Building a DVD Library—the MGM way: Oscar winners, drama, comedy, westerns, and a handful of British films combine to delight movie buffs - Entertainment - Bibliography

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), July, 2003 by Robert S. Rothenberg

Thelma & Louise (129 minutes, $24.98), the 1991 gender-bending version of "buddy" movies, was director/coproducer Ridley Scott's paean to angry feminists. The movie ran into the "Silence of the Lambs" steamroller, losing best picture to it and seeing costars Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis topped by Jodie Foster for best actress and Jonathan Demme taking the director Oscar from Scott. Its sole win was for Callie Khouri's original screenplay. ("Silence" was adapted.) This Special Edition DVD is loaded with features, highlighted by a quartet of documentaries; audio commentary by Scott, Sarandon, Davis, and Khouri; a music video; 30 minutes of deleted and extended scenes; and a particular treat--an alternate ending to the much-discussed shocking conclusion of Sarandon and Davis driving off the rim of the Grand Canyon rather than allowing themselves to be captured by pursuing law enforcement officers.

DRAMA

Carnal Knowledge (98 minutes, $19.98), deemed shocking in its treatment of sex and other relationships when it was released in 1971, has lost some of its impact over the ensuing three decades, leaving viewers more of an opportunity to concentrate on stylistic nuances. Director Mike Nichols, working from a script by cartoonist and occasional playwright Jules Feiffer, and having honed his skills at verbal confrontations five years earlier with "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," turns a startlingly young Jack Nicholson loose on a somewhat-out-of-her-league Candice Bergen and a blowsy Ann-Margaret (in the performance of her career) like an acerbic wolf among sheep, with self-loathing results. Though somewhat statically filmed and weighted down by singer Art Garfunkel, whose one-note mopey delivery demonstrates why he never ventured another dramatic role of this dimension, the film remains iconic of the era. There are no special features.

Inherit the Wind (128 minutes, $14.95), a fictionalized version of the famed Scopes trial in Tennessee over teaching evolution, is at its best during the courtroom battles between Spencer Tracy (in the Clarence Darrow-like role) and Fredric March (as the William Jennings Bryan-like defender of the religious point of view). Longtime liberal director Stanley Kramer makes no bones over which side of the debate he agrees with, turning most of the fundamentalist advocates into boobs and buffoons, with Gene Kelly in a rare dramatic role adding harpoon thrusts as an H.L. Mencken-ish reporter heading the media circus. Ironically, the battle over teaching evolution in the schools continues today, more than three-quarters of a century after the real-life "monkey" trial. Tracy received a 1960 best actor Oscar nomination, but lost out to Burt Lancaster in "Elmer Gantry," another Hollywood put-down of fundamentalist beliefs. There are no special features.

The Misfits (125 minutes, $14.95) is perhaps most noted for being the final onscreen appearance of movie giants Clark Gable, who died of a heart attack shortly after filming was completed, and Marilyn Monroe, as well as being the penultimate major role for Montgomery Clift, whose personal life was descending inexorably into tragedy. It is no wonder that this 1961 picture is ranked in Hollywood legend as a doomed vehicle, much as the James Dean-Natalie Wood-Sal Mineo "Rebel Without a Cause" is. Audiences failed to connect with the movie, perhaps because they felt uncomfortable with the thought that Gable's physical exertions in the horse-wrangling scenes may have led to his fatal heart attack or simply because the downbeat story was not what Gable and Monroe fans wanted to see their idols in. Nevertheless, Arthur Miller's screenplay--based on a short story he wrote while awaiting his divorce from Monroe--is literate, and John Huston's direction keeps the film on track, coaxing nonglamorous performances out of its glamorous stars. There are no special features.