Preston Sturges was the first prominent screenwriter to direct
his own script. He went on an unparalleled creative streak that
brought to the screen some of the most beloved films of all
time.This collection pays tribute to seven of his finest and
funniest films, starring cinema's most illustrious screen
stars.The Great McGintyAn opportunist (Brian Donlevy), turns
corruption into a promising political career, but struggles to
stay on top when he tries to go honest.Christmas in JulyHope
springs eternal when an office clerk (Dick Powell) mistakenly
believes he's won a coffee slogan challenge and spends the "prize
money".The Lady EveIt's the ultimate battle of the sexes when a
wealthy heir (Henry Fonda) falls (literally!) for a con woman
(Barbara Stanwyck) with a shady past.Sullivan's TravelsIn this
comedic masterpiece, a wealthy director (Joel McCrea) wants to
find "real" people for his next great film (co-starring Veronica
Lake).The Palm Beach StoryMoney makes the world go 'round, or so
Gerry (Claudette Colbert) believes when she divorces her
struggling husband (McCrea) and supports him by marrying a
millionaire.The Great MomentThis stirring biopic follows the
fascinating life of W.T.G. Morton (McCrea), a 19th century
dentist who successfully develops the first anesthesia.Hail the
Conquering HeroA quirky soldier (Eddie Bracken) gets an
unexpected homecoming when a group of uproarious Marines decide
to "make" a hero out of the comic misfit.
Bonus Content:
Disc 1 - The Great McGinty:
* Theatrical Trailer
Disc 2 - Christmas in July:
* Theatrical Trailer
Disc 3 - The Lady Eve:
* Theatrical Trailer
Disc 4 - Sullivan's Travels:
* Theatrical Trailer
Disc 5 - The Palm Beach Story:
* Theatrical Trailer
Disc 6 - The Great Moment:
* Theatrical Trailer
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Preston Sturges was a 20th-century Renaissance man who, at
Paramount Pictures between 1940 and 1943, wrote and directed
eight original movies unlike anything before or since. All but
one were high-energy, brilliantly detailed, and very, very funny
comedies that became instant classics. No one ever dreamed up a
more colorful assortment of characters, wrote more lovingly
textured dialogue for them, or sent them hurtling and skittering
through more outrageous situations, with undertones often darker
than most dramatic films. Seven of these pictures comprise this
boxed set; The Miracle of Morgan's Creek is missing because it
remained with Paramount when most of the studio's pre-1949
inventory was acquired decades ago by Universal/MCA. (It's on DVD
via Paramount.) The omission of a single film from the cycle--and
one of the very best--is regrettable, but there's plenty here to
relish.
Sturges was already an established playwright and screenwriter
when he cajoled Paramount into letting him direct one of his own
scripts. The Great McGinty won him the 1940 Oscar for best
original screenplay, the raffish tale of a bum (Brian Donlevy)
who ingratiates himself with the political machine of a heartland
city by successfully voting 37 times in one election, then rises
to become "reform" candidate for governor. The film is a glowing
example of Sturges's penchant for filling the foregrounds as well
as backgrounds of his movies with flavorful, mostly nameless
character actors and according each of them star status, if only
for one world-class line of dialogue. They and Sturges stood by
one another throughout the cycle, and the result was a richness
variously--and aptly--likened to Dickens or Bruegel.
Christmas in July (1940) followed, a sardonic but big-hearted
comedy about a young working-class couple (Dick Powell and Ellen
Drew) duped into believing one topsy-turvy afternoon that they've
struck it rich by winning a slogan contest. Then came the film
widely regarded as Sturges's most side-splitting, The Lady Eve
(1941). Barbara Stanwyck is merciless--and breathtakingly
sexy--as a second-generation con artist who targets brewing heir
Henry Fonda, a clueless amateur herpetologist who has spent
entirely too much time up the .
Then again, there are people who name Sullivan's Travels (1942)
among the best films ever made. Joel McCrea plays a successful
director of Hollywood comedies who decides he must make a
social-consciousness allegory, O Brother Where Art Thou? His
exploratory road trip disguised as a hobo, with starlet Veronica
Lake for companionship, combines Hollywood satire with starkest
drama verging on horror. The film is utterly unique and
shatteringly powerful.
The Palm Beach Story (1942), a return to screwball comedy,
dances a goofy tarantella on the American obsession with wealth.
There are a couple of dozen millionaires at large in this movie,
every one of them insane: Robert Dudley as a comic
deus-ex-machina ("the Wienie King"), a railroad club car filled
with Sturges stalwarts ("the Ale and Quail Club"), and '20s
crooner Rudy Vallee ascending to character-actor immortality as
the devoted suitor of Joel McCrea's runaway wife, Claudette
Colbert. At that point (still in 1942) Sturges embarked on his
most tortuous project, Triumph over Pain, the fact-based
chronicle of the Boston dentist (Joel McCrea) who discovered the
use of ether for anaesthesia. Instead of being canonized, he was
destroyed. Sturges, whose 1933 screenplay The Power and the Glory
had anticipated the fractured time scheme of Citizen Kane by
eight years, tried for even more complicated narrative-in-reverse
here--and also studded the tragic story with startling bursts of
slapstick humor. Paramount recut the film drastically and changed
the title to The Great Moment; the fitful results would not be
released till two years later.
Meanwhile, Sturges scored a pair of best-screenplay Oscar
nominations in 1944 for The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and Hail
the Conquering Hero, two small-town comedies starring Eddie
Bracken as a nebbish ill-made for heroism yet obliged by wartime
circumstance to rise to the occasion. Each of these films is a
comic masterpiece, each asking discomfiting questions about
cherished, arguably destructive American values, yet finding its
own cockeyed way to affirmation. Miracle isn't available here,
but Hail the Conquering Hero casts a lingering spell, beyond
satire. To quote its last line: "You got no idea." --Richard T.
Jameson
