The DVD Report #41

Jane Austen (1775-1817) is an author whose time has come again. Since the 1990s, films and handsome TV productions of her handful of novels published between 1810 and 1818, have been made, remade and reinterpreted numerous times. Where once only Pride and Prejudice was widely known as a cinematic work, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and her last and most romantic work, Persuasion, are just as apt to turn up nowadays at the local multiplex or on Masterpiece Theatre.

Austen’s appeal to contemporary audiences lies primarily within the irony of her characters. All of her novels are about young women seeking to marry or not marry as the case may be, the only option open to genteel young women of her day seeking to continue to live in the luxury to which they had been brought up. They are all different, yet much the same and ever fascinating, evergreen.

Delving into Jane Austen’s world are the members of The Jane Austen Book Club, a fascinating new film that is superior to most of today’s so-called “chick flicks”. The six members of the club, who read and discuss a different Austen novel each month, include five women (Kathy Baker, Maria Bello, Emily Blunt, Amy Brenneman and Maggie Grace) and a guy (Hugh Dancy) who take on the characteristics and foibles of Austen’s characters of two centuries ago.

Having recently sat through Evening, one of the worst “chick flicks”, indeed one of the worst films, of all time, I was not in any rush to see another ensemble film in the genre, which made the pleasant surprise of this one all the more refreshing. Dancy (TV’s Daniel Deronda, Elizabeth I), who had a small part in Evening, has the best big screen role of his career thus far. Bello (The Cooler, A History of Violence) and Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada), two of today’s most interesting performers, both add memorably to their resumes while Baker, Brenneman, Grace, Jimmy Smits, Marc Blucas and Kevin Zegers all turn in fine performances as well, in this richly observed comedy of manners.

Austen herself is the subject of Becoming Jane, another fine film that slipped a bit under the radar on its U.S. release. I reviewed the film back in October when it was released on DVD in Region 2. Now available in Region 1, it is well worth catching, and serves as a fine companion piece to The Jane Austen Book Club and any of the filmed versions of Austen’s works. Here’s what I said back in October:

“Becoming Jane is a lush romantic drama that is better than its reputation would have you believe. Scorned by Jane Austen purists who will tell you it flat out never happened, as well as audiences with no patience for its leisurely pace, it is the story of a love affair between the country girl who became the beloved author and the poor law student who became Chief Justice of Ireland. While the affair is undocumented, the film makes a very plausible case for it. Tom Lefroy did have relatives who lived near the Austen family and he did name his eldest daughter Jane. Beyond that all is speculation, but Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy are letter perfect as the star-crossed lovers. The supporting cast includes Julie Walters, James Cromwell, Ian Richardson and Maggie Smith, who adds to her repertoire of Edna May Oliver impersonations, following those in David Copperfield and Gosfield Park.

A veritable how-to guide to the dying process, Two Weeks is a tough film to sit through. Released on DVD last fall after a short run in theatres, the film has garnered new interest because of Sally Field’s Best Actress nomination by the AARP. They gave their award, like almost every other organization this year, to Julie Christie as the Alzheimer’s patient in Away From Her, but Field’s agonizing portrayal of a woman dying of stomach cancer was a close runner-up. She’s terrific as usual, despite the off-putting nature of her portrayal, and there are strong supporting performances by Ben Chaplin, Tom Cavanagh, Julianne Nicholson and others. It’s definitely not a popcorn movie.

Another film that managed to slip under the radar is King of California in which Michael Douglas plays a man recently released from a mental institution who convinces his teenage daughter, Evan Rachel Wood, to help him hunt for buried treasure beneath their local Costco. It’s a diverting character study with an unresolved ending, but worth seeing especially for Wood who is developing into one of our best young actresses.

Ernst Lubitsch was a master of sophisticated romantic comedy. Renowned for such masterworks as Trouble in Paradise, Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner and To Be or Not to Be, all of which have long been available on DVD, his entre into talkies was as director of several saucy pre-code musical comedies. Criterion has released a set of the first four of these under its Eclipse Series banner. Called, aptly enough, Eclipse Series 8 – Lubitsch Musicals, the set features The Love Parade, Monte Carlo, The Smiling Lieutenant and One Hour With You.

Pairing Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette MacDonald together for the first time, 1929’s The Love Parade features MacDonald as the queen of a mythical country and Chevalier as her new husband. Chevalier, whose background is that of a freewheeling philanderer, finds his new position as consort quite constraining. Featuring chanteuse Lillian Roth and comedian Lupino Lane in memorable supporting turns, the film was nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture, Actor, Director, Cinematography, Art Direction and Sound.

Substituting Jack Buchanan for Chevalier, MacDonald stars as a status rich and cash poor countess in 1930’s Monte Carlo, the weakest of the four. MacDonald falls in love with a nobleman masquerading as a hairdresser, but plans to marry a wealthy member of the gentry to improve her desperate financial position. ZaSu Pitts steals the film as MacDonald’s maid.

Chevalier is back in the title role in 1931’s The Smiling Lieutenant. His charming smile, meant for girlfriend Claudette Colbert, is intercepted by naïve princess Miriam Hopkins with whom he is forced into marriage. With a wink and a nod, Colbert shows Hopkins how to win her Chevalier’s love. Superbly acted by the three leads, as well as the inimitable Charlie Ruggles, the film was oddly nominated for a Best Picture Oscar without receiving a single other nomination.

Chevalier and MacDonald are reunited in 1932’s One Hour With You in which Chevalier, happily married to MacDonald, is romantically pursued by MacDonald’s friend, Genevieve Tobin. Featuring deft supporting turns by Roland Young and Charlie Ruggles, this film, like The Smiling Lieutenant, was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar without receiving a single other nomination in the Oscar year of 1931/32. It’s a remake of Lubitsch’s 1924 silent classic, The Marriage Circle which featured Adolphe Menjou in Chevalier’s role.

Warner Bros. has released The Joan Crawford Collection – Vol. 2 featuring five more of the legendary star’s films made over a twenty-year period from 1934 to 1953.

First up is 1934’s Sadie McKee, directed by Clarence Brown, featuring Crawford at the height of her rags-to-riches phase. She is given no less than three leading men, Edward Arnold, Gene Raymond and her real life future husband Franchot Tone. Arnold fares the best as Crawford’s husband, an older man who knows she married him for his money and doesn’t care.

Crawford, who had made several films with Clark Gable in the early thirties, was reunited with him for 1940’s Strange Cargo, directed by Frank Borzage. Gable plays one of several prisoners who have escaped from Devil’s Island and Crawford is a saloon girl, a forties euphemism for prostitute, in this melancholy mood piece. Ian Hunter is the Christ-like spiritual figure who influences the escapees, including Paul Lukas and Peter Lorre, both quite memorable.

In her last good role at MGM, Crawford gives one of her best performances in 1941’s A Woman’s Face, directed by George Cukor. The film is an early noir in which Crawford plays a scarred female blackmailer who changes her ways after plastic surgery provides her with a new lease on life. Melvyn Douglas is the compassionate plastic surgeon and the film’s villains include Conrad Veidt at his most despicable, Marjorie Main and Osa Massen.

Crawford was a little long in the tooth to be playing a carnival hoochy-coochy in the opening scenes of 1949’s Flamingo Road, directed by Michael Curtiz, but she does fine playing the character as an older, wiser broad in the film’s later scenes. Her Mildred Pierce co-star, Zachary Scott, is her weak-willed lover and Sydney Greenstreet has one of his best roles as a sleazy town boss. The supporting cast includes David Brian and Gladys George.

Returning to MGM for the first time in ten years and singing and dancing for the first time since 1933’s Dancing Lady, the nearly-50-year-old Crawford is at her most garish in her Technicolor debut in 1953’s Torch Song, directed by Charles Walters. Playing a tough cookie who can still do a high kick with the best of them, Crawford’s co-star is Michael Wilding, Mr. Elizabeth Taylor at the time, playing a blind pianist, the only man who can tolerate her. Marjorie Rambeau won an Oscar nomination as Crawford’s boozy, plainspoken Ma.

I’ll be back next week with reviews of the Charlie Chan Collection, Vol. 4 as well as some new films including Gone Baby Gone and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Until then, happy viewing!

-Peter J. Patrick (February 12, 2008)