| Avalon | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Barry Levinson |
| Written by | Barry Levinson |
| Produced by |
|
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Allen Daviau |
| Edited by | Stu Linder |
| Music by | Randy Newman |
| Color process | Technicolor |
Production company | Baltimore Pictures |
| Distributed by | Tri-Star Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 126 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Languages | English Yiddish |
| Budget | $20 million[1] |
| Box office | $15.7 million[2] |
Avalon is a 1990 Americandrama film written and directed byBarry Levinson and starringArmin Mueller-Stahl,Elizabeth Perkins,Joan Plowright andAidan Quinn. It is the third in Levinson'ssemi-autobiographical tetralogy of "Baltimore films" set in his hometown during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s:Diner (1982),Tin Men (1987), andLiberty Heights (1999).[3] The film explores the themes ofJewish assimilation into American life, through several generations of a Polish immigrant family from the 1910s through the 1950s.
The film was released to critical acclaim, and was nominated for fourAcademy Awards and threeGolden Globe Awards.
It is the late 1940s and early 1950s, and much has happened to the family ofPolish Jewishimmigrant Sam Krichinsky since he first arrived in America in 1914 and eventually settled inBaltimore.
Television is new. Neighborhoods are changing, with more and more families moving to the suburbs. Wallpaper has been Sam's profession, but his son Jules wants to try his hand at opening a large discount-appliance store with his cousin, Izzy, maybe even do their own commercials on TV.
Jules and his wife, Ann, still live with his parents, but Ann is quietly enduring the way that her opinionated mother-in-law Eva dominates the household. Ann is a modern woman who even learns to drive a car, although Eva refuses to ride with her and takes a streetcar instead.
The family contributes to a fund to bring more relatives to America. Slights, real or imagined, concern the family, as when Jules and Ann finally move to the suburbs, a long way for their relatives to travel. After arriving late and finding a Thanksgiving turkey has been carved without him, Uncle Gabriel is offended and storms out, beginning a feud with Sam.
Sam also cannot understand the methods his grandson Michael's teachers use in school, or why Jules and Izzy have changed their surnames to Kaye and Kirk as they launch their business careers. But when various crises develop, including an armed holdup and a devastating fire, the family gets through the problems together.
Levinson frequently places links between his films that are set in Baltimore. For example, there is an image of a diner under construction, recalling the director'sDiner, which also featured a Hudson automobile whose purchase figures inAvalon's plot.[4] The house that the Krichinsky family leaves to move to the suburbs was used as a residence inTin Men.[4]
Tri-Star Pictures releasedAvalon on October 5, 1990, initially in six theaters before expanding the following week to 600. Levinson criticized how the studio underpromoted the film and expanded its release too soon, while studio presidentMike Medavoy would later defend himself stating "Avalon wasn’t a wide-market movie, and we spent a lot of money to prove we could do it well. Putting it in a lot of theaters maximized the chance of making back our investment. Maybe we guessed wrong, but I don’t think anyone in the business could have squeezed another nickel out of it--orBugsy, for that matter".[5]
On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 86% of 28 critics' reviews are positive.[6]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 68 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[7]
Avalon was released onDVD in 2001.
