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The Joan Crawford Collection, Vol. 2 (A Woman's Face / Flamingo Road / Sadie McKee / Strange Cargo / Torch Song)
Availability:
In Stock
Price:
$49.98
$36.98*
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| Part No: | B000XNZ7NO |
| Manufacturer: | Warner Home Video |
| MFG Part: | WARD64745D |
| Customer Rating: | 4.5 / 5.0 |
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Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 02/12/2008
Those looking for heavy doses of melodrama, good old-fashioned storytelling, and--of course--more Joan, look no further. The
Joan Crawford Collection, Vol. 2 offers up a fine assortment of some of Crawford's popular second-tier titles that helped secure this unstoppable actress' well-deserved seat in the court of Hollywood royalty. Spanning from 1934 to 1954, the five films take viewers on a journey over peaks and valleys of Miss Crawford's tumultuous but often spectacular career and permits a glimpse into the star's adeptness to the changing times of movie making. The first film, 1934's
Sadie McKee, captures a radiant Crawford, still riding high as the queen of MGM, playing the eponymous poor cook's daughter who struggles to keep her principles intact through her rocky romances and unexpected rise to riches. Nobody plays an unlikely do-gooder like Crawford, and this splendidly entertaining film is one of her finest. 1940's
Strange Cargo features Crawford as a dive-bar singer and frequent co-star Clark Gable as a gritty prison escapee joining forces to flee a remote island. A religious parable, jungle adventure, and prison escape movie in one,
Strange Cargo maintains suspense and action surprisingly well.
A Woman Face (1941) is beautifully directed by one of cinema's best, George Cukor, who provides Crawford with one of her most accomplished dramatic roles: Anna Holm, a woman whose face is horribly disfigured as a child. Anna's physical appearance drastically alters her destiny, and becoming full of spite and bitterness, she turns to a life of crime. When the opportunity to correct her scars presents itself, the story takes a sharp turn into suspense-thriller and courtroom drama territory, eventually making its way to a totally improbable and predictable but equally exciting finale.
Flamingo Road (1949), which went on to become a nighttime television soap opera in the `80s, sees Crawford as Lane, a hardened carnival dancer who finds herself stranded in a small town facing crooked men and parochial hypocrisy. Lane's a tough cookie and unsurprisingly manages to cross the bridge from rags to riches while triumphing over her foes in a delicious reversal of fortune. The story may be hackneyed, but Crawford's histrionics provide a juicy good time. This was her first foray into playing roles that are clearly too young for her, yet her portrayal is so earnest one simply doesn't dare question the rather enormous leap in realism. Like pieced-together leftovers from much finer musicals, 1953's
Torch Song is the weakest movie of the bunch but still worth a gander. Here, Crawford plays an embittered and aging musical stage star whose unlikely romance with a blind pianist might turn around her lifetime of heartache. The film probably isn't one of her career highlights but offers up some surprisingly poignant, all-too-real moments.
Joan Crawford Collection, Vol. 2 comes with an abundance of extras including several interesting featurettes covering her career at Warner Brothers and her work with Clark Gable as well as several entertaining old-fashioned cartoons. There's also some amusing Torch Song outtakes of Crawford aspiring to sing. (Once you've heard them you may understand why her voice was dubbed.) Many of Crawford's characters have been described as being only slight manipulations of the real Joan; a tough woman looking for a little respect and trying to make it in a man's world. This collection should help vindicate her efforts. -- Matt Wold
| Fantastic Set | 2008-11-22 | 5 / 5 |
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All of the films are very entertaining, Flamingo Road could almost singularly define 'potboiler' and Crawford's at her best, if a bit ridiculous early-on as a 50-ish carnival 'dancing girl', i guess that was the point. She's terrific in the film once you get beyond the first few minutes.
And the price! At this writing (11/21/08) it is DEEPLY discounted at 52% off list- i paid way more than that last year, and it was worth it. Anyone reading, SNAP THIS UP at 23 bucks! Christmas stocking stuffer for the classic film enthusiastic, female impersonator or great-grandmother on your shopping list. And at this price, buy one for yourself- Very nicely packaged, good extras- it's been out for a year, so read the earlier reviews for all of the details ( i was most partial, again, to Flamingo Road, Strange Cargo and Torch Song, but as in all things, its only a subjective opinion), and to be less glib, i meant no disrespect to female impersonators or great-grandmothers.
This is a really nice collection and a great bookend to Volume 1, also worthy of 5 stars :) |
| ¡Adoro estas películas! | 2008-07-08 | 5 / 5 |
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Nuevamente, cinco de mis películas favoritas de Joan Crawford; sin duda un acierto de la Warner el editar estas cintas en DVD. Sólo tengo ciertos reparos acerca del formato del box set, que es un poco engorroso de manipular, comparado con el box set N°1 de Joan, con cajas independientes. Otra cosa es la ausencia de subtítulos en español o francés; pienso que se le habría dado una difusión más amplia y dado más categoría a los discos. También pienso que le sobran unos cortos animados, que nada tienen que ver con la Crawford, existiendo tanto material visual inédito sobre ella. Aún así lo importante es el contenido, que no obstante representa una muy buena selección de films y un trabajo de restauración impecable. Particularmente mi favorita fue "Torch Song": una explosión de color y estilo, sumado a unos temas musicales hermosos. Categoría aparte es el número musical de "Two faced woman", ¡la performance más freak de la historia del cine!.
Es de esperar que salgan a la venta otros sets de DVD de Joan Crawford; siento que los estudios están en deuda, con cintas como "Our dancing daughters", "Harriet Craig", "Susan and God" o "Letty Lynton", además de haber dejado pasar el aniversario 100 de su nacimiento (¡punto para Davis!... por ahora). |
| Very good buy for the price | 2008-06-20 | 4 / 5 |
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| I enjoyed seeing a lot of the Joan movies that aren't the Blockbusters yet are very good movies! |
| Joan Crawford Collection | 2008-05-19 | 3 / 5 |
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| The sound in Volume 2 seems to be all right, but all of the DVD's in Volume 1 have defective sound so serious it's impossible to hear at full volume. Unfortunately, I didn't view DVDs Volume 1 until I received Volume 2 and it is too late to return them. My advice is to check each DVD for quality as soon as you receive them. EB |
| Gorgeous set | 2008-05-10 | 4 / 5 |
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As a companion box set to The Joan Crawford Collection, this set works reasonably well: if the first set profiled the very best of Joan's middle career output, then this set takes us back, way back, to some of Crawford's earlier triumphs.
I won't review each movie in detail, suffice it to say that "Sadie McKee" is a classic example of Joan in Shopgirl-To-Socialite mode - not for everyone, particularly not when movies like "Mildred Pierce", "Possessed" or "A Woman's Face" show that Crawford's acting capabilities stretch far and beyond the limitations of Sadie's trite storyline - but is an enjoyable sort of "Pretty Woman" prototype nonetheless. "Strange Cargo" IS strange - gorgeous performances by Gable and Crawford in an ahead-of-its-time tale of morality and redemption that - dare I say it - doesn't work as well as it could have (again, a laboured and overlong script robs this film of the talents of its two principal stars).
"A Woman's Face" is a fabulous movie - if you can look past the dodgy makeup effects Joan turns in a stellar performance here, and the plot moves from drama to melodrama to thriller with polished facility, and I am delighted that this is finally out on DVD!! "Flamingo Road" is great, too - sure, we can't really believe coiffed, refined Joan as a carney stripper Lane Bellamy, but the film itself is well-made, well-acted and thoroughly enjoyable.
And "Torch Song". If you can picture Marlene Dietrich astride a pink unicorn, eating chocolate éclairs and blowing soap bubbles from her tiara, while "Pop Goes The Weasel" plays in the background, you are still nowhere near picturing the all-conquering campness of this particular motion picture.
And it's fabulous!
The presentation and extras on this set range from the ridiculous (vintage cartoons?!?!) to the sublime (audio recordings of Bette Davis and Ida Lupino in "A Woman's Face", Crawford's own vocal stylings for her ultimately dubbed role in "Torch Song", and pleasing Crawford & Gable and Jimmy Fund PSA shorts).
This is a very worthwhile purchase for any Crawford fan: what are you waiting for? Thoroughly recommended, and containing great examples of Ye Olde Chick Flick (Sadie McKee), searing dramatic talent (A Woman's Face, Strange Cargo) brilliant direction and storytelling (A Woman's Face, Flamingo Road) and boundless hilarity (Torch Song).
Get it right this minute! |
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