List Price: $49.92 Our Price: $39.94YOU SAVE $9.98!
Buy it
DVD The Joan Crawford Collection (Humoresque / Possessed (1947) / The Damned Don't Cry / The Women / Mildred Pierce)
The Joan Crawford Collection brings together a potent group of films from Crawford's career renaissance: her Warner Bros. run of the late 1940s, beginning with Mildred Pierce. Four of the titles are from that heated, noirish streak, including Crawford's 1945 Oscar-winning turn in Mildred, a great Hollywood example of an actress's persona meeting the zeitgeist moment. In this adaptation of the James M. Cain novel, Crawford plays a sacrificing mother perfectly willing to claw her way to success for the sake of her ingrate daughter. Michael Curtiz directed, snapping Crawford out of a long career slide.
Humoresque (1946) was promptly given the top-drawer treatment, and it's a truly epic melodrama about a restless society woman who takes up the cause of a young violinist (John Garfield) from the slums. Possessed (1947) gave Crawford a thorough workout as a woman in complete obsessive breakdown from various romantic traumas. What Crawford lacks in subtlety she makes up for in sheer will, which suits the character well (and brought another best actress Oscar nomination). The Damned Don't Cry (1950) is a film noir smash-up, with Crawford as a low-rent dame who brazens her way into becoming a fur-lined mobster's moll (it was loosely inspired by the Bugsy Siegel-Virginia Hill story). It's overripe but entertaining.
1939's The Women, an MGM picture, doesn't fit the mood of the collection, although it has its fans. George Cukor directed this catty version of the Clare Booth Luce play, which has an all-female ensemble cast; Crawford is in very good form as a bad girl. The movie's reputation is somewhat beyond its actual witchy charm. (Packaging gaffe: the photo on the back cover is from Seven Women.) DVD extras tend toward smallish documentaries, save the absorbing 90-minute career profile The Ultimate Movie Star on the Mildred Pierce disc, an even-handed study that includes frank revelations from director-lover Vincent Sherman and the "wire hangers" story from adopted daughter Christina. Sherman contributes a commentary on The Damned Don't Cry. --Robert Horton
Review(s): DVD The Joan Crawford Collection (Humoresque / Possessed (1947) / The Damned Don't Cry / The Women / Mildred Pierce)
Could've been better!!
Don't get me wrong because i'm really glad they released a boxed set of joan crawford films, but i don't get why they include 2 films that were already on dvd with the set. those were the women and mildred pierce. sudden fear and flamingo road would've been excellent choices instead. i hope one day they release a 2nd boxed set with her movies from the 30's. movies like strange cargo, possesed(1931), dancing lady, sadie mckee, etc.
Classic Crawford with fabulous special features
This boxed set is a must for any true Crawford fan. Aside from the obvious merit of the films chosen for inclusion in this collection, the documentary entitled, "Joan Crawford: the Ultimate Movie Star" is itself worth the price of the boxed set. This is a balanced and fair analysis of Joan Crawford the person, the actress, the mother, and ultimately, the image. It is indisputable that Ms. Crawford's daughter's tell-all book, "Mommie Dearest" has irretrievably damaged Joan Crawford's reputation, possibly deservedly so. Child abusers are not generally to be looked up to or admired in any way. And yet, despite her obvious and significant parenting deficits, she played a major role in the evolution of Hollywood movies, and her movies remain by and large, highly entertaining. This boxed set provides high quality entertainment created by a woman who truly personified the "movie star", and who should at the very least be remembered for her drive and talent. She had a most enviable career, in possibly the most competitive field imaginable. As can be seen from the documentary included in this boxed set, this is a fact that even Ms. Crawford's children acknowledge.
The Joan Crawford collection
This is the ultimate collection for the most die hearted fan. You will enjoy Joan at her Hollywood best. The mystery, the intrigue, the woman you love to hate. This collection will give you hours of fine cinema, watch it with a loved one, or just dim the lights, and curl yourself up with a warm blanket. I do recomend that you watch them in the collection order, Leaving the highly rated, and her most sucessful film, Mildred Pierce for last. You will not be disappointed.
Related DVD's The Joan Crawford Collection (Humoresque / Possessed (1947) / The Damned Don't Cry / The Women / Mildred Pierce)
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... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Bette Davis DVD Release Date: Released the 14 June 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $49.92 Your Price: $39.94YOU SAVE $9.98!
Buy it
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
Film noir is such a rich cinematic zone that second-tier specimens compel nearly as much fascination as the classics. At a glance, Volume 2 of Warner Bros.' (ever-expanding, we hope) Film Noir Collection is a distinct step down from Volume 1--inevitable when you've launched your series with five landmark titles, including three outright noir masterpieces (The Asphalt Jungle, Gun Crazy, Out of the Past). But linger beyond that first glance, because the second set is a flavorful mix of sleazoid iconography (two vehicles for B-movie bad boy Lawrence Tierney), an offbeat outing for a major director (Fritz Lang in his Howard Hughes RKO period), Poverty Row production circumstances that encourage aggressively peculiar, verging-on-radical filmmaking (the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Claire Trevor DVD Release Date: Released the 05 July 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $49.92 Your Price: $39.94YOU SAVE $9.98!
Buy it
Who was Greta Garbo? For a while the greatest of all movie stars, then a celebrated recluse, always "the mysterious lady," Garbo purred, "I want to be alone," and people took her at her word. Of course, the real Garbo is actually the "reel" Garbo, the silvery, suffering creature on the movie screen--the way the light caught her eyes, and the way she slithered around in silk. There are other Garbo films to be seen, but Garbo: The Signature Collection is the essential Garbo, the alpha and omega for fans and beginners. This 10-disc package collects seven of her MGM sound pictures, three silents, and the Turner Classic Movies documentary Garbo, which gives a good career overview and warm testimony from friends and relatives (although more critical perspective on her talent would... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Greta Garbo DVD Release Date: Released the 06 September 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $99.92 Your Price: $79.94YOU SAVE $19.98!
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
