Product Details

• Actors: Richard Dreyfuss, Amy Irving, Lee Remick, Sam Wanamaker, Joseph Cali
• Directors: Joel Oliansky
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: June 23, 1994
• Run Time: 123 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302363098
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,068 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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  Video > Drama > Love & Romance > Romance

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

When you are in the mood for a pleasant little romance, this should fit the bill. Amy Irving and Richard Dreyfuss are young pianists vying for the same prize. Surprise, surprise, they fall in love. We then must wait, with (nearly) breathless anticipation, to see if she will throw the contest to ensure his love. It is all a bit starry-eyed, but not overly gooey. The concert footage is handled with class, and there are some fine supporting performances from Sam Wanamaker and Lee Remick. It is also a lot of fun to see Dreyfuss and Irving as such fresh-faced innocents. --Rochelle O'Gorman

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Come for the romance, stay for the piano concertoes, August 11, 2001

By	Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

The romance here is between a pair of virtuoso pianists, Richard Dreyfuss as Paul Dietrich and Amy Irving as Heidi Joan Schoonover, who fall in love during an intense piano competition. It is his chance to compete for such a prize while she gets entered by her teacher without her knowledge. Some political intrique involving a young Russian pianist gives the competitors some down time and the young couple makes the most of it. Okay, so the romance is sappy, I watch this movie for the music. Paul plays Beethoven's "Emperor" Piano Concerto (No. 5 for those who need the number), while Heidi tackles Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3. This is one of those films where you go out and track down the complete piano concertos the first chance you get (For the record, Chester B. Swiatkowski is the actual pianist for the "Emperor" while Daniel Pollack plays the Prokofiev). The supporting performances by Lee Remick as Heidi's teacher Greta Vandemann, and Sam Wanamaker as temperamental conductor Andrew Erskine are both quite excellent. I can never forget Remick's great line to Erskine: "It costs extra to carve schmuck on a tombstone, but you would be worth the expense." Besides, nobody can arch an eyebrow like Lee Remick. The other competitors in the finals are Jerry DiSalvo (Joseph Cali), who is playing the rags to riches angle, Michael Humphries (Ty Henderson), who already has the money, poor little Russian girl Tatjana Baronov (Vicki Kriegler), and the silent Adam Stern (Mark Landau). A nice little movie with great piano music. This 1980 film was directed by Joel Oliansky, who also gets credit for the original story.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wore it out, July 21, 2001

By	Catherine Skidmore (Matawan, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have literally worn out my video of this movie, which I guess I've had for about 15 years - about time to replace it!

The Competition has always been one of my favorite movies - combining classical piano concertos, somewhat-sappy-yet-realistic romance, and a young sexy Richard Dreyfuss (seriously, I love him, esp. his early work, swoon) as an abrasive yet charasmatic concert pianist.

This is one of the few movies I can quote the dialogue from in everyday conversation, love it.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars one of my favorite movies for almost 25 years, June 10, 2004

By A Customer

I just bought this video to share with my daughter who is a high school musician beginning to seriously compete. I saw it in 1980 when it was released, eight years before she was born, and it has remained in my memory as one of my all-time favorites. I just finished watching it for the first time in 20 years or so. The entire movie looks very late-70s, and Richard Dreyfuss really needs to lose that silly-looking cap, but the power of the music and the message is completely intact. The scene in which Amy Irving performs her concerto is absolutely delicious and riveting. Richard Dreyfuss overacts as usual, but his realization as he listens to her performance backstage that she is, as he puts it, "brilliant," is in itself brilliantly communicated without words. Lee Remick's character provides a kind of narrative frame for Dreyfuss' and Irving's romance, and lends the movie some much-needed zing to balance all that sweetness. As does the delightful Sam Wanamaker, who plays a Leonard Bernstein-type (quite accurate except that Sam's character likes girls). And the music is just extraordinary. Although The Competition is entertaining as a love story, this is most especially a movie for musicians to savor. When I was a music major in college it was those few who were "driven" to create music and felt they had no other choice who were the tortured souls. They reached amazing emotional peaks with their music, but often struggled with despair as well. The rest of us just enjoyed ourselves. The variety of personalities portrayed in this movie is very accurate.