Product Details

• Actors: Jack Aaron, Susan Anspach, William Bassett, Jim Doerr, Catherine Gaffigan
• Directors: Earl Dawson, Larry Arrick
• Writers: Ivan Turgenev, Ronald Ribman
• Producers: Jac Venza, Virginia Kassel
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Kultur Video
• VHS Release Date: February 4, 2002
• Run Time: 120 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0000639JL
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #332,081 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Dustin Hoffman gives an amazing early performance in this drama about the "superfluous" man. Hoffman plays Zoditch, a reader in a publishing house, who has a humiliating job, a squalid apartment, and grandiose fantasies. He is assigned to read the diary of a dead man, whose story begins to weave with Zoditch’s own life. The play makes good use of double casting, as Zoditch imagines people from his own life as characters in the diary. Though a few of the performances in this adapted play still feel stagy, the production is visually playful--at one point a hand winding an elegant pocket watch cross-fades into a hand churning a meat grinder. The play’s message is satisfyingly complex; though Zoditch is routinely humiliated, he is far from blameless in the matter. This is a fascinating play, at once about the way people and events intertwine as well as the failure to connect. --Ali Davis

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Lust is the devil's monastery on the road to hell.", January 18, 2005

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Journey of the Fifth Horse (Broadway Theatre Archive) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Winner of an Obie Award in 1966 for his role as Zoditch in this play by Ronald Ribman, Dustin Hoffman reprises his role here in his first television appearance, an adaptation for NET Playhouse, directed by Larry Arrick. Hoffman is the neurasthenic "first reader" of a small publishing house in Petersburg, Russia, at the turn of the century. Speaking with a high-pitched, nasal whine and with posture resembling a crane--shoulders stooped, head forward, stomach protruding--Zoditch/Hoffman is "an interruption in everyone's conversation," a man who has no friends, no ability to relax, no lady-love, and no promise for the future.

When a housekeeper (fussily played by Charlotte Rae) brings him the diary of Nicolai Chulkaturin, which was left to her when he died, Zoditch at first rejects it but is ordered to read it at home. Chulkaturin (wonderfully played by Michael Tolan), a young man who has just died of tuberculosis, emerges from the pages of the diary and soon reveals that he, too, believes himself to be the equivalent of a "fifth horse," a superfluous addition to the coach of life. When, unexpectedly, Chulkaturin meets a young woman with whom he falls in love (Susan Anspach), his life changes, until a captain in the army sweeps her off her feet.

As the action moves back and forth between the lives of Zoditch and Chulkaturin, the reader observes innumerable parallels between them. In many ways Chulkaturin is what Zoditch wishes he could be--tall, handsome, and in love. Since Anspach and several minor characters plays dual roles both in Chulkaturin's story and in Zoditch's life, the idea of Chulkaturin as Zoditch's alterego expands.

Adapted from a story by Ivan Turgenev, the play offers a bleak reality and, in its conclusion, dark humor, which puts Zoditch's yearnings and false hopes into perspective. Though Hoffman won the Obie, Michael Tolan's acting is equally good--more subtle and less one-dimensional. Susan Anspach is both ingenuous and sexy in her two roles, and Catherine Goffigan as Zoditch's landlady is a scene stealer and wonderful foil for Zoditch. Beautifully produced and movingly acted, the play brings to life turn of the century Russian values and an ineffective little man who feels like the "fifth horse." Mary Whipple

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A pearl., July 22, 2008

By 

Newlpost "Newlpost" (NJ) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Journey of the Fifth Horse (Broadway Theatre Archive) (DVD)

If you like action car chase scenes and special effects - go away.

How about really good theater with Hamlet-like soliloquy in black & white? Quirky as all hell, but you will find yourself pointing into the empty air and asserting 'assets! . . . assets!'

I looked for a revival of this play for YEARS! There it was on DVD! Assets! The original play as was on public television way back then. Captures the old Russian psyche as well as anything. The faces will be startlingly familiar.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, complex character study, April 30, 2011

By 

K. Gordon - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Journey of the Fifth Horse (Broadway Theatre Archive) (DVD)

Very interesting, well acted videotaped play, starring Dustin Hoffman in one
of his earliest leading roles.

Hoffman has some great moments, though he occasionally goes over the top,
but the whole cast of NY theater actors is top notch.

Hoffman plays a reader for a publishing company in 1890s Russia with grandiose
dreams who is assigned to read the diary of a now dead nobleman, and their two
very different tragic lives blend in Hoffman's character's head.

Deft and well handled and ultimately quite moving. A very interesting use of multiple
time frames and fantasies.

The quality of the videotape itself is a bit rough - understandable
given the age - but this is well worth seeing.