Larry quickly settles into to the not-so-glamorous life in his roomy, sparsely furnished apartment. He finds a job in a health food store/fresh juice counter to support himself while attending acting classes, and enjoys frequent trysts with girlfriend Sarah (Ellen Greene, who a decade later would score a smash off Broadway in another story set in the Village in the 50s, the musical version of The Little Shop of Horrors). But Larry also revels in the atmosphere of the Village, surrounding himself with a cadre of Bohemian friends. Among them is Robert (Christopher Walken), a seemingly refined intellectual with an eye for the ladies; Connie (Dori Brenner), the down-to-earth Jewish girl who serves as a sort of earth-mother to the group; the chronically suicidal Anita (Lois Smith), whose depression can be deflected at the mere mention of Charlie Chaplin; and the gang's token homosexual, Bernstein (played by Antonio Fargas, in a performance that was particularly audacious for its time).
Over the requisite cappuccinos, Larry and his newly adopted peer group discuss, with intellectual earnestness, such weighty topics as whether or not there will be a widespread public rebellion if Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed, and whether or not "terrible" is too easy a word to apply to the outcome of the trial. But while trying to immerse himself in this new arty world, Larry finds that his mother is a rather difficult entity to leave behind: particularly when she and his father arrive for their first visit to his new home with a raw chicken in tow. Later, when Larry is hosting an all-too-hip "rent party" to replace the amount that he has had to shell out for an abortion, his parents show up unexpectedly, and Larry learns that his loud-mouthed mother is not quite so un-hip as he suspected.
Next Stop, Greenwich Village is a surprisingly effective coming-of-age story in which the main character matures into adulthood by degrees rather than by revelation. Despite the many dramatic turns the story takes, there are no bombshells in which Larry suddenly discovers the meaning of it all, but rather quietly observed moments in the course of a "slice of life" in which Larry almost imperceptibly changes, and manages to change some of those around him. Mazursky beautifully demonstrates this in the contrast between the opening scene in which Larry's leaving home degenerates into a shouting match with his mother, and the final scene in which he is leaving his parents' home for Los Angeles: here Fay is sad but resigned, and Larry is almost wistful. Mazursky also draws some pointed parallels between Larry's acting classes, where the students discuss ad nauseum their motivations and whether or not they were "in the moment," and the more subtle phoniness of Larry's "real-life" coffee-house sessions with his friends.
Lenny Baker, who sadly would die of cancer at a very early age, leaving this as his one starring role in a feature film, turns in a splendid performance as Larry. He deftly handles the character's more difficult (and stagy) moments, such as the lengthy scene in which he delivers his Oscar acceptance speech to a deserted street, and the fantasy sequence that ends in an incestuous kiss with his mother. Ellen Greene gives an equally strong performance as his girlfriend. Greene (and Mazursky) create a three-dimensional character in Sarah, giving her an admirable complexity and allowing her to be both strong and vulnerable. In Sarah we are given a glimpse of the difficulty of living in a rapidly changing time, when convention and transition are at odds.
But the film really belongs to the great Shelly Winters, whose performance is no less than flawless. Winters is able to perform the kaleidoscopic shifts in her character with such ease that she appears to have inhabited this woman from birth. She is tough and sad, confused, joyful, and horrified, all in the space of seconds. The scene in which Winters quietly wheedles Sarah to find out if she and Larry are sleeping together, all the while assuring Sarah that she understands that times and mores have changed, and then goes berserk when she learns the truth, is just one of the unforgettable moments that Winters provides in the film. And in the final scene where is delaying Larry's departure, she is absolutely heartbreaking.
Fox's new bargain priced DVD of the film is a treasure, offering first class picture and sound quality struck from source elements that are in excellent condition, along with a feature-length commentary by Mazursky and Greene (whose comments were recorded separately).
For more information about Next Stop, Greenwich Village, visit Fox Home Entertainment. To order Next Stop, Greenwich Village, go to TCM Shopping.
by Fred Hunter
