The Stage on Screen: Five Films About Life in the Theater

The distance between the stage and the screen is often considered to be vast. The great teachers of acting—Antonin Artaud, Lee Strassberg, Sanford Meisner, Uta Hagen, Peter Brook, Stella Adler—passed on traditions that have become inextricably linked with movie history, yet there’s still an unavoidable rift between our sense of what happens on the live stage vs. the medium of film.  I’ve always been fascinated by those great teachers, particularly because they influenced the art of screen performance so greatly, but often have very scant filmographies themselves.

There are a number of these great teachers and writers worth noting as a preface to this list: for instance, most theater students will encounter Antonin Artaud’s essay “The Theater and It’s Double” in their training, but may not realize he was featured in essential films like Abel Gance’s Napoleon and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc. Lee Strasberg, known for his far-reaching school of the “method,” made a handful of notable screen appearances, particularly opposite his student Al Pacino in The Godfather Part II and …And Justice For All. The great Sanford Meisner plays a small role in perhaps the greatest of Elaine May’s films, Mikey and Nicky. Uta Hagen gives a memorable performance in an overlooked horror/thriller from 1972 called The Other that’s truly worth seeking out (no spoilers). Peter Brook, author of a highly influential text on theatre-making called “The Empty Space,” barely performed on screen, but his brief filmography as a director is unforgettable, particularly his screen adaptations of Lord of the Flies and Marat/Sade.

There are countless ways to approach how the theater arts have mingled and tangled, succeeded and failed within the realm of cinema. There are more key examples than I can begin to cover in this list, from film auteurs like Orson Welles and Preston Sturges, who began their creative work in live theater, to more recent crossovers like playwright Annie Baker’s incredible debut, Janet Planet. The following list will stick mostly to films that depict the stage, and the distance between the two. For the most part, I’ll steer clear of more straightforward attempts to adapt plays into films, of which there are innumerable successful examples (Fosse’s Cabaret, Mike Nichol’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Welles’ Chimes at Midnight, etc.), and just as many, if not more, failures. Some of the films that follow still fall in the category of adaptations, but often have a more perceptive take on the relationship between the stage and screen than attempting to make one behave like the other.

To Be Or Not To Be

Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be Or Not  Be is a good place to begin for a few reasons. It’s the oldest film on the list, but maybe also the most current. It’s also one of those films that, for being the widely praised comedy classic it is, I’m ashamed to say I only saw for the first time recently. The film plays now like a much-needed balm for a world facing some difficult blows through a political climate that mirrors the setting of the film: Nazi occupied Poland, circa 1942 (the year the film was released). It’s light-hearted dedication to the power of the theater—and the titular words of the Bard, of course—is both hilarious and moving, and never loses a beat of dramatic momentum.

Jack Benny and Carol Lombard play husband and wife stars of the stage Joseph and Maria Tura, and a fresh-faced Robert Stack plays a star-struck devotee who sneaks backstage to meet with Maria each night, right on cue: Benny as Tura as Hamlet uttering the most famous line in all of board-treading, “To be or not to be.” Benny’s distinct comedic persona plays perfectly off the given circumstances of the film, which transforms from a farcical backstage romance into a full-blown spy thriller with absolute ease. By the time we reach the climactic murder of a German spy, Lubitsch creates a dramatic chase that ends down-center of an empty stage, a final attempt at a Nazi salute falling slack amid the gunfire. Later, Felix Bressart as a supporting actor in the Tura’s troupe brings his dream role of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice to the dangerously real audience of a throng of Nazis, reciting, perhaps, words even more pertinent to the film than those of Hamlet: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” There is so much more to praise To Be Or Not Be for in terms of it’s comedic depth and courage in a time of militant threat, but how it melds the immediacy of the stage with the overwhelming dangers of real life is one of its most perfectly staged accomplishments.

The Golden Coach

Jean Renoir has a few films that might work for this list, but none more centrally concerned with the thrill and magic of the stage than The Golden Coach (1952). Like Lubitsch’s To Be Or Not To Be, the interplay between stage and screen is key to the design and politics of the film, though The Golden Coach is even more cinematically playful in how it allows access to a world of 18^th century commedia dell’arte performers making their way through Spain, led by the charismatic force that is Anna Magnani as Camilla. Camilla’s lifeblood is, of course, the applause of the audience…but a good take at the box office doesn’t hurt either. When she’s gifted the gold accoutrements of the Spanish royalty, her loyalty to the stage vs. her loyalty to her desire to be among the ranks of the wealthy is challenged. Her wealthy suitor is Le Viceroy Ferdinand (Duncan Lamont), far from a two-dimensional depiction of aristocracy, and honestly, rightfully captivated with Camilla. On their first romantic meeting, Ferdinand perceptively laments the tension between art and commerce, warning Camilla that “where gold commands, laughter vanishes.”

Renoir’s meta-cinematic flair was complex for the time, using painted curtains and backdrops that confuse the cinematic stage with staged cinema, echoing the echeloned architecture that marked class division in another of his master works, The Rules of the Game (1939). There’s a theatrical play nestled at the center of that film, as well, echoing the swirling, whimsical play of real-life drama that comes to a decidedly dire end for such a seeming farce. The Golden Coach takes Camilla to a lighter dramatic end, more stuck in-between than fully resolved, but no less poignant or refined. That “in-between “place is as much about the place between the stage and the screen—a slight shift of cinematic grain accenting the final moments—as it is about Camilla’s romantic and personal desires. In front of or behind the curtain, there seems to be no difference in the end, as Camilla wonders out loud: “Where does theater end and life begin?” Within Renoir’s tightly orchestrated and constantly moving staging of the theatrical life, it’s indeed difficult to tell.

Opening Night

In a 1978 interview with French film magazine Postif, director John Cassavetes declared: “I never really liked the theater, at least not as much as some people. I respect theater and the people who are a part of it and I know that it’s wonderful for an actor. But it so happens I’m in love with cinema! Theater for me is a fantastic intellectual exercise, which isn’t made the most of. I don’t find many plays I like, and the plays I like are never emotional enough. They only express half of what I like to see expressed. So I’m never happy. Whereas a film, by it’s very nature, allows more imagination. Because a film is not life, it’s merely film stock!”

Live theater clearly taunted Cassavetes’ desire to get uncomfortably close to the action, and Opening Night is the film where he most fully attempted to overcome that “significant distance,” as he called it. The character center stage in Opening Night is Myrtle Gordon, an aging, alcoholic actor played by the incomparable Gena Rowlands. There is so much laid bare about the actual relationship between Cassavetes and Rowlands in Opening Night, and it comes through in the palpable energy they bring to the stage (the stage within the film, that is—the one featuring the play-within-the-film, appropriately titled “The Second Woman”), as well as the more bald-faced moments where Cassavetes might just as well be speaking as himself, not Myrtle’s supporting actor Maurice, exclaiming to Gordon’s fans, “SHE’S the star! Not ME!” Cassavetes’ utter worship of Rowlands was clear in everything they produced, and while there may be more successful iterations of their collaborations (A Woman Under the Influence, particularly), there is no other film that captures their process and fascination with the craft of acting, as well as their relationship to the audience.

And, like Renoir when he made The Golden Coach, Cassavetes is exploring new storytelling and genre territory. Anna Magnani’s Camilla is, like Myrtle, inseparable from her accomplishments in the theater, and the entire narrative set-up is eschewed by Renoir in favor of that central point. The final lines of The Golden Coach are of the Stage Manager to Camilla:

“You were not made for what is called life.  You will find your happiness only on stage each night for those two hours in which you ply your craft as an actress–that is, when you forget yourself.  Through the characters that you will incarnate, you will perhaps find the real Camilla.”

Tragically, gloriously, this is also the case with Myrtle Gordon.

Vanya on 42^nd Street

You can call Vanya on 42^nd Street a filmed version of a Chekhov play, but what Louis Malle captured at the somewhat decrepit New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd street in New York City in the early 1990’s was just a snapshot of a play in an ongoing rehearsal. I’ll admit at coming at this one as an unapologetic lover of Chekhov, and particularly a lover of the 1897 play this film is based on, Uncle Vanya. I’ll bypass my “reasons why” for pointing out that many of the actors involved in this film were already gathering to work on the play before Malle got the idea to make the film, but without the intention of ever inviting an audience to see it. How many plays are so productive for actors that doing it for an audience would be beside the point?

The film begins with a pre-rehearsal street scene between the director, Andre Gregory, and the actor playing Vanya, Wallace Shawn. In a sweet nod, perhaps, to their previous Malle-directed film My Dinner with Andre, Gregory tears away a piece of Shawn’s pastry outside of the theater. And before you realize it, their daily interactions drift effortlessly into the daily interactions between Astrov (Larry Pine) and the elderly nurse Marina (Phoebe Brand, an original member of the Group Theater with Clifford Odets, and an active teacher of acting into her 90’s) that open the play. At intermission, we are taken out of the drama momentarily as the camera turns to Gregory behind his desk. He calls for a break, and we catch a glimpse of a couple of guests, which was evidently common for the “Vanya Rehearsals.” While, for the most part, the film is just a record of these actors grappling with this play in this space and time, it feels unusually special because of their disinterest in it as a finished product.

And Shawn is a nearly-perfect Vanya. Likewise, Brooke Smith should be more fondly remembered for this turn as Sonya than she is for being the “American Girl” in the hole in Silence of the Lambs. Julianne Moore is also memorable as Yelena, and her hair is similarly unforgettable (there’s a reason why it was often featured so prominently on the cover art for the film). As for Malle, the film sits atop numerous entries in a wildly varied career that sometimes feel inexhaustible. For proof of this, follow the path of his work from early films like Elevator to the Gallows, The Lovers, and Zazie in the Metro to his films of the 70’s like Lacombe, Lucien (a masterpiece, frankly) and the surrealist Black Moon to documentaries like God’s Country and, eventually, his work with Gregory and Shawn—a fascinating filmography from a truly restless creative mind.

Drive My Car

Anton Chekhov’s landmark work of Stanislavski-era realism, Uncle Vanya, also plays a major role in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, which is, in part, also about actors and directors and the theatrical process. The parallels to Chekhov’s play are carefully woven into the overarching narrative of the film, which involves actor/director Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) losing his wife and creative collaborator Oto (Reika Kirishima) to a brain aneurysm, and his process of directing a new production of Uncle Vanya after her death. The new producers of this multi-lingual production of Uncle Vanya mandate the director use a chauffeur, the sullen and somewhat affectless Misaki (Tôko Miura). Miura’s Misaki is an oddly compelling portrayal, as we watch her quiet countenance process the precarious, ongoing relationship Kafuku maintains with Ota via audio recordings Ota had made for him of her reading the other roles in Uncle Vanya as a memorization tool; the ritual of repetition that was once a regular part of Kafuku’s commute now a necessary ritual of grieving, with Misaki caught in the middle.

The relationship that grows between Kafuku and Misaki along these drives is one that hints at several possible outcomes, but, like a Chekhov play, character usurps the primacy of plot, and what follows feels much more like life lived than a series of plot mechanisms. There’s no moment where Misaki takes over the role of Sonya, and no detours into forced romantic interludes. As keenly aware of conventional dramatic tropes as Chekhov was in his time, Hamaguchi delicately puts these possibilities into play, and then opts for drawing connections between these characters that are much riskier and complicated. Like Chekhov, he takes his time, and allows time to work on the audience.

To be clear, this is a movie whose title sequence only arrives over 30 minutes into the film, so forgive me if I overstate it’s “slow cinema” qualities–a troublesome moniker anyway, unfortunately tagged on to films like this that never feel “slow” to me at all. Yet, while I’m not sure each revelation of character in Drive My Car lands emotionally for me, the overall studied and measured approach of the film is entirely effective, and the final scene involving a performance of Sonya’s monologue from Uncle Vanya in Korean sign language brings the film to a perfectly silent and emotionally resonant place.