Film Forum

(1981, Louis Malle) Commonly thought to be a real time conversation in a fancy New York restaurant, MY DINNER WITH ANDRE was in fact “filmed with exquisite attention to the smallest details by director Louis Malle over a period of week, and not in a New York restaurant but on a studio set. The conversation that flows so spontaneously between André Gregory and Wallace Shawn was carefully scripted. ‘They taped their conversations two or three times a week for three months, and then Shawn worked for a year shaping the material into a script, in which they play comic distillations of aspects of themselves,’ Pauline Kael writes.

“Both Shawn and Gregory are born storytellers, and as they talk we see their faces, but we picture much more: André being buried alive, and a monk lifting himself by his fingertips, and fauns cavorting in a forest. And Wally trudging around to agents with his plays, and happily having dinner with Debbie, and, yes, enjoying [Charlton] Heston's autobiography. We see all of these things so vividly that MY DINNER WITH ANDRÉ never becomes a static series of two shots and closeups, but seems only precariously anchored to that restaurant, and in imminent danger of hurtling itself to the top of Everest…. There is nothing else like it. It should be unwatchable, and yet those who love it return time and again, enchanted.” – Roger Ebert.