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List Price: $19.98Price: $14.99You Save: $4.99 (25%)Little Women (1933)
Actors: Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Paul Lukas, Edna May Oliver, Jean Parker
ASIN : B00005NRO2
Sales Rank : 12140
Director : George Cukor
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Turner Home Ent
Region Code : 1
Format : Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780790745893
ISBN : 0790745895
UPC : 012569515925
Publication Date : December 06, 2001
Release Date : December 06, 2001
Publisher : Turner Home Ent
Manufacturer : Turner Home Ent
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Turner Home Ent
Running Time : 117
Product DescriptionLittle women is a coming of age drama tracing the lives of four sisters: meg jo beth and amy. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 07/20/2004 Starring: Katherine Hepburn Paul Lukas Run time: 117 minutes Rating: Nr Director: George Cukor Amazon.com essential videoLouisa May Alcott's beloved story is one of the most-read novels ever written. It has also proved popular film and telefilm fodder (at least six versions plus a TV series). In addition, Little Women is one of those rare literary projects that can truly be done well on screen. This, the 1933 version, chronicles the lives and loves of sisters Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth (played, respectively, by Katharine Hepburn, Frances Dee, Joan Bennett, and Jean Parker). It's a superior rendering to the amiable, perky 1949 version with June Allyson, Janet Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor, Margaret O'Brien, and Peter Lawford, and comparable to the beautiful, feminist Gillian Armstrong 1994 take. Douglass Montgomery's Laurie isn't nearly as dreamy as Christian Bale's (1994), but the lack of chemistry between him and Hepburn's Jo is perfect for the story, in which Jo loves him like a brother. Jo's real love she offers up to perhaps the finest Professor Bhaer (Paul Lukas). Character actress Edna May Oliver is at her indignant best as Aunt March. Director George Cukor's vision is elegant, warm, and as true to the original source material as 117 minutes allows. This Little Women was a huge box-office hit, and broke all the records to that time. --N.F. Mendoza
Reviews for the Little Women (1933)
List Price: $19.98Price: $14.99You Save: $4.99 (25%)Freaks
Actors: Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, Roscoe Ates, Henry Victor
ASIN : B00027JYLC
Sales Rank : 5644
Director : Tod Browning
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780790746548
ISBN : 0790746549
UPC : 012569519121
Release Date : December 10, 2004
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 64
Product DescriptionTreachery is discovered amongst a traveling circus sideshow. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 09/13/2005 Starring: Wallace Ford Roscoe Ates Run time: 62 minutes Rating: Nr Director: Tod Browning Amazon.comTod Browning, who directed Bela Lugosi in the original Dracula, stepped into even eerier territory with this 1932 story of betrayal and retribution in the circus. Evil trapeze artist Olga Baclanova seduces and marries a midget in the circus sideshow, hoping to inherit his wealth. But in doing so, she has crossed the wrong folks: the tightly knit group of nature's aberrations, who stick together like family--and who set out to avenge their little pal. Browning brought in some of the most famous sideshow attractions of the era, include Siamese twins Daisy and Violet Hilton and Johnny Eck the Legless Boy, as well as Zip and Pip, microcephalics whose appearance in this film inspired cartoonist Bill Griffith to create his comic strip, "Zippy the Pinhead." So disturbing that it was banned for 30 years in Great Britain. --Marshall Fine
Reviews for the Freaks
List Price: $19.98Price: $14.99You Save: $4.99 (25%)The Nun's Story
Actors: Audrey Hepburn, Peter Finch, Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, Dean Jagger
ASIN : B000E1MXSW
Sales Rank : 3932
Director : Fred Zinnemann
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0012569739864
UPC : 012569739864
Release Date : December 04, 2006
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 149
DescriptionStory of Gabrielle Van Der Mal, who gives up everything to become a nun, facing incredible odds in the Congo and then at the mother house in France at the outbreak of World War II. Amazon.com essential videoFred Zinnemann's epic drama is a splendid showcase for Audrey Hepburn, who stars as the young nun Sister Luke, who is deeply spiritual yet conflicted about whether or not she can conform to convent life. Though the film is a mesmerizing--and quite leisurely--two and a half hours, its plot is fairly simple--young Gabrielle (Hepburn) enters the convent pledging her life to God, learns the disciplines associated with the life, receives her dream assignment of going to the Congo as a missionary nurse, and once there, is forced to face whether she is meant for the rigorous life of poverty, chastity, and most difficult of all, obedience. The film does a marvelous job of portraying the challenges of cloistered life without being either off-putting or overly romantic. And Hepburn, sometimes with only her eyes, communicates all the drive, faith, and conflict of a young woman so torn. --Anne Hurley
Reviews for the The Nun's Story
List Price: $19.98Price: $13.99You Save: $5.99 (30%)Suspicion
Actors: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce
ASIN : B0002HOEOY
Sales Rank : 5074
Director : Alfred Hitchcock
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Turner Home Ent
Region Code : 1
Format : Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780780639874
ISBN : 0780639871
UPC : 053939658323
Release Date : December 07, 2004
Publisher : Turner Home Ent
Manufacturer : Turner Home Ent
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Turner Home Ent
Running Time : 99
Product DescriptionThey vows said til death do us part. But is shiftless playbo husband cary grant trying to speed wealthy new bride joan fontaine in that direction? Studio: Turner Hm Entertainm Release Date: 09/07/2004 Starring: Cary Grant Joan Fontaine Run time: 99 minutes Rating: Nr Director: Alfred Hitchcock Amazon.comRepeated viewings can't dispel the shock of the final scene in this classic 1941 romantic mystery--a brief but disorienting confrontation that suddenly inverts the heroine's mounting conviction that she's married a murderer, forcing us to reconsider virtually every scene and line of dialogue that's preceded it. It's a masterful coup de grace for director Alfred Hitchcock, who has built a puzzle around the corrosive power of suspicion, threaded with deft ambiguities that toy with dramatic conventions and character archetypes in nearly every frame. As embodied by Joan Fontaine, who nabbed an Oscar in this second outing with the director, Lina McLaidlaw is a buttoned-up, bookish heiress whose prim exterior conceals longings for a more engaged emotional life. Her solution materializes in the darkly handsome Johnnie Aysgarth, a gambler, womanizer, and spendthrift who flirts, then pursues, and soon marries her. As Aysgarth, Cary Grant is both irresistible and sinister, capable of deceit and petty theft, as well as grander designs on his bride's impending fortune. Lina's passion for Johnnie is clouded by each new revelation about his apparent dishonesty, from clandestine gambling to real estate development schemes; more troubling are clues implicating him in the death of his best friend, and the prospect that Johnnie may be slowly poisoning Lina herself. By the time we see him ascending a darkened staircase with a suspicious glass of milk, an image made all the more indelible through the spectral glow the director captures in the glass, the evidence seems damning indeed. In fact, even as Hitchcock stacks the deck against Johnnie, and takes full advantage of Grant's skill at conveying such menace, the director also dots his landscape with visual clues to Lina's own neurotic (and erotic) obsessions. The final scene forces us to reevaluate her behavior while leaving enough of a cloud over Johnnie to rob him, and us, of a complete exoneration. It's a wicked, unsettling payoff to a brilliantly executed thriller. --Sam Sutherland
Reviews for the Suspicion
List Price: $59.98Price: $37.99You Save: $21.99 (37%)The Errol Flynn Signature Collection, Vol. 1 (Captain Blood / The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex / The Sea Hawk / They Died with Their Boots On / Dodge City / The Adventures of Errol Flynn)
Actors: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Lionel Atwill, Brenda Marshall, Bette Davis
ASIN : B0007OY2PS
Sales Rank : 9872
Director : B. Reeves Eason, Chuck Jones, David Heeley, Friz Freleng, Jean Negulesco
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Black & White, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780790797199
ISBN : 0790797194
UPC : 012569704022
Release Date : December 19, 2005
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 678
Product DescriptionStudio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 04/19/2005 Amazon.comErrol Flynn is one of those names that define movie stardom. Chiseled good looks that stopped just short of being preposterous. A brash and jaunty manner that charmed men and women alike. Whiffs of bad-boy scandal offscreen that only enhanced his legend (not for nothing did "In like Flynn" become a national catchphrase!). And enough marquee-worthy titles that in memory's ear ring like classics. Flynn's stardom wasn't on a par with the richly ambiguous artistry of Cary Grant, or the deep, enduring heroic legacy of John Wayne, or the indelible character work amassed by Flynn's Warner Bros. contemporaries Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson. Still, this most celebrated of Tasmanian devils was a one-of-a-kind, often raffishly entertaining icon of Hollywood in the '30s and '40s who played a big part in making the golden age glow. And for most of us, to say "swashbuckler" is to conjure up Flynn's wolfish grin above a rapier, director Mike Curtiz's wall-filling shadows of dueling men, and the symphonic, trumpet-filled music scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Stardom came swiftly. After two small-part assignments at Warners, the studio awarded Flynn the title role in Captain Blood (1935)--in retrospect, a sort of rough draft for his most beloved movie, The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938; not in this collection). The hero, an Irish-born physician wrongly convicted of treason during the reign of King James, is sentenced to a life of slavery in Jamaica. In short order he's charmed his new master's niece (the bright-eyed Olivia De Havilland, Maid Marian-to-be) and contrived an escape with his rebel comrades to become lusty, albeit passionately populist, buccaneers. The film's budget was clearly limited (there's a stark absence of horizons in the tropic and seagoing scenes), but director Curtiz's camerawork cunningly evokes the ever-present tilting and rolling of life aboard ship. Much-Oscar-nominated, the movie certified Flynn as the Douglas Fairbanks of the sound era--even in blond tresses and without what would become his signatory mustache. If Captain Blood became the Flynn-Curtiz prototype for swashbucklers, The Sea Hawk was the last, luxury model off the line. Warners was always wired in to the zeitgeist, and this 1940 movie about English privateers saving Queen Elizabeth's island nation from the Spanish Armada does double duty as an in-Der-Fuehrer's-face allegory of the looming world war. No blank horizons here, and every wall sports a towering map of a world ripe for conquest. Slickness is all: Claude Rains and Henry Daniell are impeccably devious diplomats, and Sol Polito's black-and-white cinematography shifts into sultry sepiatone when the Sea Hawks sneak off to the tropics on a transatlantic espionage mission. (As for Flynn's mission, his swashbuckling would hereafter be confined to contemporary war pictures for the duration.) He also saddled up for some lively Westerns. Dodge City (1939) is a knock-down, drag-out barn-burner in brassy Technicolor, with Flynn as a trail boss reluctantly turned town marshal. Curtiz directs yet again, with flair if not necessarily historical conviction, and the presence of Robin Hood costars Olivia De Havilland and Alan Hale (Little John) is virtually mandatory by this point. Ripe villainy is supplied by Bruce Cabot and--substituting, perhaps, for the un-frontier-worthy Basil Rathbone--the fox-faced Victor Jory. They Died with Their Boots On (1942) is filled with spectacular Civil War and cavalry action, though its hagiographic treatment of George Armstrong Custer should set historically enlightened viewers on the warpath. Nonetheless, it features Flynn's most interesting performance in the collection. Whereas Curtiz was the ideal director for the star in boy's-own-adventure mode, Raoul Walsh elicited more nuanced work from him (see especially their wonderful Gentleman Jim, not included in this collection), and the scenes between Flynn and Olivia De Havilland achieve a tenderness that deepens with each reel. The magic-hour cinematography is by veteran John Ford cameraman Bert Glennon. And that--apart from a new documentary feature, The Adventures of Errol Flynn--leaves The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). Sad to say, that doesn't leave much. Bette Davis (taking the role Flora Robson played in The Sea Hawk) and Flynn (as the English knight the not-so-Virgin Queen loved but feared as a rival) have zero chemistry; she delivers a mannered performance only a Bette Davis impersonator could love, and Flynn demonstrates how stiff he could be (no pun intended) when clueless about his material. In fairness to both, the movie is a static adaptation of a very repetitious and declamatory Maxwell Anderson play. Its inclusion here is notable only as a vast technical improvement on the long-ago VHS release. --Richard T. Jameson
Reviews for the The Errol Flynn Signature Collection, Vol. 1 (Captain Blood / The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex / The Sea Hawk / They Died with Their Boots On / Dodge City / The Adventures of Errol Flynn)
List Price: $59.98Price: $46.99You Save: $12.99 (22%)The Bette Davis Collection, Vol. 3 (The Old Maid / All This, And Heaven Too / The Great Lie / In This Our Life / Watch on the Rhine / Deception)
Actors: Bette Davis, Mary Astor, Miriam Hopkins, George Brent, Claude Rains
ASIN : B0012OX7DA
Sales Rank : 5393
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Restored, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0085391187578
UPC : 085391187578
Release Date : December 01, 2008
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 666
DescriptionIN THIS OUR LIFE Homewrecker Davis runs off with sister Olivia de Havilland’s hubby and that’s just for starters! THE OLD MAID Let the fireworks begin. Miriam Hopkins poses as the mother of the child Davis bore out of wedlock…the arrangement is beginning to fray. ALL THIS, AND HEAVEN TOO Enchanted by governess Davis, nobleman Charles Boyer murders his wife. But is la Bette as innocent as she appears? THE GREAT LIE Friends make the best enemies. Scheming concert pianist Mary Astor and selfless Davis are entangled in secrets and lies. DECEPTION Now, Voyagers' Davis, Claude Rains and Paul Henried reunite in a gloriously flamboyant tale of musicians, indiscretion and murder. WATCH ON THE RHINE A leader of Germany’s anti-Hitler underground is hunted by Nazi agents in Washington DC. Dashiell Hammett adapts Lillian Hellman’s play. Amazon.comTo quote Claude Reins in "Deception," Bette Davis is "all eyes and talent," and both burn bright in six vintage films she made for Warner Bros. between 1939-46. Lesser known than her certified classics, these are not exactly best Bettes, but they are marvelously entertaining and a representative showcase for one of Hollywood’s most enduring leading ladies. These eminently repeatable films put Davis (and viewers) through the ringer. Few actresses portrayed characters who suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune so grandly, so regally, so tragically, or so deservedly. As an ad for one of Davis’ movies once famously proclaimed, when she was good, she was very good. When she was bad, she was terrific. Just check out John Huston’s In This Our Life (1942), this set’s unearthed treasure. Bette, flouncing like mad, jilts her fiancée, steals good sister Olivia de Havilland’s husband, and promptly drives him to drink and suicide. And she’s just getting warmed up! (You don’t need Jeannine Basinger’s informed commentary to debunk the tantalizing movie legend about a supposed cameo by members of the Matlese Falcon cast. Those gents at the bar look nothing like Bogie and company. But that is Walter, John’s father, tending bar). Davis was also very good at being noble. In the prestige project, Watch on the Rhine (1943), based on Lillian Hellman’s play and adapted for the screen by Dashiell Hammett, she is the steadfast wife to Paul Lukas, in his Oscar-winning role, as a "legendary figure of the underground movement," who carries on his fight against fascism in Washington, D.C. In The Old Maid (1939), based on the novel by Edith Wharton, Bette allows her cousin (Miriam Hopkins) to give her illegitimate child a respectable name, and, posing as the girl’s unsuspecting aunt, must stand by while she grows up spoiled and "horrid." And in All This and Heaven Too (1940), she is a transplanted French schoolteacher who regales her initially scornful students with the true story behind her scandalous past. Deception is another ripping melodrama in which she stars as a pianist whose reunion with her lost love (Paul Henreid), a cellist is threatened by Rains as her arrogant and sadistic Svengali (who’s responsible for those minks in her closet). Last but not least is The Great Lie (1941), pitting Bette against Mary Astor, who won an Academy Award as the bitchy concert pianist whose son Bette is raising (long story, but it involves missing aviator George Brent, whom they both love). These films offer such they-don't-make-'em-like-this-anymore pleasures as lush, melodramatic scores by such masters as Max Steiner, hothouse emotions, quotable dialogue, and, of course, indelible character actors at their peaks. These films are seen to their best advantage when viewed as part of each disc’s bonus features that recreate an old fashioned "Night at the Movies," complete with theatrical previews, newsreels, short subjects, and Warner Bros. cartoons featuring Porky Pig or Daffy Duck. --Donald Liebenson
Reviews for the The Bette Davis Collection, Vol. 3 (The Old Maid / All This, And Heaven Too / The Great Lie / In This Our Life / Watch on the Rhine / Deception)
List Price: $14.98Price: $8.99You Save: $5.99 (40%)Battle of Britain
Actors: Michael Caine, Trevor Howard, Harry Andrews, Curd Jürgens, Ian McShane
ASIN : B00008PC0Y
Sales Rank : 7239
Director : Guy Hamilton
Brand : TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
Studio : MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code : 1
Format : Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780792855576
ISBN : 0792855574
UPC : 027616885760
Release Date : December 20, 2003
Publisher : MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer : MGM (Video & DVD)
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : MGM (Video & DVD)
Running Time : 133
DescriptionFeaturing a "big stellar cast" (Variety), including Michael Caine, Trevor Howard, Laurence Olivier, Christopher Plummer, Michael Redgrave, Robert Shaw, Susannah York and Edward Fox, Battle of Britain is a spectacular retelling of a true story that shows courage at its inspiring best. Few defining moments can change the outcome of war. But when the outnumbered Royal Air Force defied insurmountable odds in engaging the German Luftwaffe, it may well have altered the course of history! Amazon.comThere's something about this film that's so irresistible, despite its grandiose manipulation. Maybe because it recounts the greatest air battle in history, achieving the greatest aerial battle in film history. Maybe because it has such a terrific cast (Harry Andrews, Michael Caine, Trevor Howard, Curt Jurgens, Laurence Olivier, Nigel Patrick, Christopher Plummer, Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, Robert Shaw, Patrick Wymark, and Edward Fox). Maybe because it's so technically well-made, thanks to the Bond team of producer Harry Saltzman and director Guy Hamilton and the great cinematographer Freddie Young. Or maybe because there is something truly riveting about watching the British kick the Nazis back to Germany. --Bill Desowitz
Reviews for the Battle of Britain
List Price: $14.98Price: $10.49You Save: $4.49 (30%)Road House (Fox Film Noir)
Actors: Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Celeste Holm, Richard Widmark, Charles Flynn
ASIN : B001CC7PM6
Sales Rank : 7461
Director : Jean Negulesco
Studio : 20th Century Fox
Region Code : 1
Format : Black & White, Subtitled
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0024543528609
UPC : 024543528609
Release Date : December 02, 2008
Publisher : 20th Century Fox
Manufacturer : 20th Century Fox
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : 20th Century Fox
Running Time : 95
DescriptionIda Lupino is a singer working at Richard Widmark's club. When she falls for Cornel Wilde, Widmark goes berserk. Amazon.comRoad House has acquired a cult as a prime film noir. Certainly the title location is archetypal, a lounge and bowling alley up toward the Canadian border, and Ida Lupino and Richard Widmark make the most of flavorful roles that would qualify them as exemplary noir denizens even if they hadn't established that elsewhere. He's the second-generation owner of the place who's never been obliged to grow up. She's a somewhat shopworn dame he's brought back from Chicago to play the piano and sing. He--Jefty's the name, by the way--decides to marry her, and is unhinged enough not to realize he needs to ask first. She, meanwhile, has been rubbing Jefty's sobersides right-hand man (Cornel Wilde) the wrong way, and both of them are getting to like it. Fairly psychotic vengeance ensues. This was director Jean Negulesco's first film for Fox, pretty much coinciding with his career peak of Johnny Belinda, a Warner Bros. picture that would bring him an Oscar nomination. Yet Road House is a frustratingly mixed bag. The writing boasts expert three-cushion dialogue--which Lupino delivers deftly--but the script is poorly structured overall. (Screenwriter-producer Edward Chodorov was appropriating material from another crazy-young-fellow movie he'd worked on, MGM's 1942 Rage in Heaven.) Cinematographer Joseph (Laura) LaShelle's lighting and setups are characteristically artful and glossy, but he's obliged to make too many studio "exteriors" look good--a standard cheat in that era, but more irksome than usual because the ostensible location cries out for legitimacy (couldn't they have gone to Lake Arrowhead at least?). Totally on the plus side, however, Ida really does sing and, for the first time in her career, is not dubbed; as Celeste Holm's character notes in admiration and envy, "She does more without a voice than anyone I ever heard." Musical highlights: "One for My Baby" and "Again." --Richard T. Jameson
Reviews for the Road House (Fox Film Noir)
List Price: $29.99Price: $8.99You Save: $21 (70%)A Place in the Sun
Actors: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, Anne Revere, Keefe Brasselle
ASIN : B00003CXBZ
Sales Rank : 4839
Director : George Stevens
Brand : Paramount
Studio : Paramount
Region Code : 1
Format : Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0097360581546
UPC : 097360581546
Release Date : December 21, 2001
Publisher : Paramount
Manufacturer : Paramount
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Paramount
Running Time : 122
Product DescriptionMontgomery clift stars as a poor young man determined to win a place in respectable society and the heart of a beautiful socialite. Shelley winters plays the factory girl whose dark secret threatens clifts professional and romantic prospects. Consumed with fear & desire clift is driven to a desperate act. Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 08/22/2006 Starring: Montgomery Clift Shelley Winters Run time: 121 minutes Rating: Nr Director: George Stevens Amazon.com essential videoGeorge Stevens won an Oscar for his 1951 adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel An American Tragedy, though the film seems a little overwrought today and even self-parodying at times. Still, Montgomery Clift's performance as a poor lad so drawn to a rich, beautiful girl (Elizabeth Taylor) that he contemplates killing his lower-class fiancée (Shelley Winters) is powerful, sympathetic, and mesmerizing. Taylor makes a strong impression, but Winters is awfully good in the less-glamorous role. The tone of the film is oppressive--the film doesn't exactly breathe with possibility--but there are lots of good reasons to give this movie a visit. --Tom Keogh
Reviews for the A Place in the Sun
List Price: $14.98Price: $8.99You Save: $5.99 (40%)Lifeboat (Special Edition)
Actors: Tallulah Bankhead, John Hodiak, Walter Slezak, William Bendix, Mary Anderson
ASIN : B000A9QK7I
Sales Rank : 4699
Director : Alfred Hitchcock
Brand : Twentieth Century Fox
Studio : 20th Century Fox
Region Code : 1
Format : Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Special Edition, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0024543172260
UPC : 024543172260
Release Date : December 18, 2005
Publisher : 20th Century Fox
Manufacturer : 20th Century Fox
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : 20th Century Fox
Running Time : 96
DescriptionNominated for three Academy Awards, Alfred Hitchcock's "absorbing brilliantly executed" (Hollywood Reporter) World War II drama, is a remarkable story of human survival. After their ship is sunk in the Atlantic by Germans, eight people are stranded in a lifeboat, among them a glamorous journalist (Tallulah Bankhead), a tough seaman (John Hodiak), a nurse (Mary Anderson) and an injured sailor (William Bendix). Their problems are further compounded when they pick up a ninth passenger - the Nazi captain from the U-boat that torpedoed them. With its powerful interplay of suspense and emotion, this legendary classic is a microcosm of humanity, revealing the subtleties of man's strengths and frailties under extraordinary duress. Amazon.comPart mystery, part wartime polemic, Lifeboat finds director Alfred Hitchcock tackling a cinematic challenge that foreshadows the self-imposed handicaps of Rope and Rear Window. As with those subsequent features, Hitchcock confines his action and characters to a single set, in this instance the lone surviving lifeboat from an Allied freighter sunk by a German U-boat in the North Atlantic. A less confident, ingenious filmmaker might have opened up John Steinbeck's dialogue-driven character study beyond the battered boat and its cargo of survivors, but Hitchcock instead revels in his predicament to exploit the enforced intimacy between his characters. Indeed, we never actually see the doomed freighter--the smoking ship's funnel beneath the credits simply sinks beneath the waves, and we're plunged into the escalating tensions between those who gradually find their way to the boat, a band of eight English and American passengers and crew, plus a German sailor (Walter Slezak) rescued from the U-boat, itself destroyed by the freighter's deck gun. Heading the cast and inevitably commanding their and our attention is the cello-voiced Tallulah Bankhead as Connie Porter, a cynical, sophisticated writer whose priorities seem to be hanging onto her mink and keeping her lipstick fresh. Gradually, the others find Porter and her lifeboat, forming a temporary community that inevitably suggests a careful cross section of archetypes, from wealthy industrialist (Henry Hull) to ship's boiler men (John Hodiak and William Bendix). Hitchcock juggles the interpersonal skirmishes between the boat's occupants with the mystery of their German prisoner, which itself becomes a meditation on the fine line between nationalism and morality, a line that Slezak walks delicately until his identity is resolved. Visually, Hitchcock transforms his back-lot set and its rear-projected cloudbanks into a desolate stretch of ocean, while capturing the horror of an amputation through an economical set of images culminating in an empty boot. --Sam Sutherland
Reviews for the Lifeboat (Special Edition)
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