Being There (Criterion Collection) (2-DVD) PG

Getting there is half the fun; being there is all of it!
Being There (Criterion Collection) (2-DVD)
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Format:  DVD  (2 Discs)
item number:  6E4XR
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DVD Details

  • Number of Discs: 2
  • Rated: PG
  • Run Time: 2 hours, 10 minutes
  • Video: Color
  • Encoding: Region 1 (USA & Canada)
  • Released: March 21, 2017
  • Originally Released: 1979
  • Label: Criterion Collection

Performers, Cast and Crew:

Starring &
Performer: , , &
Directed by
Edited by
Screenplay by
Composition by
Art Direction by
Produced by
Director of Photography:

Major Awards:

Academy Awards 1979 - Best Supporting Actor: Melvyn Douglas

Entertainment Reviews:

Certified Fresh94%

TOMATOMETER
Total Count: 52

Upright92%

AUDIENCE SCORE
User Ratings: 25,035
4 stars out of 5 -- Peter Sellers redeemed himself with one last major turn in BEING THERE....This is an exceptional comedy...
Total Film
Apr 1, 2009
...A stately, beautifully acted satire....Sellers never strikes a false note...
New York Times
Dec 20, 1979
Sellers has never been better and he embellishes the detached, childlike innocence of this character with perfect style and timing. It's a deceptively simple performance, but it is essentially the core and substance of the film. Full Review
Hollywood Reporter
Dec 19, 2016
...Deadpan farce....Sellers in his greatest performance... -- Rating: A-
Entertainment Weekly
Jan 15, 1999
...A rare and subtle bird that finds its tone and sticks with it. It has the appeal of an ingenious intellectual game...
Chicago Sun-Times
May 25, 1997
[Chance] is a cipher both funny and frightening, making utter vacancy look like Zen inscrutability.
Premiere
Apr 1, 2004
Rating: 4/4 -- Closed out the 1970's with a knowing smile, mourning that which was to come, and celebrating an unassuming antidote to the decade's increasing sense of materialism and political polarization. Full Review
From the Front Row
Jun 4, 2019

Product Description:

BEING THERE is based on Jerzy Kosinski's short comic novel about a simpleton, Chance (Peter Sellers), raised in isolation whose only education came from watching TV. When he's forced out of the house where he worked as a gardener by the death of the wealthy recluse who raised him from infancy, he's fortuitously struck by a limousine carrying Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine), the wife of a wealthy industrialist. He's mistaken, because of his well-tailored suits, for a man of means and taken to dinner with her husband, Ben Rand (Melvyn Douglas). There, as Chauncy Gardner, his blank affect is taken for seriousness and his literal pronouncements about gardening for metaphoric economic predictions. Soon he's meeting the president (Jack Warden) and becoming a star on TV--where he's a natural.

Kosinski was well known to be personally fascinated by the power of television. In BEING THERE, which he adapted for the screen himself, he presents a comic fable about a man whose entire sense of reality came from watching television. Sellers is marvelous as the always-deadpan cipher in whom everyone he meets sees whatever it is they need to see. Shirley MacLaine, Jack Warden, and Melvyn Douglas give outstanding performances in this biting satire directed by Hal Ashby.

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Product Info

  • Sales Rank: 40,830
  • UPC: 715515195317
  • Shipping Weight: 0.25/lbs (approx)
  • International Shipping: 2 items

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