Being There (Criterion Collection) (2-DVD) PG
Getting there is half the fun; being there is all of it!
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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 | Peter Sellers & Shirley MacLaine | |
Performer: | Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden, Richard Basehart & Richard Dysart | |
Directed by | Hal Ashby | |
Edited by | Don Zimmerman | |
Screenplay by | Jerzy Kosinski | |
Composition by | Johnny Mandel | |
Art Direction by | James Schoppe | |
Produced by | Andrew Braunsberg | |
Director of Photography: | Caleb Deschanel |
Major Awards:
Academy Awards 1979 -
Best Supporting Actor: Melvyn Douglas
Entertainment Reviews:
No one seems to know what to do with the allegorical undertone of Jerzy Kosinski's script, but as a whole this 1979 film maintains a fine level of wit, sophistication, and insight.
Full Review
Chicago Reader
What started as a fable ends up being a satire and that is precisely where the story becomes tedious and long, at the same time that it shows its weakest side. [Full Review in Spanish]
Full Review
El Pais (Spain)
What emerges in the end is a strange ambiguity of attitude to the American political system and a hollow humour about cultural values. The cinema of cynicism, really.
Full Review
Time Out
Here is a comedy that valiantly defies both gravity and the latest Hollywood fashion.
Full Review
TIME Magazine
Rating: 3/4 --
Sellers is funny in every moment; you just have to watch very closely.
Full Review
LarsenOnFilm
Rating: 4/5 --
Even in a chilly movie like this, deaths have resonance (whether they're on camera, or off).
Full Review
Quickflix
Rating: 4/5 --
Hal Ashby's satirical parable on the way the USA surrenders itself to homespun evangelicalism gives Peter Sellers the role of a lifetime.
Full Review
Radio Times
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.
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: 40,282
- UPC: 715515195317
- Shipping Weight: 0.22/lbs (approx)
- International Shipping: 2 items
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