerry Mayer ... Waffles Julianne Moore ... Yelena Larry Pine ... Dr. Astrov Brooke Smith ... Sonya Wallace Shawn ... Vanya Andre Gregory ... Himself LOUIS MALLE (director) (b. October 30, 1932 in Thumeries, Nord, France—d. November 23, 1995 (age 63) in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California) directed 33 films and television shows, including 1994 Vanya on 42nd Street, 1992 Damage, 1990 May Fools, 1987 Au Revoir Les Enfants, 1986 “God's Country” (TV Movie documentary), 1986 “And the Pursuit of Happiness” (TV Movie documentary), 1985 Alamo Bay, 1984 Crackers, 1981 My Dinner with Andre, 1980 Atlantic City, 1978 Pretty Baby, 1975 Black Moon, 1974 A Human Condition (Documentary), 1974 Lacombe, Lucien, 1971 Murmur of the Heart, 1969 Calcutta (Documentary), 1967 The Thief of Paris, 1965 Viva Maria!, 1963 The Fire Within, 1962 A Very Private Affair, 1960 Zazie dans le metro, 1958 The Lovers, 1958 Elevator to the Gallows, and 1953 Crazeologie (Short). He also wrote 17 films and TV shows—2010 Shikeidai no erebêtâ, 1990 May Fools, 1987 Au Revoir Les Enfants, 1978 Pretty Baby, 1975 Black Moon, 1974 Lacombe, Lucien, 1971 Murmur of the Heart, 1969 Calcutta (Documentary), 1968 Spirits of the Dead, 1967 The Thief of Paris, 1965 Viva Maria!, 1963 The Fire Within, 1962 Vive le tour (Documentary short), 1962 A Very Private Affair, 1960 Zazie dans le metro, 1958 Elevator to the Gallows (adaptation),

and 1954 Station 307 (Short)—and was the cinematographer for 5: 1986 “God's Country” (TV Movie documentary), 1986 “And the Pursuit of Happiness” (TV Movie documentary), 1962 Vive le tour (Documentary short), 1956 The Silent World (Documentary), and 1954 Station 307 (Short). ANTON CHEKHOV (writer—play “Dyadya Vanya”) (b. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, January 29, 1860 in Taganrog, Russian Empire [now Rostov Oblast, Russia]—d. July 15, 1904 (age 44) in Badenweiler, Baden-Württemberg, Germany) was a Russian physician, dramaturge, and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classic plays, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Over 370 films have been based on his stories, particularly Uncle Vanya.

Malle—VANYA ON 42nd STREET BABETTE’S FEAST—2

DAVID MAMET (writer—adaptation) (b. David Alan Mamet, November 30, 1947 in Chicago, Illinois) wrote 43 films and TV shows, among them 2014 About Last Night (based on Sexual Perversity in Chicago), 2013 “Phil Spector” (TV Movie), 2010 “The Unit” (TV Series—67 episodes), 2005 Edmond (play/screenplay), 2004 Spartan, 2001 Heist, 2001 Hannibal (screenplay), 2000 State and Main, 1999 The Winslow Boy (screenplay), 1999 “Lansky” (TV Movie), 1998 Ronin (screenplay), 1997 Wag the Dog (screenplay), 1997 The Spanish Prisoner, 1997 The Edge, 1996 American Buffalo (play/screenplay), 1994 Oleanna (play/screenplay), 1994 “Texan” (TV Short), 1994 Vanya on 42nd Street (play adaptation), 1992 Hoffa, 1992 Glengarry Glen Ross (play/screenplay), 1992 “The Water Engine” (TV Movie—play), 1991 Homicide, 1991 Performance (TV Series), 1989 We're No Angels, 1988 Things Change, 1987 House of Games (screenplay/story), 1987 The Untouchables, 1987 “Hill Street Blues” (TV Series), 1986 About Last Night... (play Sexual Perversity in Chicago), 1982 The Verdict (screenplay), 1981 The Postman Always Rings Twice (screenplay), and 1979 “A Life in the Theater” (TV Movie—play). He also directed 21 films, television shows, and video shorts, including 2013 “Phil Spector” (TV Movie), 2010 Two Painters (Short), 2010 Our Valley (Short), 2010 The Marquee (Short), 2010 Inside the Actor's Workshop (Video short), 2010 Lost Masterpieces of Pornography (Video short), 2006-2008 “The Unit” (TV Series), 2008 Redbelt, 2004 “The Shield” (TV Series), 2004 Spartan, 2001 Heist, 2000 Catastrophe (Short), 2000 State and Main, 1999 The Winslow Boy, 1997 The Spanish Prisoner, 1996 “Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants” (TV Movie), 1994 Oleanna, 1991 Homicide, 1988 Things Change, and 1987 House of Games. ANDRE GREGORY (writer—screenplay) (b. May 11, 1934 in Paris, France) wrote 2 films, 1994 Vanya on 42nd Street, and 1981 My Dinner with Andre. In addition to writing, Gregory also appeared in 23 films and TV shows, including 2013 Fear of Falling, 2003 Judge Koan, 1998 Celebrity, 1998 Goodbye Lover, 1995 Last Summer in the Hamptons, 1994 Vanya on 42nd Street, 1994 The Shadow, 1993 Demolition Man, 1990 The Bonfire of the Vanities, 1988 Some Girls, 1988 The Last Temptation of Christ, 1987 Street Smart, 1986 The Mosquito Coast, 1983 “Great Performances” (TV Series), 1982 Author! Author!, and 1981 My Dinner with Andre. DECLAN QUINN (cinematographer) (b. 1957 in Chicago, Illinois) was the cinematographer on 53 films and television

shows, including 2014 “Line of Sight” (TV Movie), 2014 Hot Tub Time Machine 2, 2013 Fear of Falling, 2012 The Reluctant Fundamentalist, 2012 Being Flynn, 2011 Neil Young Journeys (Documentary), 2009 Neil Young Trunk Show (Documentary), 2008 New York, I Love You, 2008 Pride and Glory, 2007 Jimmy Carter Man from Plains (Documentary), 2004 Vanity Fair, 2003 Cold Creek Manor, 2002 U2: The Best of 1990-2000 (Video documentary), 2002 In America, 2001 Monsoon Wedding, 2000 28 Days, 1998 One True Thing, 1997 One Night Stand, 1996 Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love, 1995 Leaving Las Vegas, 1994 Vanya on 42nd Street, 1993 The Ballad of Little Jo, 1992 “The Heart of Justice” (TV Movie), 1991 “Lies of the Twins” (TV

Movie), 1991 Blood and Concrete, 1989 The Kill-Off, and 1984 U2: Unforgettable Fire (Documentary short). PHOEBE BRAND ... Nanny (b. November 27, 1907 in Ilion, New York—d. July 3, 2004 (age 96) in New York City, New York) appeared in 1 film and 1 TV show: 1994 Vanya on 42nd Street, and 1951 “Treasury Men in Action” (TV Series).

LYNN COHEN ... Maman (b. Lynn Harriette Kay, August 10, 1933 in Kansas City, Missouri) appeared in 76 films and television shows, including 2014 Omphalos, 2014 Gabriel, 2014 They Came Together, 2013 The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, 2013 A Case of You, 2012 Where Is Joel Baum?, 2012 Not Waving But Drowning, 2012 The Romance of Loneliness, 2010 The Kindergarten Shuffle, 2010 Sex and the City 2, 2010 A Little Help, 2003-2010 “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (TV Series), 2010 The Extra Man, 2008 Eagle Eye, 2008 Synecdoche, New York, 2008 Sex and the City, 2008 Deception, 2007 The Summoning of Everyman, 2006 Invincible, 1993-2006 “Law & Order” (TV Series—12 episodes), 2005 Munich, 2005 The Last Days of Leni Riefenstahl (Short), 2003 The Station Agent, 1999 Cradle Will Rock, 1997 My Divorce, 1997 Deconstructing Harry, 1996 I Shot Andy Warhol, 1994 Vanya on 42nd Street, 1993 Manhattan Murder Mystery, and 1983 Without a Trace. GEORGE GAYNES ... Serybryakov (b. George Jongejans, May 16, 1917 in Helsinki, Finland) appeared in 85 films and TV shows, including 2003 Just Married, 1997 Wag the Dog, 1996 The Crucible, 1994 Vanya on 42nd Street, 1992-1993 “Hearts Afire” (TV Series—23 episodes), 1989-1991 “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd” (TV Series—17 episodes), 1989 Police Academy 6: City Under Siege, 1984-1988 “Punky Brewster” (TV Series—86 episodes), 1988 Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach, 1987 Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol, 1986 Police Academy 3: Back in Training, 1985 Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment, 1984 Police Academy, 1984 “Blue Thunder” (TV Series), 1983 “Cheers” (TV Series), 1982 Tootsie, 1982 Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, 1979-1982 “Quincy M.E.”

Malle—VANYA ON 42nd STREET BABETTE’S FEAST—3

(TV Series), 1980 Altered States, 1979 “WKRP in Cincinnati” (TV Series), 1976-1977 “Rich Man, Poor Man - Book II” (TV Series), 1976 Nickelodeon, 1976 “Black Sheep Squadron” (TV Series), 1976 Harry and Walter Go to New York, 1975 “McCloud” (TV Series), 1974 “Cannon” (TV Series), 1974 “The Six Million Dollar Man” (TV Series), 1971 “Hogan's Heroes” (TV Series), 1969 Marooned, 1968 “Bonanza” (TV Series), 1962 “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour” (TV Series), 1962 “The Defenders” (TV Series), and 1955 “One Touch of Venus” (TV Movie). JERRY MAYER ... Waffles (b. May 12, 1941 in Waterloo, Iowa—d. February 3, 2003 (age 61) in New York City, New York) appeared in 17 films and TV shows, including 2001 “Ed” (TV Series), 2000 “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (TV Series), 2000 Joe Gould's Secret, 1991-1998 “Law & Order” (TV Series), 1994 Nobody's Fool, 1994 Vanya on 42nd Street, 1992 Single White Female, 1991 “Women & Men 2: In Love There Are No Rules” (TV Movie), 1991 “A Marriage: Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz” (TV Movie), 1985 “The Equalizer” (TV Series), 1984 “Miami Vice” (TV Series), 1980 Brubaker, 1976 “Serpico” (TV Series), 1974 The Great Gatsby, and 1973 “Much Ado About Nothing” (TV Movie). JULIANNE MOORE ... Yelena (b. Julie Anne Smith, December 3, 1960 in Fayetteville, North Carolina) appeared in 76 films and television shows, among them 2015 The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, 2015 Seventh Son, 2014 The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, 2014 Non-Stop, 2013 Carrie, 2013 The English Teacher, 2009-2013 “30 Rock” (TV Series—7 episodes), 2012 What Maisie Knew, 2012 “Game Change” (TV Movie), 1985-2010 “As the World Turns” (TV Series—19 episodes), 2010 The Kids Are All Right, 2007 I'm Not There., 2006 Children of Men, 2004 Laws of Attraction, 2002 The Hours, 2002 Far from Heaven, 2001 The Shipping News, 2001 Evolution, 2001 Hannibal, 1999 Magnolia, 1999 The End of the Affair, 1999 A Map of the World, 1999 An Ideal Husband, 1998 Psycho, 1998 The Big Lebowski, 1997 Boogie Nights, 1997 The Lost World: Jurassic Park, 1996 Surviving Picasso, 1995 Nine Months, 1994 Vanya on 42nd Street, 1993 Short Cuts, 1993 The Fugitive, 1993 Body of Evidence, 1992 The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, 1990 “B.L. Stryker” (TV Series), 1989 “Money, Power, Murder.” (TV Movie), and 1984 “The Edge of Night” (TV Series). LARRY PINE ... Dr. Astrov (b. March 3, 1945 in Tucson, Arizona) appeared in 94 films and television shows, including 2014 “Unforgettable” (TV Series), 2013 Fear of Falling, 2013 Jimmy P., 2013 “House of Cards” (TV Series—6 episodes), 2013 “The Good Wife” (TV Series), 2011-2012 “Homeland” (TV Series), 2012 Arbitrage, 2009 The Good Heart, 2006 “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (TV Series), 2004 Melinda and

Melinda, 2004 “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” (TV Series), 2004 The Clearing, 1999-2003 “Oz” (TV Series—8 episodes), 2001 The Royal Tenenbaums, 2000 Small Time Crooks, 1999 A Stranger in the Kingdom, 1999 Let It Snow, 1997-1999 “All My Children” (TV Series—6 episodes), 1998 Celebrity, 1997 The Ice Storm, 1995 Dead Man Walking, 1994 Vanya on 42nd Street, 1989 “The Justice Game” (TV Series), 1989 The Dream Team, 1988 “Miami Vice” (TV Series), 1986 “Tales from the Darkside” (TV Series), 1986 “As the World Turns” (TV Series), 1982 I, the

Jury, 1968 “One Life to Live” (TV Series), and 1952 “Guiding Light” (TV Series). BROOKE SMITH ... Sonya (b. May 22, 1967 in New York City, New York) appeared in 48 films and TV shows, including 2013 “Ray Donovan” (TV Series—7 episodes), 2013 Labor Day, 2013 “Graceland” (TV Series), 2012 “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (TV Series), 2010 The Aspern Papers,

2006-2008 “Grey's Anatomy” (TV Series—25 episodes), 2007 “Weeds” (TV Series), 2007 “Crossing Jordan” (TV Series—13 episodes), 1996-2007 “Law & Order” (TV Series), 2004 Melinda and Melinda, 2004 “Six Feet Under” (TV Series), 2002 Bad Company, 2002 “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” (TV Series), 2001 The Man Who Wasn't There, 1999 “Homicide: Life on the Street” (TV Series), 1998 “Remembering Sex” (TV Movie), 1997 “The Larry Sanders Show” (TV Series), 1996 Kansas City, 1996 Trees Lounge, 1994 Vanya on 42nd Street, 1993 The Night We Never Met, 1991 The Silence of the Lambs, 1988 The Moderns, and 1988 “The Equalizer” (TV Series). WALLACE SHAWN ... Vanya (b. Wallace Michael Shawn, November 12, 1943 in New York City, New York) has appeared in 157 films and television shows, including 2014 Drawing Home, 2014 Don Peyote, 2013 Fear of Falling, 2013 The Double, 2011-2013 “Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness” (TV Series—6 episodes), 2013 “The Good Wife” (TV Series), 2008-2012 “Gossip Girl” (TV Series—11 episodes), 2011 The Speed of Thought, 2010 Toy Story 3, 2009 “ER” (TV Series), 2009 “Life on Mars” (TV Series), 2009 “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (TV Series), 2006 “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” (TV Series), 2001-2006 “Crossing Jordan” (TV Series—8 episodes), 2004 The Incredibles, 2004 Melinda and Melinda, 2004 “Sex and the City” (TV Series), 1999 Toy Story 2, 1999 “Homicide: Life on the Street” (TV Series), 1999 My Favorite Martian, 1994-1997 “Murphy Brown” (TV Series), 1996-1997 “Clueless” (TV Series—17 episodes), 1995 Toy Story, 1995 Clueless, 1995 The Wife, 1994 Vanya on 42nd Street, 1994 Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, 1993 The Cemetery Club, 1992 Nickel & Dime, 1991 Shadows and Fog, 1989 Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills, 1987 The Princess Bride, 1987 Nice Girls Don't Explode, 1987 Radio Days, 1984 Micki + Maude, 1984 The Bostonians, 1984 The Hotel New Hampshire, 1983 The First Time, 1982-1983 “Taxi” (TV Series), 1982 A Little Sex, 1981 My Dinner with Andre, 1980 Atlantic City, 1980

Malle—VANYA ON 42nd STREET BABETTE’S FEAST—4

Simon, 1979 All That Jazz, 1979 Manhattan, and 2002 “Teamo Supremo” (TV Series). He also wrote 6 plays and screenplays, which are 2013 Fear of Falling, 2010 Tea Time (Short) (script), 2004 The Fever (play/screenplay), 2004 Marie and Bruce (screenplay), 1997 The Designated Mourner (play), and 1981 My Dinner with Andre.

LOUIS MALLE (from Wikipedia) (30 October 1932 – 23 November 1995) was a French film director, screenwriter, and producer. His film, Le Monde du silence, won the Palme d'Or and Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1956. He was also nominated multiple times for Academy Awards later in his career.

Malle worked in both French cinema and Hollywood, and he produced both French and English language films. His most famous films include Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958), Lacombe Lucien (1974), Atlantic City (1980), My Dinner with Andre (1981), and Au revoir, les enfants (1987).

Malle was born into a wealthy industrialist family in Thumeries, Nord, France. He initially studied political science at the Sciences-Po before turning to film studies at IDHEC instead.

He worked as the co-director and cameraman to Jacques Cousteau on the Oscar and Palme d'Or-winning (at the 1956 Academy Awards and Cannes Film Festival respectively) documentary The Silent World (1956) and assisted Robert Bresson on A Man Escaped (French title: Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut, 1956) before making his first feature, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (released in the U.K. as Lift to the Scaffold and in the U.S. originally as Frantic, later as Elevator to the Gallows) in 1957, aA taut thriller featuring an original score by Miles Davis, the film made an international film star of Jeanne Moreau, at the time a leading stage actress of the state Comédie-Française. Malle was 24 years old.

Malle's The Lovers (Les Amants, 1958), which also starred Moreau, caused major controversy due to its sexual content, leading to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case regarding the legal definition of obscenity. In Jacobellis v. Ohio, a theater owner was fined $2,500 for obscenity. The decision was eventually reversed by the higher court, which found that the film was not obscene and hence constitutionally protected. However, the court could not agree on the definition of "obscene," which caused Justice Potter Stewart to utter his "I

know it when I see it" opinion, perhaps the most famous single line associated with the court.

Malle is sometimes associated with the nouvelle vague— though his work does not directly fit in or correspond to the auteurist theories that apply to the work of Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Rohmer, and others, and he had nothing whatsoever to do with Cahiers du cinéma, he did exemplify many of the characteristics of the movement, including using natural light, and shooting on location. His film Zazie dans le métro (Zazie in the Metro, 1960, an adaptation of the Raymond Queneau novel) did inspire Truffaut to write an enthusiastic letter to Malle.

Other films also tackled taboo subjects: The Fire Within (Le Feu follet, 1963) centres on a man about to commit suicide, Murmur of the Heart (1971) deals with an incestuous relationship between mother and son and Lacombe Lucien (1974), co-written with Patrick Modiano, is about collaboration with the Nazis in Vichy France in World War II. The second film earned Malle his first (of three) Academy Award nominations for "Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced."

In 1968 Malle visited India and made a seven part documentary series, L'Inde fantôme: Reflexions sur un voyage and a documentary film, Calcutta, which was released in cinemas. Concentrating on real India, its rituals and festivities, Malle fell afoul of the Indian government, which disliked his portrayal of the country, in its fascination with the pre-modern, and consequently banned the BBC from filming in India for several years. Malle later claimed his documentary on India was his favorite film.

Malle later moved to the United States and continued to direct there. His later films include Pretty Baby (1978), Atlantic City (1981), My Dinner with Andre (1981), Crackers (1984), Alamo Bay (1985), Damage (1992) and Vanya on 42nd Street (1994, an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's play Uncle Vanya) in English; Au revoir, les enfants (1987) and Milou en Mai (May Fools in the U.S., 1990) in French. Just as his earlier films such as The Lovers helped popularize French films in the United States, My Dinner with Andre was at the forefront of the rise of American independent cinema in the 1980s.

Malle was married to Anne-Marie Deschodt from 1965 to 1967. He had a son, Manuel Cuotemoc (born 1971), with German actress Gila von Weitershausen and a daughter Justine (born 1974) with Canadian-born French actress Alexandra Stewart. He married actress Candice Bergen in 1980. They had one child, a daughter, Chloé Malle, in 1985. He died from lymphoma at their home in Beverly Hills, California on Thanksgiving Day 1995. Steven Vineberg; “Vanya on 42nd Street: An American Vanya” (Criterion Notes) In the long history of stage-to-screen translations, there’s never been anything quite like Louis Malle’s Vanya on 42nd Street (1994), an astonishing hybrid blurring the boundaries between theater and film, rehearsal and performance, actor and character. The production began in 1989, as an extended workshop under the guidance of André Gregory, perhaps the most gifted stage director in America, who assembled a superb cast of actors to rehearse Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at the abandoned Victory Theater on Forty-second Street. They met, over the

Malle—VANYA ON 42nd STREET BABETTE’S FEAST—5

course of more than four years, whenever their professional schedules allowed, without any plan to perform before an audience. But toward the end of that period, they began to invite friends to watch the rehearsals. Eventually, Gregory asked Malle to film the play, performed by the actors in street clothes, with bare-bones furniture and rehearsal props, and they installed themselves in the magnificently decrepit New Amsterdam Theatre across the street, unused for decades, its stage rendered impracticable by flooding and mice, so that they were restricted to a section of what had been the orchestra.

Malle’s long career, which began in 1956, when he codirected Jacques Cousteau’s undersea documentary The Silent World, flowered during the French New Wave, and eventually occupied simultaneous spheres in France and in Hollywood, includes no other dramatic adaptations. Still, Vanya wasn’t entirely new territory for him. In 1981, he directed Gregory and actor-playwright Wallace Shawn (who plays Vanya) in the one-of-a-kind film My Dinner with André, written by Shawn, in which the two men philosophize over dinner at a restaurant about theater and their lives. It isn’t a documentary: Shawn culled the conversation, which is heady and eccentric and as witty as the dialogue in a high comedy, from a series of discussions between him and Gregory, but it’s no less carefully shaped than any of Shawn’s stage works, and the two stars are playing fully conceived characters, “Wally” and “André.” This little charmer of a picture comes to mind most vividly in the opening sequence of Vanya, where the actors stroll through midtown on their way to the New Amsterdam, exchange pleasantries, and introduce the friends and relatives they’ve brought to the day’s run-through—the visiting niece of Phoebe Brand (who plays Marina, the nanny) and Shawn’s friend Mrs. Chao and a young acquaintance of hers, Flip. Like My Dinner with André, this section looks like a documentary but isn’t. (Mrs. Chao is actually played by the famous Indian chef and cookbook writer, and actor, Madhur Jaffrey, and her friend is the soon-to-be film writer and director Oren Moverman.)

In other ways, too, Malle was the ideal director for the project, which strips down Chekhov’s late-nineteenth-century story about Russian intellectuals in the provinces and reimagines it as a text for Stanislavski-trained American actors. (David Mamet’s adaptation, based on a literal translation by Vlada Chernomordik, moves Chekhov’s dialogue as close as possible to American rhythms without sacrificing the often poetic self-consciousness of the characters’ speeches.) Not only was Malle a superb actor’s director but he also ferried back and forth throughout his professional life between fiction films and documentaries and was fascinated with the idea of softening the line between them. In A Very Private Affair (1962), for instance, he cast Brigitte Bardot in a role clearly inspired by her real-life persona, and the young man he chose to play the lead in Lacombe, Lucien (1974), the story of a peasant who joins the

Gestapo during the occupation because he can’t get into the Resistance, was a woodcutter named Pierre Blaise, with no previous acting experience. Both Chekhov and Constantin Stanislavski, who directed Chekhov’s plays at the Moscow Art Theatre, hated the European theater of their time for its fakery and its tendency to showcase stars; they believed in an ensemble ethic, and Chekhov wrote scenes that can be played only with the kind of psychological realism Stanislavski trained his actors to achieve. Though audiences would certainly recognize some of the faces in Vanya on 42nd Street, only Julianne Moore (as Yelena) has had a movie star’s trajectory, and in 1994 she was just beginning to land leading roles. Gregory has a way of working with an ensemble that is strikingly at odds with the quick-pick-up approach of professional theater in the United

States; you’d have to travel as far as France’s Théâtre du Soleil to find another company that takes years to cultivate a production. His aim is to permit the actors to peel open the play, layer by layer, and locate the more deeply embedded and surprising elements in their characters. An elusive truth was also what Malle was after in Lacombe, Lucien with Blaise and his then equally inexperienced costar, Aurore

Clément, though he approached it via a different avenue. It’s easy to imagine Malle’s being immediately sympathetic to Gregory’s project.

Chekhov wasn’t alone among the great modernist playwrights in questioning the presumptions of theatrical realism. A couple of decades after Uncle Vanya, Luigi Pirandello confronted the issues of realism in Six Characters in Search of an Author, and in some ways Vanya on 42nd Street suggests, especially in the opening, a reverse-Pirandellian take on Chekhov’s masterpiece. Pirandello’s play queries the basic theatrical notion that actors on a stage can take on the mantle of someone else’s reality without turning it artificial; Gregory and Malle accept this challenge to realism by showing us that great actors who have burrowed deep inside their roles can shift into them with such ease that you don’t notice the transformation until you’re already caught up in it. This is the Stanislavskian ideal, accomplished when actors draw on their own experience to furnish the emotional core of their characters. Shawn, wandering through the playing area at the New Amsterdam with Mrs. Chao, confides that he’s exhausted because he hasn’t slept well for several nights, and he lies down on a bench to rest; Larry Pine chats with Brand (an original member of the Group Theatre, where Stanislavskian acting was first practiced in America in the 1930s) about how overcommitted he is, rehearsing several plays simultaneously. Without warning and without missing a beat, their conversation becomes the opening exchange of Uncle Vanya, between Dr. Astrov and Marina, and only after we realize this, a moment or two late, do we see that Shawn has already slipped into the character of Vanya, dozing nearby. It takes two (or perhaps three) viewings to understand that Malle has prepared us for this metamorphosis even earlier: What seems like

Malle—VANYA ON 42nd STREET BABETTE’S FEAST—6

a throwaway credit sequence, with the actors on the street, is already pairing them with their characters. George Gaynes, who will play the haughty, self-pitying, out-of-touch professor, Serebryakov, looks like an old-world gentleman out for a stroll, dressed impeccably in an overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat; when he makes his first-act entrance a few minutes later, he’s still sporting the hat and wears his coat over his shoulders like a cape. Pine, who as Astrov falls in love with the professor’s wife, Yelena, and tries to tempt her into an affair, strolls through the theater district, turning to admire a shapely young woman as she passes. Moore and Brooke Smith (as Yelena’s stepdaughter, Sonya) arrive together, chattering enthusiastically—anticipating the girlish relationship that will spring up between their characters, after a period of iciness, at the end of act 2. Shawn stands by a vendor’s stall, munching contemplatively on a knish, an image that seems oddly right for a latter-day Vanya, that combination of failed intellectual, disappointed sensualist, and tragic clown. Lynn Cohen, who plays Vanya’s mother, Maman, the professor’s most devoted reader, exudes a distinctly New York bohemian elegance as she strides down the street with her bag swinging from her shoulder. When they arrive at the theater, Brand and Jerry Mayer (who plays the estate hanger-on, Waffles) are already there to greet them, just as their characters are continually in attendance at the estate where Vanya and Sonya live year-round and Serebryakov and Yelena have just arrived on an extended summer visit.

The pared-down setting and the rehearsal props are reminiscent of Our Town, but Thornton Wilder used those devices to keep the audience aware that they were watching a play; Gregory and Malle use them, paradoxically, to show how little the details of setting matter when the details of character are worked through and profoundly right. At some point in the first

act, we stop noticing that we’re not watching a fully designed production—or if the thought does occur to us now and then, it’s as an emissary from the real world pinching us to remind us that this is a movie of a rehearsal of a play, before we forget again and are swept up in the emotional turmoil of the characters’ lives. The key item in the movie for exploring this notion is the “I New York” coffee cup on the dining room table, an anachronism that becomes merely part of the fabric of the setting, imbued like everything else with the indolent, unsettled atmosphere of this Russian country estate. This interaction of late-twentieth-century New York actors with a turn-of-the-century Russian text acknowledges both and celebrates the tension between them as well as the overlap. That’s why the music we hear behind the opening and end credits isn’t, say, a balalaika melody but a

marvelous jazz score by Joshua Redman. The point is that Uncle Vanya speaks as powerfully to contemporary Americans as it did to Russians at the sunset of the age of the czars. The magnificence of the performers, perhaps the most extraordinary group of actors ever gathered to bring Chekhov’s play to life, confirms it.

Vanya on 42nd Street turned out to be Malle’s final film. His output was so varied that it doesn’t seem particularly strange that his swan song is so unlike the Renoiresque French movies he is best known for: Murmur of the Heart (1972); Lacombe, Lucien; Au revoir les enfants (1987). Of course, he made many pictures

in America too, and his editing rhythms in Vanya are as precisely attuned to the relaxed, colloquial styles of the cast as Mamet’s language rhythms. The film is a triumphant cross-hatching of talents—Gregory’s and Malle’s, Chekhov’s and Mamet’s, and the actors’, whose poignant intimacy as a true Stanislavskian ensemble takes us straight to the heart of Chekhov’s vision of how human beings can interact on a stage (or on-screen) when there’s no theatrical self-consciousness to get in the way. ���

The online PDF files of these handouts have color images

Just four more in the Spring 2014 Buffalo Film Seminars:

April 15 Wes Anderson, The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001, 110 min

April 22 Tommy Lee Jones, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, 2005, 120 min April 29 José Padilha, Elite Squad, 2007, 115 min

May 6 John Huston, The Dead, 1987 83 min

CONTACTS: ...email Diane Christian: engdc@buffalo.edu

…email Bruce Jackson bjackson@buffalo.edu ...for the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com

...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto list@buffalofilmseminars.com ....for cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center and State University of New York at Buffalo

with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News