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DVD The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
Gregory Peck plays a young New York executive who defies the wisdom of the corporate class by deciding his family is more important than the offer of a new job. Lots of melodrama, guilt, and a revelation about a wartime affair (told in flashback), but this well-oiled, good-looking 1956 film still holds up pretty well. Based on a novel by Sloan Wilson, the script and direction are by Nunnally Johnson (The Three Faces of Eve). --Tom Keogh
THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT (1956) is writer/director Nunnally Johnson's ambitious film version of the popular 1953 best-seller by Sloan Wilson. It is set in suburban Connecticut and Rockefeller Center, linked by trains full of commuters. One of those commuters is Gregory Peck, who does advertising for one of the big television networks run by his boss, Fredric March. Johnson is setting up contrasts here. Peck is married to Jennifer Jones and has three kids; March is married to 1930's actress Ann Harding and has a daughter named Susie. Both March and Jones seem unhappy at home, happier at work. But Peck is haunted by his past, in the Army in the Pacific in 1945 after World War Two is over in Europe. Peck has an affair with lovely Marisa Pavan, who gives birth to his child. What Peck will do with that Italian child covers the last half hour of the movie.
I like the film a lot because it gives us the clothes and cars and job world of my early childhood in the suburbia of 1950's San Francisco. And the cast is incredible, including Lee J. Cobb, Henry Daniell, Arthur O'Connell, Gene Lockhart, and Keenan Wynn. The brilliant use of CinemaScope, almost all in long shot with characters standing or sitting at opposite ends of the wide screen, is by Charles G. Clarke. A magnificently knowledgeable audio commentary has film scholar James Monaco comparing movie and book constantly, often talking about his own life during this early 1950's period, the cars his father owned and the hats worn, and the stunning use of CinemaScope for a movie that simply could not withstand pan and scan treatment. Maybe that is why it is not shown that often on TV, wonders Monaco; the only network that would always run it letterboxed, Turner Classics, does not own this Fox movie. Thank God for DVD.
THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT runs a long 153 minutes, but maintains interest throughout and was a pet project of producer Darryl F. Zanuck. This is from an era when a high-powered Production Chief could dictate that a movie run long to do justice to a long novel. Monaco keeps saying that Jones' wife character is much nicer in the book and does not harp all the time on the quality of life she and Peck have in Connecticut. She seems only a bit too unpleasant on screen for me, and the house they move out of is quite beautiful to me also. That is a director's choice-or maybe Zanuck's choice. Monaco also mentions the kids watching TV a lot in a darkened living room as not being in the book. This is contrasted against a television network office at Rockefeller Center that only has two TV monitors and not the logical three, something I never would have picked up on, like a man wearing the wrong hat or driving the wrong year model car. It is a very illuminating audio commentary by a movie lover and knowledgeable reader for a very good movie. (REVIEWED ON LETTERBOXED DVD.)
A Great Film At A Fair Price
I had never watched this film before ordering it, so I took the chance. It turned out to be a smart buy! As usual, Peck is just awesome. He seems to fit this role well, as if it captures a true part of his persona as a family man. As the movie continues you realize that you can relate to the character on a personal level. I enojoyed the flashback sequences and thought they were placed well throughout the film. Overall, this movie supplies drama and action for the viewer. So, if you are considering purchasing this dvd, I'd suggest you buy it. You'll enjoy it!
"The Man"... A Great Film
A fine story from author Sloan Wilson, filmed with Gregory Peck in the leading role... A Winning Combination! Excellent DVD transfer is a bonus.
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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In Old Chicago was 20th Century Fox's grandest production of 1938, and it's still worthy of classic status. Along with MGM's 1936 earthquake drama San Fracisco, it ranks among the finest of the early disaster films, and the climactic depiction of the great Chicago fire of 1871 is still impressive, with some shots that are just as amazing as the digitally rendered disaster effects of present-day Hollywood. It's a highly fictionalized account of the O'Leary family, whose legendary milk-cow kicked over the lamp that set Chicago ablaze, and the teaming of Tyrone Power, Don Ameche, and Alice Faye (as O'Leary brothers Dion and Jack, and Jack's showgirl wife Belle) proved so popular that they were reunited, along with director Henry King, in Darryl F. Zanuck's follow-up production... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Tyrone Power - Alice Faye - Don Ameche - Alice Brady Director(s): Henry King DVD Release Date: Released the 09 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Beautifully directed by Edmund Goulding, this sumptuous, and prestigious adaptation of Somerset Maugham's novel was made in 1946 to great acclaim. It's a tale of manipulation, greed, unrequited love, and the eternal search for spiritual enlightenment. Larry Darrell the central character - and played in the movie by the startlingly attractive Tyrone Power - searches for life's meaning in a journey that takes him from the high society of Chicago to the coal mines of France and then on to the mountains of the Himalayas.
Larry Darrell (Power) is a frustrated man. Having just returned to Chicago after World War 1, and having seen his best friend killed, he dodges a future as a stockbroker and instead goes to Paris to seek enlightenment, much to the chagrin of his wealthy and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Tyrone Power - Gene Tierney Director(s): Edmund Goulding DVD Release Date: Released the 24 May 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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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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