Lenny 4K 1974 Ultra HD 2160p

A magnificent drama about the famous comedian Lenny Bruce, who performed brilliantly in nightclubs in the 1950s and 1960s. His acts, mostly improvised, were known for their sharp wit, crudeness (even to the point of profanity), and blunt honesty, while his personal life was marred by alcohol, drugs, and instability.
 

User Review

Although Bob Fosse is known worldwide primarily for *Cabaret* and *All That Jazz*, critics almost unanimously consider the black-and-white drama *Lenny* to be his most significant work. It stands out both for its unconventional structure and for the personality of its protagonist—the legendary stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce.

Performing primarily in small nightclubs, this artist nevertheless managed to carve out an important place in American culture in the 1950s and 1960s. The untimely death of Lenny Bruce (1925–1966) did not, however, become a national tragedy, as it remained overshadowed by the deaths of such screen idols as Marilyn Monroe or James Dean.

It was only eight years later, thanks to Fosse, that time finally “caught up” with a man who was ahead of his time. Based on the documentary book by A. Golding and L. Schiller, *Ladies and Gentlemen, Here Is Lenny Bruce!*, as well as J. Berry’s stage musical *Lenny*, Foss took the risk of departing from the traditions of musical cinema for the first time, presenting the world with a harsh documentary-style exploration of the Eisenhower era.

It was precisely then that the problem of controlling the thoughts and feelings of free American citizens became particularly acute. The mediator and main character of this study was none other than Lenny Bruce—a rebel without an ideal, doomed to be branded an immoralist in the name of debunking the hypocrisy that reigned almost universally among his compatriots.

Performing yet another set of sketches in some nightclub before a small and not always sober audience, this philosopher-comedian (who never got his King Lear), having learned the price of democracy and freedom of speech the hard way, did not so much provoke the police who were constantly watching him as he sought to awaken a sense of dignity in people, becoming one of the harbingers of the counterculture wave.

Dustin Hoffman, who bore little physical resemblance to Lenny Bruce, conveyed the hero’s tragic worldview—hidden behind a clown’s mask—with great depth, thanks to his extraordinary ability to transform himself. The brash comedian, who invariably created a certain discomfort with his unpolished (often profanity-laced) lines or simply his provocative behavior—a sort of live performance—had no place in his own era, from which he hastened his own departure with a drug overdose.

Like Lenny Bruce himself, the film was not showered with awards upon its release. Despite six Oscar nominations, it did not win a single statuette. In this sense, the award for Best Actress, received at the Cannes Film Festival by Valerie Perrin, who played Lenny’s wife—the stripper Honey Harlow—may serve as some measure of compensation.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (94.1 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Info Audio

#English: FLAC 1.0
#English: Dolby Digital 1.0 (Commentary by film historians Nick Redman and Julie Kirgo)
#English: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Commentary by film historian/filmmaker Daniel Kremer and filmmaker Henry Jaglom)

Info Subtitles