Rutherford, Margaret

The Agatha Christie Miss Marple Movie Collection (Murder at the Gallop / Murder Ahoy / Murder Most Foul / Murder She Said)

Never mind purists who bemoan Margaret Rutherford's incarnation of Agatha Christie's celebrated spinster sleuth. These four British films, produced between 1961 and 64, are jolly good, regardless of their tenuous connection with Miss Marple as written, or with Christie herself. One of the films, in fact, Murder Ahoy, is an original screenplay credited as "an interpretation of Miss Marple." And two others, Murder at the Gallop and Murder Most Foul were based on books featuring Christie's other famed detective, Hercule Poirot." But no matter. The redoubtable Rutherford indelibly makes Marple her very own, or, as she proclaims to Inspector Craddock (Charles Tingwell), with whom she locks horns throughout all four films, "I am always myself." Rutherford makes a formidable first impression in Murder She Said, based on Christie's 4:50 from Paddington, in which the armchair sleuth goes undercover as a servant after witnessing a murder on a train. In Murder at the Gallop, based on After the Funeral, where there's a will, there's murder. In Murder Ahoy, Marple discovers a ship of thieves. In Murder Most Foul, Marple deadlocks a jury and joins a theatrical troupe to prove the defendant's innocence.

The Marple films are endearingly modest productions, redeemed by peerless performances and mostly sharp scripts. Ron Goodwin's theme music used in all four films is an irresistible piece of '60s symphonic pop that's a classical gas. None of the actors are suspect. Rutherford gets able support from her real-life husband, Stringer Davis, who portrays Marple's Watson-esque sidekick. Venerable character actors Robert Morley and Ron Moody enliven Gallop and Foul, respectively. And in Murder She Said, that's Joan Hickson, who would go on to acclaim as Miss Marple in the celebrated BBC series (also available on DVD). But it's tough to steal a scene from Rutherford, whose Marple displays a keen mind, and, in Ahoy, surprising prowess with a sword! --Donald Liebenson

Murder She Said (1961): Margaret Rutherford's debut as Agatha Christie's Miss Marple Murder at the Gallop (1963): Murder and mystery start with a funeral Murder Most Foul (1964): Miss Marple joins a theatrical troupe whose specialty is death scenes. Murder Ahoy (1964): Miss Marple takes the helm in a seagoing whodunit

The Importance of Being Earnest - Criterion Collection

If you're looking for the definitive example of dry British wit, look no further than The Importance of Being Earnest. Of course, it helps to have Oscar Wilde's beloved play as source material, but this exquisite adaptation has a charmed life of its own, with a perfectly matched director (Anthony Asquith was raised in the rarified, upper-class atmosphere of Wilde's play) and a once-in-a-lifetime cast. Mix these ingredients with Wilde's inimitable repartee, and you've got a comedic soufflé that's been cooked to perfection. Opening with a proscenium nod to its theatrical origins, the film turns Wilde's comedy of clever deception and mixed identities into a cinematic treat, and while the 10-member cast is uniformly superb, special credit must be given to Dame Edith Evans, reprising her stage role as the imperiously stuffy Lady Bracknell. To hear her Wilde-ly hilarious inflections and elongated syllables is to witness British comedy in its purest form, fully deserving of the royal Criterion treatment. --Jeff Shannon

Oscar Wilde's comic jewel sparkles in Anthony Asquith's film adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest. Featuring brilliantly polished performances by Michael Redgrave, Joan Greenwood, and Dame Edith Evans, the enduringly hilarious story of two young women who think themselves engaged to the same nonexistent man is given the grand Technicolor treatment. Seldom has a classic stage comedy been so engagingly transferred to the screen. The Criterion Collection is proud to present The Importance of Being Earnest on DVD for the first time.

I'm All Right Jack

After a decade on radio, Peter Sellers set out on the road to international stardom in 1959's I'm All Right Jack. Sellers played both Sir John Kennaway and, unforgettably, the trade union leader Fred Kite (he had taken multiple roles in The Mouse That Roared and would do so again in Dr. Strangelove). The result is laugh-out-loud comedy with a satiric edge, lampooning the then-burning issue of industrial relations. Bertram Tracepurcel (Dennis Price) plans to make a fortune from a missile contract, a scheme that involves manipulating his innocent nephew Stanley Windrush (Ian Carmichael) into acting as the catalyst in an escalating labor dispute, from which the socialist Mr. Kite is only too keen to make capital. Management and labor both have their self-serving hypocrisy dissected in this ingenious comedy, which is actually a sequel to the military comedy Private's Progress (1956), but stands independent of the earlier film. Both films were made by the brothers John and Roy Boulting, directors and producers of such British classics as Brighton Rock (1947), Seven Days to Noon (1950), Carlton-Browne of the F.O. (1959), and Heavens Above (1963). The superb cast of I'm All Right Jack also features Richard Attenborough, John Le Mesurier, Margaret Rutherford, and Terry-Thomas. --Gary S. Dalkin

The Mouse on the Moon

The natives are growing restless in the tiny country of Grand Fenwick! There's no indoor plumbing, no money to pay for it and no one's had a hot bath in ages! Facing a winter without warm water, the conniving Prime Minister (Ron Moody, Oliver!) convinces the U.S. government to give him a million-dollar grant by promising to use it for Grand Fenwick's space program. There's just one pesky problem: Grand Fenwick doesn't have a space program! But when a local crackpot professor discovers that the region's wine makes radical rocket fuel, the little nation determines to blast its wayinto the space race and land on the moon before the U.S., Russia or anyone else! Get readyfor a spoof on space travel and political plotting that's so funny, it'll have you howling at the moon! Full of "hilarious slapstick moments" (Boxoffice), this lunar laugh-riot is a "delightful farce" (The Film Daily) that's out of this world!

Countess From Hong Kong

Charlie Chaplin's last film is the cinematic equivalent of Willie Mays staying too long in baseball--a sad farewell from someone who has clearly lost his touch. Marlon Brando (who famously did not get along with Chaplin and initiated, with this film, his curious habit of undermining his directors' best intentions) plays an American millionaire leaving Hong Kong to assume an ambassadorship. He discovers Sophia Loren--playing a daughter of Russian aristocrats and a former gangster moll--concealed in his closet onboard the outbound ship, hoping to gain passage to the States. Brando, looking none too pleased, agrees to help her, with not terribly comic or romantic results. Chaplin's one modestly clever touch is to have the camera rock gently and slowly back and forth, ostensibly emulating the movement of the luxury liner. The humor falls flat, Brando and Loren have no chemistry, and the story isn't terribly engaging. The former Little Tramp appears, mercifully briefly, as a seasick steward who opens and closes a door, swooning in between. Appropriately enough, in silence. --David Kronke

The Smallest Show On Earth

An amiable knockoff of the Ealing comedy style, The Smallest Show on Earth (1957) starts with aspiring novelist Bill Travers and his "nice gel" wife Virginia McKenna inheriting a cinema from a hitherto unknown uncle and discovering that it isn't the sumptuous modern Grand, which specializes in those "smash 'em in the face, knock 'em over the waterfront" pictures, but the decrepit Bijou, known locally as "the fleapit." The initial plan, set up by lawyer Leslie Phillips, is to sell off the cinema to the owner of the Grand so he can knock it down to make a car park, but our heroes are put off by the arrogant bullying of the rival manager (Francis De Wolff) and succumb to the inept charms of the crazed, aged staff--drunken projectionist Peter Sellers, doddering commissionaire Bernard Miles, and dotty ticket lady Margaret Rutherford (who joined the team as a piano accompanist).

In the 1950s there was a run of gentle British comedies in which outmoded and broken-down local institutions (steam trains, tugboats, vintage cars) were saved by collections of committed eccentrics who despised the new-fangled bus services or soulless council bureaucracies and were willing to resort to a little larceny (in this case, arson). The Smallest Show slots in perfectly with the cycle, getting laughs from the Bijou's already outmoded program of scratchy Westerns and desert dramas (which increase ice cream sales) and sentiment over the staff's midnight screenings of silent movies that remind them of better days. It's likeable rather than hilarious, with Sellers and Miles buried under crepe hair and fake wrinkles competing to out-dodder each other and losing the picture to the inimitable Rutherford, who doesn't have to fake her eccentricity. Pinup June Cunningham is the glamorous usherette and Sid James plays her annoyed dad. --Kim Newman

Blithe Spirit [Region 2]

Noel Coward's favorite play was certainly a departure for David Lean, best known for adapting Dickens in the '40s. While it's the director's only comedy, the result is a delightful gem. Rex Harrison is an acerbic author haunted by the ghost of first wife Elvira (Kay Hammond), who tries to seduce him all over again. This throws his second wife (Constance Cummings) into a panic, second-guessing her lack of passion. It's a celestial sex romp that hasn't lost its bite. Margaret Rutherford, as always, steals the show as the sardonic medium. --Bill Desowitz

The Runaway Bus

Starring Frankie Howerd, Margaret Rutherford, Petula Clark, George Coulouris, Toke Townley and Belinda Lee. When heavy fog prevents any flights from leaving London Airport, a group of passengers are put on a bus driven by Percy Lamb (Frankie Howerd in hi

Song of Freedom/Big Fella

The Wacky World of Mother Goose

Bent on enslaving an entire land of nursery-rhyme characters (to mine diamonds!), the dastardly Count Warptwist sneers and chortles his crooked way through The Wacky World of Mother Goose. According to Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass (famed creators of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer), such can be expected when Mother Goose leaves King Cole in charge while she visits her ailing sister. Contorted as it sounds, the premise allows Rankin and Bass to concoct possible backstories on literary curiosities like Little Jack Horner, Peter Pumpkin-eater's wife, and the dish who ran away with the spoon. It also means an eclectic soundtrack, frequent eyebrow-raising lyrics not meant for the preschool set, and an occasional nursery rhyme belted out by a resounding, Ray Conniff-esque chorus. Digital remastering for the DVD edition restores wide-awake colors, an odd juxtaposition to the sleepy characters first conceptualized by legendary artist Paul Coker Jr. (MAD Magazine). (Ages 6 and older) --Liane Thomas