Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976)

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This film is a fun evocation of the times, with young bohemian types in lower middle class New York city. The main protagonist is a very sympathetic character, by far the best of the film, an aspiring your actor who is leaving home and dealing with his Jewish mother. You also get the young Christopher Walken, Jeff GOldblum, Ellen Greene, and several others in their earliest roles, so film buffs will love to see them.Unfortunately, very little happens in the film, in the middle it kind of dragged, for me at least. Some of them get ready for the next stage, most of them don't. Pfft.I do like this film, indeed I watched it when I was contemplating moving to New York. But it didn't bear a critical re-watching at a more mature age, one of the crucial tests for film classics. I watched it and felt, so what?

Writer/Director Paul Mazursky clearly aims to showcase that special place and time in his own life, in this semi-autobiographical story of a young, would-be actor who leaves his Brooklyn home and moves to Greenwich Village, to live among poets, writers, and other young actors. It's the early 1950s, and Mazursky's alter ego goes by the name of Larry (Lenny Baker), early twenties, earnest, fun loving, romantic, and plagued by an overbearing, intrusive mother named Faye (Shelley Winters).Larry's friends include several rather eccentric people. But they're all his age, and all have the usual growing-up problems. Talk turns to romance, sex, finding a job, future plans, and so on. The script is rather talky. But in a place like Greenwich Village, where life revolves around people, philosophy, and the arts, what else is there to do but talk?Though humor permeates the film, it's mostly dark comedy, which masks the underlying emotional pain of the various characters, as they all seem rather lost and forlorn amid such gloomy and dreary physical surroundings. But maybe the drabness of it all provides that sense of nostalgia for Mazursky, that sense of having moved beyond, to a broader, brighter, more expansive vision of life.The film's cinematography is conventional. Dark interiors match the film's dark, poignant themes. Background music features mostly light jazz, with a little opera thrown in. Casting and acting are fine. But Shelley Winters steals the show with her terrific performance.Nostalgic in tone and sentiment, "Next Stop, Greenwich Village" offers memories of another time, another place. It's a period-piece setting, a coming-of-age story. It's a film that will appeal to viewers who lived through the 1950s, or who can identify with the bohemian lifestyle that so defines that special place called Greenwich Village.

Admittedly I come to this film with a deep prejudice. Though it's set in 1953, it was released in 1976, the same year I moved to Greenwich Village. In fact, much of the movie looks to have been filmed about two blocks west of where I lived for 30 years.For a young person moving to Greenwich Village, there's something timeless about the experience, as this film shows. Directed by Paul Mazursky, the film stars Lenny Baker, Shelley Winters, Ellen Greene, Christopher Walken, Lois Smith, and Dori Brenner. Baker is an aspiring young actor named Larry Lapinsky, who leaves his parents' apartment and his sobbing mother (Winters) to take a place in the Village. There, he gets a day job, a girlfriend (Greene), a group of bizarre friends, and starts acting class. He uses a liquor bottle he finds at the subway as an Oscar and thanks the Academy while he waits for a train; he does impressions of Brando for a cop; he does a scene from Golden Boy for class. Mazursky has left nothing out, not the overblown egomaniacal young actor (Jeff Goldblum) whom Larry meets at an audition, the bipolar young woman (Smith), the gay friend (Antonio Fargas), the poser who's a chick magnet (Walken), and everybody's friend destined to be unlucky in love (Brenner). It's a madcap, free, painful, and sobering existence.Baker is wonderful as Larry, anxious to get out and live. He's very likable. Shelley Winters is a riot as the Jussi Bjorling-loving Faye Lapinsky, who keeps dropping in and bringing food while she and her husband are in the neighborhood. At one point, she is so convincing telling Sarah (Greene) that she doesn't care if Sarah has been having sex with Larry, that Sarah admits to it, thus driving Faye into such a state that Sarah claims she lied. Lois Smith is very effective as the neurotic Anita. Dori Brenner does a great job as the caring friend, and Christopher Walken strikes the right balance as the enigmatic, distant Robert.Highly recommended, and if you've ever lived in Greenwich Village, or tried to be an actor in New York, don't miss it.What makes the film is the New York energy and the locations - many of which still exist, Village Cigars, Smiler's, the lamp store, Julius' bar, the whole Christopher Street area.

This is not a great film but it is sweet and has it's moments. It also has a cast of soon to be stars. While it was interesting to see Shelley Winters when she could still pull off dark hair, it was even more interesting to see a young Christopher Walken and a young Jeff Goldblum. Also seen are Vincent Schiavelli of character actor fame and an almost microsecond uncredited cameo by Bill Murray.The movie isn't great but for a movie fan its worth the time if for no other reason to see if you can spot all of the soon to be's.