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DVD Since You Went Away
A three-hour weepy extraordinaire, this 1944 offering from producer David O. Selznick (who also wrote the screenplay) was a tribute to all the families who stayed behind while their men went off to fight in World War II. Claudette Colbert is the mother of daughters Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple; first seen coming home after dropping her war-bound husband at the train, she becomes the model of courage and strength on the homefront. The plot has a Saturday Evening Post feel today, as it follows the family's day-to-day life and struggles, whether with a crotchety boarder (a delightfully starchy Monty Woolley) or oldest daughter Jones's doomed romance with departing serviceman Robert Walker. They don't make them like this anymore and it's too bad. Nominated for a fistful of Oscars, it took only one, for its shadow-drenched black-and-white cinematography. --Marshall Fine
This movie should be a staple to every movie buff! It is a movie I've watched over and over again throughout the years that I've had it, first my own recording, then VHS and now DVD.
The four most important words since Gone With the Wind....
A woman and her two daughters try to cope after her husband goes off to war in 1944's SINCE YOU WENT AWAY, a four-hankie weepie made during World War II. Boasting an all-star cast, Gone With the Wind's producer David O. Selznick, and epic length (nearly 3-hours, with intermission), this movie should be a revered classic. However, like Gone With the Wind, it hasn't aged all that well.
You can't, for the most part, fault the cast. The redoubtable Claudette Colbert could play `ideal woman' with the best of them, and here her ability to portray quiet yearning for her departed husband is one of the movie's biggest assets. The `ideal' theme is punctuated by Joseph Cotten, here an artist turned navy commander who loves old flame Anne Hilton from a flirtatious yet unbridgeable distance. Agnes Moorehead as the somewhat shrill `bad' statesider is also effective. Love to see those that sneer at rationing get their comeuppance, even if I have to wait nearly three hours for it. The revelation, though, is Robert Walker as the "Golly gee" youth who finds love with one of Colbert's daughters, played by Walker's then real-life wife Jennifer Jones, shortly before his unit is due to ship out. The only other movie I've seen Walker in was Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, in which he plays probably the best film psychopath ever. His role in this movie is as far away from Bruno Anthony as can be imagined, and it's terribly affecting.
Monty Woolley, who made something of a career out of playing curmudgeons coming to dinner and nesting in a spare room, here plays a curmudgeonly retired colonel who rents a room from cash-strapped Colbert. That he's the estranged grandfather of sweet young Robert Walker is a happy coincidence. Shirley Temple, Colbert's other daughter, made something of a career out of charming old curmudgeons and crying on cue, both of which traits are severely tested by this movie. It was effective when she was six, but at sixteen I found it, well, annoying. In fact, both the Woolley and the Temple characters seemed a little convenient, a little phony. Temple because she couldn't act, Woolley because he was too much Sheridan Whiteside from The Man Who Came to Dinner. If they merely annoyed, Hattie McDaniel's `Fidelia' shocked and offended. Fidelia was the Hilton's maid until Tim Hilton enlistment, at which point she was let go because the family could no longer afford her. The movie has her returning to the Hiltons, as their maid, for no money because... well, because she loves the family so much and she can't stand to see them try to survive without her. So, after her day job she will come `home' and play maid for the Hiltons.
Look, I realize SINCE YOU WENT AWAY is supposed to be a sentimental celebration of the loved ones on the home front. Much of it is moving and touching, especially the parts played by Cotten and Walker. The rest seem conceits embraced by the greatest generation but dropped by their heirs.
Since You Went Away
This is an absolute must for any video library. What a powerful, moving, romantic film. It certainly gives a good view of those on the home front - supporting the military! A wholesome film which is hard to find now! I highly recommend it for all ages 12 & above. The performances by all are excellent & very moving!
Great wartime story with so much heart. They don't make them like this anymore. Ginger Rogers plays a different kind of role then you're use to seeing and she pulls it off great. More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Ginger Rogers - Joseph Cotten Director(s): George Cukor - William Dieterle DVD Release Date: Released the 19 October 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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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
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Before he made the classic All About Eve, writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz made this clever story about three wives who spend an afternoon at a children's picnic mulling over a letter all three had just received, from a woman who says she's just run off with one of their husbands. As the wives--a former farm girl (Jeanne Crain), a radio soap opera writer (Ann Sothern), and a social climber from the wrong side of the tracks (Linda Darnell)--mull over the troubles of their marriages, each begins to think that she's the one left behind. A Letter to Three Wives doesn't have the crackling show-biz milieu of Eve, but it has the same mix of snappy dialogue and topnotch performances. The tone ranges from florid sentiment to unblinking cynicism, yet Mankiewicz... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Jeanne Crain - Linda Darnell - Ann Sothern Director(s): Joseph L. Mankiewicz DVD Release Date: Released the 22 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The ultimate tearjerker, this 1942 romance classic directed by Mervyn LeRoy (based on a novel by James Hilton) stars Ronald Colman as a British army officer suffering from amnesia after World War I. After falling in love with and marrying a dance-hall singer (Greer Garson), Colman's happy character begins a career as a writer and doesn't seem to mind that he doesn't remember who he is. A car accident changes all that, however, causing the hero's memory to return and making him forget all about his lovely cottage and bride. LeRoy modulates the obvious suspense element in the story (for example, is Colman going to remember Greer or not?) extremely well, building ever-so-deliciously slowly toward a huge payoff. This is one of the great date movies of all time. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Ronald Colman - Greer Garson Director(s): Mervyn LeRoy DVD Release Date: Released the 11 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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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
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