List Price: $14.95 Our Price: $13.46YOU SAVE $1.49!
Buy it
DVD Dodsworth
One of the finest films of the 1930s, this classic Samuel Goldwyn production was based upon the hit Broadway play written by Sidney Howard, which had in turn been adapted from the 1929 novel by Sinclair Lewis. Ahead of its time in dramatizing the disintegration of a marriage, the story centers on the title character (superbly played by Walter Huston, who originated his role onstage), a wealthy automobile manufacturer whose wife (Ruth Chatterton, in her final American film role) desperately craves an aristocratic lifestyle in Europe. Dodsworth indulges her fancies to a degree, but their clashing desires--compounded by her affair with a European baron and his affection for a sympathetic widow (Mary Astor)--create further tension and mutual rancor. Dodsworth was perhaps the first Hollywood drama of the sound era that maturely addressed the complexity of a failing marriage and impending divorce, made especially compelling since Dodsworth is such an admirable and upstanding character who means well and upholds the ideal of marital commitment. Sharply directed by William Wyler, the film is as relevant today as it was when released in 1936. --Jeff Shannon
The security sensation can give you a distorted perspective about the real state of things. Once you get what you want; many people assume the possessed issue will endure forever without mattering its intrinsic value and its development through the years.
The notable mind of Sinclair Lewis that portentous North American writer, created an expressive portrait around the doubtful illusion of the archetype know as self made man. Be careful with this detail that so many couples and families have destroyed I the past and still on.
One of the jewels of William Wyler in that prodigious decade of the thirties. Walter Huston shines once more in this delicate but profound drama that still maintains its vigorous actuality.
An Excellent, Mature Film; Walter Huston Is Exceptional
For all that Sinclair Lewis' reputation rests on the satires of Babbitt, Main Street and Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth is something different, much more mellow and much more sympathetic.
The movie, written by Sidney Howard and directed by William Wyler, does a fine job of telling the story of Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston), a recently retired automobile manufacturer, and his younger wife, Fran (Ruth Chatterton). Sam Dodsworth is smart and decent, very much the idea of an American. He's no one's fool, and his values of fairness and faithfulness guide his decisions. He loves his wife, but understands her, too. Fran longs to escape the constraints of the stifling, mid-west town of Zenith where Sam had built his company. When he sells the company, they decide to go to Europe on the grand tour, something Fran has longed for. "Sam, I want a new life all over," she says, "from the very beginning...a perfectly free, adventurous, glorious life...why, if we weren't tied to this half-baked middle-western town...oh, Sam, darling, I want all the lovely things I have a right to."
They go to Europe, and on the liner meet Edith Cortwright (Mary Astor), a sympathetic divorcee, and Clyde Lockert (David Niven), the first of several men Fran becomes attracted to. Fran is swept up in the clever, cultured ways of the European men she meets. Increasingly, we see how spoiled, superficial and petulant she is becoming. "You've got to let me have my fling now," she cries to Sam, "because you're simply rushing at old age, and I'm not ready for that." Eventually she maneuvers things so that Sam returns home while she stays in Vienna. What's wrong with her, a friend asks Sam. "She's scared of growing old."
By the end of the movie Sam Dodsworth has learned a good deal about himself and the limits a person can reach. We expect him and Edith Cortwright to achieve a happiness that neither probably thought to have. And for Fran, she will most likely remain a deeply unhappy woman.
This is an excellent, mature drama that contrasts, within the unravelling of a marriage, the Thirties' view of the cultural, controlling sophistication of Europe with the direct vigor of America. Walter Huston does a magnificent job as Sam Dodsworth...strong, decent and, at first, out of his depth. He creates such a sympathetic characterization of Dodsworth that the final moments of the movie bring a real sense of joy and satisfaction.
The DVD picture is in fair shape considering the age of the movie. The only significant extra deals with cast biographies.
Dodsworth
An adult, perceptive romantic drama, beautifully played. Director William Wyler and screenwriter Sydney Howard minimize the soapiness inherent in the premise, leaving an honest and surprisingly moving film about love lost and re-discovered. Huston is superb.
This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.98 Your Price: $8.98YOU SAVE $6!
Buy it
Among the earliest writers to set his sights on the director's chair, Preston Sturges brought a frank, unsentimental view of the war between the sexes to his mid-'40s features that exemplify his style, as demonstrated in this prescient 1942 gem. Architect Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) and his wife, Gerry (Claudette Colbert), further refine the archetypal Sturges couple--the male embodying strength, idealism, and a certain naivete, the female ultimately stronger, smarter, and (as revealed early on in an astonishing speech by Colbert) clearer-eyed and more pragmatic about the subtext of sex. This giddy shaggy-dog story follows the couple's split, and Gerry's subsequent flight to Palm Beach. This head-snapping frolic is paced by double-entendres and lampooning looks at the very rich, with... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Claudette Colbert - Joel McCrea Director(s): Preston Sturges DVD Release Date: Released the 01 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $12.99 Your Price: $10.39YOU SAVE $2.6!
Buy it
Leave Her to Heaven is one of the most unblinkingly perverse movies ever offered up as a prestige picture by a major studio in the golden age of Hollywood. Gene Tierney, whose lambent eyes, porcelain features, and sweep of healthy-American-girl hair customarily made her a 20th Century Fox icon of purity, scored an Oscar nomination playing a demonically obsessive daughter of privilege with her own monstrous notion of love. By the time she crosses eyebeams with popular novelist Cornel Wilde on a New Mexico-bound train, her jealous manipulations have driven her parents apart and her father to his grave. Well, no, not grave: Wilde soon gets to watch her gallop a glorious palomino across a red-rock horizon as she metronomically sows Dad's ashes to the winds. Mere screen moments later,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Cornel Wilde Director(s): John M. Stahl DVD Release Date: Released the 22 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.98 Your Price: $11.98YOU SAVE $3!
Buy it
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... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Bette Davis - Herbert Marshall - James Stephenson Director(s): William Wyler DVD Release Date: Released the 11 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.97 Your Price: $15.98YOU SAVE $3.99!
Buy it
Screwball comedy was practically invented by this classic Howard Hawks picture, a breathless farce with not an ounce of sentimentality. John Barrymore, in magnificent form, plays egomaniacal Broadway producer Oscar Jaffe, who molds his latest protégé, Mildred Plotka, into elegant thee-a-tuh star Lily Garland (Carole Lombard). The last hour of the picture has Oscar and Lily, now on the outs, battling each other on the Chicago-to-New York train. These two marvelous creatures are quintessential Hawks characters, figures of pure style who can't exist without the adrenaline and spark so amply supplied by the Hecht-MacArthur script. Hawks's giddyup pacing anticipates Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday, and his deployment of character actors (notably Walter Connolly and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): John Barrymore - Carole Lombard Director(s): Howard Hawks DVD Release Date: Released the 22 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.94 Your Price: $17.95YOU SAVE $1.99!
Buy it
