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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 808
EAN num: 9780141183503
ISBN number: 0141183500
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Page Count: 176
Printing Date: May 25, 2000
Publishing house: Penguin Classics
Sale Popularity Level: 99968
Studio: Penguin Classics
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Powerful, passionate and frighteningly relevant, the drama of Arthur Miller deals in the hard currency of 'social' realism and tragedy. 'All My Sons' (1947), which brought Miller his very first major success, is a merciless exposure of wartime profiteering and the capitalist ethic. The ideological conflict of father and son is a compelling one, and points to the way Miller develops his later drama, where social issues are tempered and tautened by the theme of personal disintegration. Eddie, the hero of 'A View from the Bridge' (1955), is an illiterate longshoreman. His inexorable progress towards self-discovery and fall stirs the emotions with the same painful intensity as the play jolts the intellect.
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Rated by buyers 
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What really kills this recording is the Guy Noire style narrator.
Garrison Keillour kills this recording.
We keep waiting for the wry and subtle in-jokes, and they fail to come
What we get is real life.
Guy Noire only gets in the way.
This recording arrived in its box as ordered, used. I was surprised not to find a lengthy brochure inside. I highly recommend you also get the play as written by Miller, perhaps at A View From the Bridge, Arthur Miller, I do not know, but I wish I had read the play along with hearing this live recording, as the issues raised in this play are crucial for where we are today.
We are all immigrants and the grandchildren of immigrants, except for instance the Cherokee and the Sioux, etc. By what moral right may we now deny these who come as ew ourselves did?
This play explores the nature of the immigrant, and the illegal one, and the criminal networks which hold them enslaved, as they are today, and the criminal employers who need pay them nothing, as they are illegal. For this reason they are labelled illegal, to pay them nothing.
This play is not The Crucible as other reviewers wish. It is not Willy Loman, although issues of hidden sexual diversity may also find tracing.
It is a play about poor immigrants, some illegal. We need read it today.
Yet this recording may well not entirely provide a clear View from the Bridge.
Apparently there was some adaptation in order to make it a purely oral reading, and thus the dominance of the Guy Noire character (a lawyer) who even provides descriptions of actions on stage as one would not hear in the theatre except in certain productions of Bertolt Brecht. All the same it was not clear to me just what Ed O'Neill was doing with Marco in the end. For all we could tell from the sighs they might have been, well, dancing.
And that is the second distractor after Guy Noire: Ed O'Neill. We all know and despise Ed O'Neill from Married with Children - The Complete First Season, the hand in pants Al Bundy character is unshakable and the voice is clearly his here, despite the harder Brooklyn edge.
It is hard to come to love Al Bundy, and it is hard for us here to identify enough with Ed's character to care in the end. We are thus tragically left with melodrama (reinforced by Guy Noire) rather than tragedy, bathos rather than pathos.
And that is a shame. This play has much to tell us now yesterday in so many ways.
When we hear the original Caedmon recording of Death of a Salesman with Lee J. Cobb and Dustin Hoffman we do not need audio-visual clues telling us what we are not seeing, nor an Our Town type telling us what we ought to be seeing. Here I find the omnipresent, omniscient, ironic Guy Noire character intrusive and drawing from the direct drama, and wonder how much the original play has been adapted for this recording. Perhaps none. Perhaps too much. I need to read the book.
I think people in other reviews have not heard this play clearly enough, but through the lens of other works by Miller. Read this work on its own. Do not read King Lear as if it were Romeo and Juliet. This work stands strongly on its own. We need read it now.
We need open our arms to the huddled masses, as our Liberty statue promises. We need destroy the economic injustice which enslaves millions in our own homeland to the profit of a superfluously wealthy few, who when things fall apart get even more trillions thrown their way.
Hear the subtext of this play. It preaches equality. It preaches justice. It preaches love. It preaches equal opportunity. It preaches America.
Read the play. And then try this recording by the LA Theatre Works. You might even come to understand Al Bundy as the complex Eddie Carbone.
Rated by buyers 
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(This review is for A View from the Bridge, which I give 2 stars. I think that All My Sons is Miller's best play, and rate that 5 stars)
During the 1940's, Miller and director Elia Kazan were close friends (Miller actually dedicated All My Sons (1947) to him). In 1952, Kazan went before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and named eight people that had been members of the Communist party. Miller was very disappointed in his friend and wrote The Crucible as a metaphor for the witch-hunt that was taking place in Washington. Kazan responded with On The Waterfront, in which Marlon Brando fingers a corrupt union leader. Miller responded to Kazan through drama again in 1955 with A View From the Bridge.
Eddie Carbone turns in two Italian immigrants because one of them (Rodolpho) is dating his niece (Catherine), whom he secretly (even unknown to himself) lusts after. Eddie is eventually killed by the other immigrant (Marco).
Alfieri is a neighborhood lawyer whom Eddie seeks out for help to keep his niece away from Rodolpho. He tells him that there is nothing the law can do for Eddie, and that he should just "wish her luck." Alfieri is the quasi-narrator of the play, and it is his neutral view from which the play takes its name (he is also a bridge between Italy & America, between old world values & the American law). He is a Cassandra character - he knows what will happen and Eddie does not listen to him.
It's much less dimensional than Death of A Salesman or All My Sons, an incredible play about war-profiteering and cover-ups that has never gotten the attention it deserved (it reappeared on Broadway in the fall of 2008).
Arthur Miller appeared before HUAC in 1956. True to his word, he refused to supply political information about other writers and entertainers. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and blacklisted, but it was eventually overturned.
Rated by buyers -
Arthur Miller never ceases to impress me. As one of the greatest American playwrights in history, Miller depicts the lives of these characters in a beautiful yet relatable way. Definitely a good read if you have a free afternoon to yourself. I would suggest reading the whole thing in one sitting. Definitely helps the pacing of the story.
Rated by buyers 
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Arthur Miller's View from the Bridge is a lengthy, emotionally packed drama that focuses on perplexing longshoreman, 40 year-old Eddie Carbone who has a disturbing inappropriate fixation on his 18 year-old niece. Lawyer Alfieri provides intermittent narration on the unfolding drama with tragic consequences.
The 50's play, considered in Best American Plays, takes place in Red Hook Brooklyn, NY, where an Italian family, Eddie Carbone, wife Beatrice, and Catherine, the 18-year old niece whose mother was Beatrice's sister. It's unclear how young she was when they took her in, but since she has become a young girl, Eddie has been in control of her actions, the normal coming-of-age sexuality, like when he accuses her of the looks she gets by "walkin' wavy".
Neice Catherine's argument to prove a short skirt isn't as short when she stands up and walks, she says, "when you see me walkin' down the street.......Eddie replys "Listen, you have been giving me the willies the way you walk in the street, I mean it."
Beatrice's two cousins, who are brothers, are immigrating from the beautiful mountains and oceans in Italy, but where poverty is the predominant force. The beautiful view is what is across the bridge.
Hiding from immigration, the brothers are respectful and here to work and Catherine is soon in love with younger brother, Rodolpho. Through his own admission, the idea "eats" at Eddie, as his torment is fueled each day. Eddie is challenging, belligerent, sarcastic and evil.
We don't learn a lot about his wife Beatrice's past or Eddie's, we just know that wife Beatrice is very aware of his actions and obsession toward Catherine. Beatrice and Eddie have not had sexual relations for months and she is craving to be his wife again.
During the very first act, the set-up is done well. The reader learns quickly about the sexual obsession; we learn how dedicated and respectful the immigrants are, we learn the frustration with Beatrice, and we learn very well, what makes Eddie tick!
The drama moves quickly, it is intense and complete! There is a movie version, but I truly believe the best way to see this and get the feel of characters, is to see the entire play on stage. Movies leave out so much feeling one needs to grasp to gather your thoughts.
I recommend highly, Miller's All My Sons (Penguin Classics)"All My Sons" and The Price and of course, the popular Death of a Salesman (Penguin Plays). .......Rizzo
Rated by buyers -
The great play writer Arthur Miller had the idea for "A View From The Bridge" when he was doing research on a longshoreman who was executed by the mob for attempting to revolt against union. He heard a story about another man who denounced his relatives to the Immigration Bureau. The play is not only about this fact, but also concerning on tense familiar and social relationships, and also there is a sexual identity subtext.
Although "A View from the Bridge" is not as famous or as good as "The Crucible" or "Death of a Salesman", it is an interesting piece since its characters are so well developed. One of the main themes in this play is the `naming names'. Just like Miller himself, the main character Eddie Carbone, had the chance of denouncing his friends. Unlike his character, the writer when inquired about his supposed communist friends chose to be loyal to them.
But certainly, the main symbol in the play is Brooklyn Bridge, that means, among other things, pathway of opportunity to Manhattan and also the linkage between American and Italian cultures. And the community where the play is set is very close to this bridge. Miller has created again some effective characters in this play, who are forced to face problematic situations. They may not always succeed, but the writer does - at least most of the time.
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