Inescort, Frieda

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen's wonderful novel has been adapted to the screen many times, with this 1940 version representing the golden age of the Hollywood studio era. Greer Garson, then just on the cusp of her stardom, plays the headstrong Elizabeth Bennet, smartest of five daughters who must be married off. Laurence Olivier is that difficult fellow Mr. Darcy, whose mulishness about the Bennet girls begins to thaw when he gets a dose of Elizabeth's sense and sensibility. The film is done up in the glamorous MGM house style, which means we're stuck with the less-than-inspired direction of Robert Z. Leonard (The Great Ziegfeld), redeemed somewhat by a collection of handsome sets (Cedric Gibbons and Paul Groesse won the Oscar for Interior Decoration) and the dandy photography by Karl Freund, one of the greats. Anyone accustomed to the 1995 miniseries version of Pride and Prejudice will need to adjust to the swifter demands of a two-hour movie, and to be sure this version, like the 2005 Keira Knightley remake, simplifies some of Austen's scenes. It's one of the few films, by the way, with Aldous Huxley as a credited screenwriter. Edmund Gwenn is lovely as Mr. Bennet, and Mary Boland brash as Mrs. Bennet; Garson, although MGM liked to corset her in fine-lady roles, manages to let Elizabeth's sauciness come through. Actually, the movie's weak spot is Laurence Olivier's elaborate performance as Darcy, which feels too theatrical. Not that it matters; Austen's story is so good, the film sails through to its delicious finish with all flags flying. --Robert Horton

A Place in the Sun

George 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

The Eddy Duchin Story

The John Ford Film Collection (The Informer / Mary of Scotland / The Lost Patrol / Cheyenne Autumn / Sergeant Rutledge)

WHV celebrates on of the true masters of American cinema with the release of The John Ford Collection. Four-time Academy Award Winning director John Ford is perhaps best known for his Westerns and collaborations with John Wayne however this Ford collection runs the gamut of genres and shows the diversity and genius of John Ford at his most impressive. Featured here will be the DVD debuts of five classic titles - all will be exclusive to the five-disc boxed set.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/MISC. UPC: 085393980429 Manufacturer No: 39804

John Ford remains the consensus choice as America's greatest director, and his critical eminence dates from two films in this set. By 1934 he had been directing for 17 years, building a solid reputation as a Hollywood professional with maybe the best eye in the movie business. With The Lost Patrol (1934) and The Informer (1935)--made for RKO rather than his accustomed studio base, Fox--he took a decisive step toward establishing himself as a personal, at least semi-independent artist. Both films were stark dramas free of box-office compromise, glib heroics, or any expectation of facile happy endings. They were also more relentlessly stylized than anything Ford had done before ... which both distinguished them in their day and left them vulnerable to dating when some of their experimentation proved rather dead-ended.

The Lost Patrol began Ford's association with producer Merian C. Cooper, a partnership that would lead to the independent production company Argosy and the making of such fine, ultrapersonal films as The Quiet Man, The Searchers, and Ford's celebrated cavalry trilogy. The story, by Philip MacDonald, concerns a handful of British soldiers cornered at an oasis in the Mesopotamian Desert (now Iraq) during World War I and slowly decimated by an unseen enemy. The strong visuals--baking sun, the undulating vastness of the dunes, the drift of ghostly mirages--befit a crucible of character-testing, with an unnamed Sergeant (Victor McLaglen) striving to keep at least one man alive as desperation, madness, and implacable Arab snipers take their toll. This DVD release restores six minutes of footage cut for a 1949 rerelease and rarely seen since.

Ford won the first of his four best-director Oscars for The Informer, an intense tale of "one night in strife-torn Dublin, 1922" when a slow-witted I.R.A. strongman named Gypo Nolan sells out his best friend for 20 British pounds. On a budget that obliged him to obscure canvas sets with deep shadows and a persistent fog that underscores Gypo's mental and spiritual confusion, Ford created a visual world akin to the German Expressionist classics of the 1920s. But the film's inventive use of sound and an ambitious music score (by Max Steiner) commingling leitmotifs for half a dozen key characters also encouraged '30s critics to hail it as the first classic of the sound era. That was overstating it (and more than a little amnesiac on the critics' part!). Overstated, too, was Ford's relentless Christ symbolism paralleling Gypo's betrayal to that of Judas. Still, Victor McLaglen's portrayal of the title character remains a triumph (McLaglen won an Oscar as well), and the film abounds in brilliant strokes: the silhouette of a British soldier shining his flashlight on the wanted poster of Gypo's friend, while Gypo lurks just outside the beam; the giant Nolan forever knocking his head on hanging signs or seeming to be crushed by low ceilings; the cacophony of cries and gunfire, and then crashing silence, as the Black and Tan raid the I.R.A. rebel's home. Initially overrated, then relegated to museum status, The Informer awaits rediscovery as a dynamic motion picture.

The John Ford Collection includes one more mid-'30s RKO endeavor, Mary of Scotland (1936). Although handsome, this adaptation of a Maxwell Anderson blank-verse play about Queen Elizabeth's northern rival never finds credible footing as a movie. Andrew Sarris is dead right in lamenting Ford's version of Mary, Queen of Scots, as "a madonna of the Scottish moors"--Katharine Hepburn, inevitably. The most interesting thing about the production is the offscreen story, that Ford and Hepburn fell passionately in love, yet (perhaps) resisted becoming lovers.

From there we leap to the 1960s and two Westerns made under the aegis of Warner Bros. (Warner now owns the RKO library, hence this rather arbitrary set.) Sergeant Rutledge (1960) has markedly improved with age, with what once seemed creaky dramaturgy now playing as bold stylization. Using a jagged flashback structure occasioned by a court-martial at a Southwest outpost, Ford took an unflinching look at the legacy of race in America. The then-unknown black actor Woody Strode has a showcase role as a magnificent "Buffalo soldier" accused of the rape-murder of his commanding officer's blond, white daughter and the murder of the commandant himself. Unfortunately, Ford's once-masterly handling of character actors had grown lax, and he indulged some tedious bombast from Willis Bouchey and Carleton Young as the presiding judge and prosecutor, respectively; and Jeffrey Hunter, however effective in The Searchers, made a weak protagonist as Rutledge's defense counsel. But the veteran cameraman Bert Glennon almost winds things back to Stagecoach days, occasionally turning the film's Technicolor to very nearly black and white.

Another debt to race relations is addressed in Cheyenne Autumn (1964), a beautiful title to grace John Ford's final Western. The film has moments of grandeur as Ford attempts at long last to "tell the story from the Indians' point of view," and it's a pleasure to report that William H. Clothier's majestic Technicolor compositions have been restored to their Panavision dimensions on the DVD. Ford is unambiguously supportive of the Cheyennes' resolve to bolt their reservation in the desert Southwest and trek north to their ancestral lands. By contrast, most of white society, the military, the bureaucracy, and the sensationalist press are portrayed as insensitive, foolish, or hateful. However, the Cheyenne are nobly wooden, with all key roles played by non-Indians: Ricardo Montalban, Gilbert Roland, Sal Mineo, Victor Jory, and Dolores Del Rio (breathtakingly beautiful as ever). As for point of view, it's sympathetic cavalry officer Richard Widmark and Quaker missionary Carroll Baker through whose eyes most of the epic narrative unfolds. --Richard T. Jameson

The Bette Davis Collection (The Star / Mr. Skeffington / Dark Victory / Now, Voyager / The Letter)

Even in the 21st century, very few film stars create and define their own genre--and certainly not in the complete way Bette Davis did. The Bette Davis Collection gives an exceptionally good survey of essential Bette, with four of the five films absolute knock-down classics from her long reign at Warner Bros. Davis's personality was so strong that she tended to overpower her directors, but William Wyler was one of the few to maintain his own distinctive style with her, and The Letter (1940) is a triumph for both of them. At a humid Malaysian plantation, Davis kills a man in the brilliant opening sequence, and the remainder is a darkly suggestive unraveling of the complicated explanation.

Dark Victory (1939) and Now, Voyager (1942) would be on anybody's list of most representative Davis pictures. In the former, she's a doomed heiress nobly losing her eyesight, a multiple-handkerchief situation that proved one of her biggest hits. Voyager allows Davis one of her favored techniques (appearing frumpy for at least part of her performance) as a mother-dominated spinster who comes out of her shell. Her match with Paul Henreid--and the music of Max Steiner--turns this into one luscious melodrama.

If Mr. Skeffington (1944) is not as celebrated as those films, it is nevertheless a characteristic Warners work-out. Davis wasn't shy about playing unsympathetic roles, and Fanny Skeffington--vain, selfish, married for practicality--is an exasperating tour de force. She gets good support from Claude Rains as the sensible, adoring husband. The Star (1952) is no classic, but its Pirandellian aspects will appeal to the actress's fans: Bette plays a washed-up Oscar-winning star desperate to get herself back in the public eye (think if it as a less witty postscript to All About Eve). There's some hint the main character is modeled more on Joan Crawford than Bette herself, in which case Davis must have loved playing it.

Extras are modest, with short featurettes giving background on three of the discs, and director Vincent Sherman providing commentary for Mr. Skeffington. But the films themselves, and their neurotically intense star, are quite capable of standing alone. --Robert Horton

The Bette Davis Collection includes 3 new-to-DVD classics, featuring Davis in multiple Emmy-nominated performances as a captivating adulteress, a manipulative beauty, and a former Oscar-winning actress recovering from the end of her career.

The Letter

In the opening sequence of The Letter, director William Wyler delivers a primer on film directing: at a rubber plantation, in the tropical funk of a Malaysian night, the heavy stillness is suddenly broken by shots... and a woman with a gun, descending a staircase. She is the wife of the plantation owner, and the dead man is, ahem, not her husband. Holding the gun so securely is Bette Davis, in one of her greatest performances (her acting of a big revelation, late in the film, is still an astounding piece of emotional fluency). The story is taken from one of those sturdy Somerset Maugham tales that has proved itself in many versions, but this is the keeper; it was nominated for seven Oscars®, including best picture, director, and actress, winning none. Wyler's impeccable direction, and Davis's take-no-prisoners approach to an "unsympathetic" character, make for a completely satisfying picture. --Robert Horton

You'll Never Get Rich

An eccentric New York theater owner has his eye on the beautiful chorus girl Sheila Winthrop (Rita Hayworth). His wife has her eye on him. Sheila has her eye on the show's choreographer Robert Curtis (Fred Astaire). Having been discovered the boss throws Robert into the middle of a comedic cover-up that eventually forces Robert to flee into the Army. Robert will never get rich as a private but at least he's out of his predicament - or is he? When Rita Hayworth was paired to star opposite Fred Astaire in the musical comedy YOU'LL NEVER GET RICH the press speculated that the two might be mismatched. Then Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohen insisted on the pairing and correctly so. All skeptics were silenced as Hayworth more than proved her dancing abilities establishing her as one of the best partners Astaire ever had - Ginger Rodgers notwithstanding. She quite literally became Columbia's hottest property of the '40s with LIFE magazine quickly dubbing her the "Love Goddess" of Hollywood. The film's many accolades include Academy Award® nominations for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture and the featured hit song "Since I Kissed My Baby Goodbye" by Cole Porter.System Requirements:Running Time: 88 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 043396103696 Manufacturer No: 10369

They don't make the most obvious screen couple--if you squint, you might think Stan Laurel had gotten together with Lauren Bacall--but their differences only serve to make this effervescent musical all the more entertaining. You'll Never Get Rich is the first of two that Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth made together (followed by You Were Never Lovelier). Astaire, who stars as choreographer-turned-soldier Robert Curtis, has rarely been looser, and Hayworth, as dancer Sheila Winthrop, has rarely been more graceful. As in Royal Wedding, Astaire also engages in some fancy solo footwork. Robert Benchley and Frieda Inescort provide priceless support as Robert's philandering boss and his clever wife, and Cole Porter composed the music, including "So Near and Yet So Far," "Dream Dancing," and the Oscar®-nominated "Since I Kissed My Baby Goodbye." You'll Never Get Rich is timeless, escapist fun that also serves to prove that sometimes opposites don't just attract--they can make beautiful music together. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

The Return of the Vampire

Bela Lugosi stars as a vampire stalking the streets of World War II London when German bombing releases vampire Armand Tesla (Lugosi) from his grave. Aided by a werewolf named Andreas (Matt Willis) and opposed by Lady Jane (Frieda Inescort) who operates an asylum Tesla goes in search of young ladies to supply him with blood.System Requirements:Running Time: 69 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR Rating: NR UPC: 043396078727

The Alligator People

When Jane's husband disembarks from a passenger train immediately after their wedding and disappears without a trace, troubling questions are raised. How could his face, mangled beyond recognition in a plane crash during the war, have healed without any scarring? And what unspeakable acts took place on the alligator-ridden bayou plantation he left as an address? Wonderfully haunted, The Alligator People explores the mystery with skillful pacing, generally decent dialogue, and only intermittently laughable special effects. Miscegenation, anxiety over radiation and atomic science, homoeroticism, distrust of doctors and medicine, fear of the American South--all the major cultural obsessions of the late '50s are either tacitly or explicitly represented here; perhaps that's why the far-fetched scientific premise that underlies the plot makes a weird resonance despite its utter implausibility. The ubiquitous Lon Chaney is on hand, and his performance as a drunken swamp rat with a penchant for violence is a hoot; but the real star of the show is Beverly Garland, whose inspired lead, alternately detached and histrionic, decidedly puts to rest the myth of the inelasticity of early sci-fi and horror performers. A winner. --Miles Bethany

A young wife (Beverly Garland) is abandoned by her husband on their wedding day. Distraught, she traces him to his ancestral home in the bayous of Louisiana, where, amid the swamps and deadly undergrowth, she discovers a terrible secret. Her husband was saved from death by an experimental medical procedure involving serum derived from alligators and now he's developing horrifying side-effects. She'll face any danger to help him, but soon discovers her love may not be enough.

Casanova's Big Night

A tailor assumes the identity of the famous Casanova in order to win women's hearts.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: NR
Release Date: 6-SEP-2005
Media Type: DVD

Bob "Orson Welles" Hope is at the top of his game in this 1954 Technicolor laugh-fest co-starring Joan Fontaine and Basil Rathbone. Hope plays Pippo Popolino, Casanova's tailor, who finds himself standing in for the great lover after the real Casanova (played by Vincent Price) leaves town to avoid paying his debts. Enlisted by an overzealous mother-in-law to test the true love of her daughter-in-law-to-be, Hope must capture the prized petticoat and help avert a civil war to boot. Years before he wore out his welcome in countless TV specials, Hope is a marvel here, perfecting his neurotic and vain coward persona while enganging in some pretty inspired slapstick. It's easy to forget that in 1954 this was pretty edgy stuff. It's no wonder a young Woody Allen idolized him. --Kristian St. Clair