Product Details

• Actors: Lucrezia Borgia
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: A&E Home Video
• DVD Release Date: April 25, 2006
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000F6ZCAM
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #131,014 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A favorable look at one of history's most maligned women, June 25, 2004

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Biography - Lucrezia Borgia - Pretty Poison [VHS] (VHS Tape)

A product of the Italian Renaissance, Lucrezia Borgia's name has been synonymous with evil for over half a millennium, but this video reveals little truth to the scandalous stories associated with her name. She was certainly an unusual woman, the illegitimate daughter of the man who, when Lucrezia was 11, became Pope Alexander VI. Actually, I learned as much about late 15th century Italy as I did Lucrezia Borgia in this documentary. It is hard to imagine a Roman Catholic cardinal with three illegitimate children becoming pope, but of course the history of the papacy throughout the Middle Ages is less than sterling. Borgia deeply loved her father, and he loved her. It didn't stop him from using her as a pawn in his own political manipulations for power, however. She was to be married, in fact, at age 11, but her father's plans changed when he became the pope. At age 13, she did become a bride, but the marriage was doomed from the start. I was shocked to learn that the pope, like many fathers of brides in that era, attended the wedding night ceremonies (behind a sheet) to make sure that the marriage was consummated. This becomes quite ironic given the fact that Lucrezia's father soon had the marriage annulled. This move was the impetus of the gossip and scandal that would hang over Lucrezia forevermore, as her first husband responded angrily and accused his wife of having an incestuous relationship with her father. The pope's enemies took up these charges and added new ones: by age 16, Lucrezia was supposedly a depraved young woman who poisoned her enemies with arsenic, even bearing a special ring equipped with a tiny needle for subtly delivering the poison.

Lucrezia's life went from bad to worse when one of her brothers was killed; the murder was never solved, but another brother, Cesare, was suspected of the crime. At 16, Lucrezia was married to a son of the king of Naples (another politically motivated marriage); this immediately became a true love affair that produced a child but ended rather quickly when an assassin murdered her husband (again, suspicion fell on her brother Cesare). A third marriage was arranged soon thereafter, and Lucrezia was forced to leave her son behind and move a considerable distance away from Rome to live with a family that shunned and disliked her. She had a platonic love affair with a poet but eventually found happiness with her husband, dying during the birth of the couple's sixth child. She was greatly mourned by her husband and the people of the area.

According to this video, there is basically no truth behind any of the awful scandals and accusations that have tainted the name of Lucrezia Borgia all these many years; the historians interviewed here identify her as an extraordinarily unfortunate but by no means an evil woman. Unfortunately, the documentary does not cover as much material as it could have. The dark deeds committed by her brother Cesare and the lascivious nature of her father, Pope Alexander VI, are not explored in detail, there is no mention of charges that Lucrezia had incestuous relationships with two of her brothers, and not a hint is dropped about a rumored pregnancy during Lucrezia's time in a convent after the end of her first marriage (of course, there seems to be little truth to the charges of incest and early pregnancy). Frankly, from what I saw here, I cannot understand why this woman has been treated with such malevolence over the years; any search for evil in the Borgia family should focus on her brother Cesare and, to some degree, her father, Pope Alexander VI. It is a credit to Lucrezia that she remained loyal to family members who used and abused her for their own selfish reasons. With so much information left unexplored, this interesting look at the life of one of history's most maligned women seems, in the end, to be a little less than definitive.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fair shake for Lucrecia, July 1, 2011

By 

Lola Ann Mcgourty - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Biography - Lucrezia Borgia: Pretty Poison (DVD)

Lucrecia Borgia has been perhaps unfairly viewed as a pariah and her name equated with female evil. The book tells the real story of her life--as well as we can know. I bought this video because of "The Borgias" on Showtime wanting to know more. Women did not have the freedoms we have now and she had to use her beauty and wit to survive.
Biography puts out a good product.Biography - Lucrezia Borgia - Pretty Poison [VHS]

3.0 out of 5 stars BORGIAS REVIEW, January 23, 2012

By 

CATHY (ALLENHURST, GA, US) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Biography - Lucrezia Borgia - Pretty Poison [VHS] (VHS Tape)

WAS NOT PAYING ATTENTION WHEN I PURCHASED AND DID NOT REALIZE THAT I HAD ORDERED A VHS TAPE. CONDITION WAS OK.