Product Details

• Actors: Will Smith, Stockard Channing, Donald Sutherland, Ian McKellen, Mary Beth Hurt
• Directors: Fred Schepisi
• Writers: John Guare
• Producers: Fred Schepisi, Arnon Milchan, Mary Pat Walsh, Ric Kidney
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
• VHS Release Date: April 14, 1998
• Run Time: 112 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0792838378
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #268,439 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

John Guare's hit Broadway play--about an Upper East Side couple who gets bilked by a young black man claiming to be Sidney Poitier's son--receives a terrific screen translation in this film by Fred Schepisi. Though the play was discursive and episodic, Schepisi, working from Guare's adaptation, makes it all flow like a fascinating evening listening to friends recount something that happened to them. But the story itself is also intriguing for the disparity it reveals between the wealthy, the would-be wealthy, and the have-nots yearning to be rich. Stockard Channing and Donald Sutherland are exceptional as the couple who open their home to a young man they believe is a friend of their children (to whom they barely speak); Will Smith is fascinatingly glib as the young man, who claims that his famous father is casting a film version of Cats and offers his hosts roles as extras in the film. Smith finds the heartbreaking core of this character and Channing is haunting as a woman looking to make a connection, even with a confused young con artist. --Marshall Fine

From The New Yorker

Fred Schepisi's film of John Guare's brilliant play about affluent, liberal-seeming New Yorkers who are conned by a young, gay black man claiming to be the son of Sidney Poitier. It's as agile and as inventive a visualization of complex theatrical material as you'll ever see. Guare's script (which sticks close to the text of the play) is a virtuoso comedy of upper-middle-class Manhattan manners, and the writing is amazingly nimble and unpredictable. Surprise is both the method of the work and its meaning. The plot is full of twists, the chronology is murderously tricky, and the dialogue is all weird, unaccountable spins-every line comes at you like a screwball or a split-fingered fastball. Guare's subject is the possibility, and the necessity, of seeing the world through someone else's eyes. The odd empathy that develops between the privileged heroine, Ouisa (Stockard Channing), and the young hustler (Will Smith) is moving because it emerges, unexpectedly, out of their radically different-but equally ingenious-strategies for manipulating experience. Their cleverness, like Guare's, ultimately transcends itself. Schepisi's direction keeps the movie charging forward, driven by its locomotive wit, until near the end, when we find ourselves set down in a huge and thrillingly unfamiliar emotional landscape, hardly knowing how we got there. It's a wonderful ride. The terrific cast also includes Donald Sutherland, Mary Beth Hurt, Bruce Davison, and Anthony Michael Hall. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A perfect 10, August 21, 2001

By 

Manola Sommerfeld (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Six Degrees of Separation (DVD)

The first scene is very confusing, and the next 20 minutes of movie a bit of a drag: the Kittredges are so unbearably affected! Later on, i came to realize how important those draggy moments were. This is a movie that got progressively better and better, and kept me engaged to the very end. In a nutshell: Flan (what a name!) and Ouisa Kittredge are art dealers living in posh East Side and are entertaining a guest when this young black man drops by their apartment, victim of muggers. He claims to be not only the son of Sidney Poitier, but also friends with the couple's children at Harvard. He is so well spoken, exotic, fascinating, flattering, that soon he has everyone in that apartment wrapped around his little finger. When you finally get to meet the children, you quickly understand the reason for that. Paul Poitier is a classy con-artist that makes people fall in love with him. For example, after explaining what his thesis is about (stolen by muggers), Flan Kittredge throws a passionate and outraged "I hope your robbers read every page of it!" It is impossible not to like him. After Paul does the rounds among the Kittredges' friends, he becomes cocktail party anecdote. Ouisa is the one who eventually admits how much she cares for this boy and becomes incredibly guilty for not having helped him enough. The best metaphor in the movie is represented by the Kandinski painting, the chaos-control canvas, because while on the surface it seems that Oiusa has her life under control with lots of money, powerful friends and poshy luxurious lifestyle, in fact she has another side where there is little sense of meaning.

My biggest objection is the title music. Somehow that chintzy violin tune clashed with the story big time. The acting is magnificent, the NY shots beautiful, and there are some hilarious moments in the film, like the scene at The Rainbow Room. This movie is a 10, a must-see, a masterpiece. Don't miss it!

32 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's A Small World After All., March 17, 2002

By 

tvtv3 "tvtv3" (Sorento, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Six Degrees of Separation [VHS] (VHS Tape)

One night in a posh Manhattan apartment a young black man (Will Smith), appearing to be mugged enters the home of Flan (Donald Sutherland) and Ouisa Kittredge (Stockard Channing). The man who says his name is Paul, claims to be friends of the Kittredge children. Over the evening Paul flatters the couple and a buisness guest they are hosting with his exotic tales and fascinating life stories. However, things aren't always what they seem to be. Like the painting in the movie, what is chaotic on one side, may be controlled on the other and vice versa.

This was the first major film breakthrough for Will Smith, proving that he isn't just the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and is a serious actor. Donald Sutherland does a superb job as the stuck-up art dealer who makes millions of dollars but spends more than he can make. However, the real star of the movie is Stockard Channing. Her performance is perfect and her portrayal of Ouisa's self-disovery, realization, and spiritual redemption could not have been better.

SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION has become a part of the American pop conscience (thanks largely to the Kevin Bacon game). However, the movie is much more than a pop cultural reference. It is a movie for the critical movie viewer. It explores questions of great magnitude and in the end, concludes on a comic, rather than tragic, note. It is a small world after all, just six degrees of separation.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent, Artistic and purposely meaningful., March 2, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (I am where I am.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Six Degrees of Separation (Widescreen Edition) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

The ability to tame the imagination and in so doing to recreate our personal world: this is the point of Guare's adapted play. The film centers around two themes: the inevitable interconnectedness of mankind and the often untapped ability of everyone to create themselves, determine their fate. Wil Smith plays the saddeningly pathological 'Paul Poitier,' a young, black, inner-city youth stuck in a life that has led him nowhere until he finds 'the right people' to open the door to another world: the Kittridges. Stockard Channing's character, Weeza Kittridge, learns the beauty in Paul's deranged art and comes to understand the serious meaningless and 'collage' that her lack of imaginative participation has allowed her life to become. Everything means something. Everyone is a sign, a symbol, an opportunity, a 'door opening up to a new world.' " It's a profound thought."