Nilsson, Anna Q

Sunset Boulevard (Special Collector's Edition)

Swanson stars as fading film star Norma Desmond and Holden plays the struggling writer who is held in thrall by her madness. Von Stroheim plays Desmond's discoverer, ex-husband, and butler.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: NR
Release Date: 8-AUG-2006
Media Type: DVD

Billy Wilder's noir-comic classic about death and decay in Hollywood remains as pungent as ever in its power to provoke shock, laughter, and gasps of astonishment. Joe Gillis (William Holden), a broke and cynical young screenwriter, is attempting to ditch a pair of repo men late one afternoon when he pulls off L.A.'s storied Sunset Boulevard and into the driveway of a seedy mansion belonging to Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a forgotten silent movie luminary whose brilliant acting career withered with the coming of talkies. The demented old movie queen lives in the past, assisted by her devoted (but intimidating) butler, Max (played by Erich von Stroheim, the legendary director of Greed and Swanson's own lost epic, Queen Kelly). Norma dreams of making a comeback in a remake of Salome to be directed by her old colleague Cecil B. DeMille (as himself), and Joe becomes her literary and romantic gigolo. Sunset Blvd. is one of those great movies that has become a part of popular culture (the line "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up," has entered the language)--but it's no relic. Wow, does it ever hold up. --Jim Emerson

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Well, bless my beautiful hide! Director Stanley Donen invests this rollicking musical with a hearty exuberance. Howard Keel, with his big-as-all-outdoors baritone, stars as a bold "mountain man" living in the Oregon woods who brings home a bride (plucky songbird soprano Jane Powell) to his six slovenly brothers. Taming the rambunctious brood, Jane proceeds to make gentlemen of them so they can woo sweethearts of their own. But old habits die hard: their flirting gives way to fighting in the film's celebrated barn-raising scene, a lively acrobatic dance number exuberantly choreographed by Michael Kidd. Big brother chimes in with his own brand of advice--an old-fashioned kidnapping! Donen manages to get away with such a politically incorrect plot by investing the boys with a innocent sweetness, most notably the youngest brother played with genial earnestness by Rusty (Russ) Tamblyn (pre-West Side Story). This modest production became a huge hit and remains one of MGM's best-loved musical comedies, an energetic, high-kicking classic. --Sean Axmaker

An American in Paris

An ex-G.I. remains in Paris to paint and falls in love with a girl who is planning on marrying another man.
Genre: Musicals
Rating: NR
Release Date: 6-JUN-2000
Media Type: DVD

A GI (Gene Kelly) stays in Paris after the war to become an artist, and has to choose between the patronage of a rich American woman (Nina Foch) and a French gamine (Leslie Caron) engaged to an older man. The plot is mostly an excuse for director Vincente Minnelli to pool his own extraordinary talent with those of choreographer-dancer-actor Kelly and the artists behind the screenplay, art direction, cinematography, and score, creating a rapturous musical not quite like anything else in cinema. The final section of the film comprises a 17-minute dance sequence that took a month to film and is breathtaking. Songs include "'S Wonderful," "I Got Rhythm," and "Love Is Here to Stay." --Tom Keogh

In the Good Old Summertime

Musical remake of "Shop Around the Corner" involving two feuding store employees who are unknowingly engaged in a romantic relationship as anonymous pen pals.

Regeneration/Young Romance

New York gangs have rarely been as realistically depicted as in this vivid, grungy 1915 melodrama. Aside from its status as one of the earliest gangster pictures, Regeneration is the first feature in the long directorial career of Raoul Walsh (White Heat), whose marvelously energetic and manly adventures brightened Hollywood's Golden Age. The plot is a stock tale of a hood (Rockliffe Fellowes, who has a true mug's face) reformed by a social worker (Anna Q. Nilsson, a silent star with some resemblance to Leelee Sobieski), but Walsh got the grime of the slums into the very grain of the photography. He once explained, "I went down around the waterfront and around the docks and into the saloons and got all kinds of gangster types, people with terrible faces, hiding in doorways." You can almost smell the beer slopping out of the pail when the hero (as a boy) brings home his cruel stepfather's alcoholic sustenance from the tavern. --Robert Horton

The first full-length gangster picture ever made according to its director, Raoul Walsh, who would later make "The Roaring Twenties," "High Sierra," "The Bowery" and "White Heat." "Regeneration" (72 min.) is a powerful slum melodrama produced in 1915 on location in the lower east side of New York City, with a gaggle of authentic low-life types performing alongside professional actors. As an added bonus on this DVD, "Young Romance" (58 min.), also released in 1915, is a recent rediscovery that forever silences the claim that refined comedy cannot be conveyed via the screen. This disguise plot, worthy of an Elizabethan drama, was written by William deMille (brother of Cecil, father of Agnes), and directed by George Melford ("The Sheik," the Spanish "Dracula"). "Regeneration" is in the Library of Congress National Registry of essential American films.

An American in Paris

A GI (Gene Kelly) stays in Paris after the war to become an artist, and has to choose between the patronage of a rich American woman (Nina Foch) and a French gamine (Leslie Caron) engaged to an older man. The plot is mostly an excuse for director Vincente Minnelli to pool his own extraordinary talent with those of choreographer-dancer-actor Kelly and the artists behind the screenplay, art direction, cinematography, and score, creating a rapturous musical not quite like anything else in cinema. The final section of the film comprises a 17-minute dance sequence that took a month to film and is breathtaking. Songs include "'S Wonderful," "I Got Rhythm," and "Love Is Here to Stay." --Tom Keogh

The Toll Gate/His Bitter Pill

William S. Hart was the first and arguably the most fascinating of silent-film cowboy stars. Hard and humorless, with a face that looked chiseled out of granite, he straddled the line between hero and criminal as the "Good Badman" of silent Western cinema. In The Toll Gate (1920), directed by Hart regular Lambert Hillyer, he plays Black Deering, the leader of a train-robbing gang sold out by one of his own men. Deering escapes with revenge on his mind, but he's wounded and seeks shelter in the lonely cabin of an abandoned woman (the beautiful Anna Q. Nilsson) where he considers the possibility of a new life, but only after he escapes not one but two posses, one of which is led by his betrayer. The stunning locations paint a hard, rugged West where Hart has practically stepped out of the craggy landscape, ruthless enough to take on the elements on their own terms and quietly driven by a harsh moral code that demands he put his own life on the line to save a boy. The only disappointment in this tinted and toned presentation is the sorry shape of the deteriorated master: rain-like scratches cover the picture in places, and burns, bleeding, washouts, and overexposures overwhelm the picture in particularly damaged spots. Also included (on the Kino video and Image DVD) is the Mack Sennett short His Bitter Pill, a slapstick parody that pokes fun at Hart's stony persona. --Sean Axmaker

In "The Toll Gate" (1920, 73 min.), William S. Hart stars as Black Deering, a gunfighter and outlaw who, upon escaping from the authorities, flees into the wilderness. Hiding in the cabin of an abandoned woman and her young child, Deering finally finds the possibility of redemption he never dared dream of. His only problem: two posses on his trail--and they want blood. Also included on this DVD is Mack Sennett's famous western parody "His Bitter Pill" (1916, 20 min.), done in the inimitable Keystone style and viciously lampooning the noble cowboy.

Sunset Blvd. [Region 2]

Billy Wilder's noir-comic classic about death and decay in Hollywood remains as pungent as ever in its power to provoke shock, laughter, and gasps of astonishment. Joe Gillis (William Holden), a broke and cynical young screenwriter, is attempting to ditch a pair of repo men late one afternoon when he pulls off L.A.'s storied Sunset Boulevard and into the driveway of a seedy mansion belonging to Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a forgotten silent movie luminary whose brilliant acting career withered with the coming of talkies. The demented old movie queen lives in the past, assisted by her devoted (but intimidating) butler, Max (played by Erich von Stroheim, the legendary director of Greed and Swanson's own lost epic, Queen Kelly). Norma dreams of making a comeback in a remake of Salome to be directed by her old colleague Cecil B. DeMille (as himself), and Joe becomes her literary and romantic gigolo. Sunset Blvd. is one of those great movies that has become a part of popular culture (the line "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up," has entered the language)--but it's no relic. Wow, does it ever hold up. --Jim Emerson

An American in Paris [Region 2]

A GI (Gene Kelly) stays in Paris after the war to become an artist, and has to choose between the patronage of a rich American woman (Nina Foch) and a French gamine (Leslie Caron) engaged to an older man. The plot is mostly an excuse for director Vincente Minnelli to pool his own extraordinary talent with those of choreographer-dancer-actor Kelly and the artists behind the screenplay, art direction, cinematography, and score, creating a rapturous musical not quite like anything else in cinema. The final section of the film comprises a 17-minute dance sequence that took a month to film and is breathtaking. Songs include "'S Wonderful," "I Got Rhythm," and "Love Is Here to Stay." --Tom Keogh

I Live on Danger