Product Details

• Actors: Patrick Stewart, Ian Richardson, Elizabeth Spriggs
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: BBC Worldwide
• DVD Release Date: May 16, 2006
• Run Time: 120 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000E8JNQA
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #115,655 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "The Devil's Disciple" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

DEVIL'S DISCIPLE (GEORGE BERNARD SHAW - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The Devil's Disciple" Sent From Heaven, May 21, 2006

By 

Jonathan Alexandratos "bookworm1010" (Knoxville, TN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Devil's Disciple (DVD)

I just watched this wonderful 2-hour BBC program now on DVD. The wit of Bernard Shaw is crisp and biting in the dialogue. The actors, namely Patrick Stewart and Ian Richardson, pump just the right amount of energy, sarcasm, drama, and humor into their lines to make this piece truly enjoyable. Shaw is the only playwright who has ever had the power to make me laugh and cry at the same time. This piece will undoubtedly do that for you.

The DVD transfer is nothing special, though. Some images look a bit grainy. The sound quality is fairly crisp, but everything is perfectly audible. This DVD has one extra, which is also marvelous: a program titled, "The Wit and Wisdom of G. Bernard Shaw." It is a great biography of the playwright's life with scenes and quotes recited by (a 1980s) Christopher Plummer among other fine actors. I would recommend this DVD for purchase by anyone with a remote interest in Shaw or the actors in the program. Also, if you're interested in stories set in Revolutionary War America, I would recommend this to you as well. Basically, if you've clicked on this page out of curiosity, you have what it takes to fully enjoy this program! Enjoy!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Devil's Disciple as George Bernard Shaw wrote it, November 24, 2007

By 

Claudia Thompson (Laramie, WY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Devil's Disciple (DVD)

The Devil's Disciple is not one of George Bernard Shaw's best-known plays, perhaps because it lacks the cynicism and misanthropy of classic Shaw (Pygmalion, Man and Superman). The characters in The Devil's Disciple are generally likeable people who come to generally good ends. This does not mean that Shaw's satire is absent. His targets in this play are religious and class hypocrisy. The kind of class snobbery represented by General Burgoyne (Ian Richardson), who is determined to commit his atrocities in a gentleman-like manner, may be lost on modern audiences, but Shaw's attacks on religious hypocrisy are quite timely.
The play is set in New England during the American Revolution. Richard Dudgeon (Mike Gwilym) has been called back to his Puritanical home village after his father's death. Richard is in rebellion against the strict morality of his upbringing and does everything he can to shock and scandalize his neighbors and family by claiming to be the Devil's disciple. Richard also brings the news that British troops are marching toward the village arresting and hanging suspected rebels. The local minister, Anthony Anderson (Patrick Stewart), determines to reclaim Richard. The minister invites the reprobate into his home over the protests of his pretty young wife, Judith (Susan Woolridge), then leaves the two together while he answers a parish call. British troops break in, seeking not the reprobate Richard but the upright minister. The British arrest the wrong man, leaving the minister's wife torn between desire to save an innocent man and desire to save her husband. Her confusion is furthered when neither man acts the way she expected.
This 1987 BBC production boasts an incredibly strong cast. Mike Gwilym finds all the nuances in Richard Dudgeon, who is not as free of his Puritan upbringing as he would like to think. Elizabeth Spriggs is both bitter and righteous as Richard's narrow mother. Ian Richardson, as the British commander General Burgoyne, is as cold as he is well-mannered. Susan Woolridge does a competent job with Shaw's least believable part, the young wife who confuses her pity for one man and disappointment with another for a shift in her own affections. But it is Patrick Stewart, as the one man of strong principle and true charity in a town full of hypocrites, who really dominates. When Stewart is on-screen, the contrived plot (even Shaw called it a melodrama) becomes convincing and this production moves from pretty good to outstanding. Anyone who still thinks of Stewart mainly as Star Trek's Jean-Luc Picard should see this performance just to get a better sense of his dramatic range.
For those familiar with the 1959 movie version of The Devil's Disciple, starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and Laurence Olivier, a word of caution. The 1959 movie took large liberties with Shaw's text. This is the play as Shaw wrote it, with each sharp epigrammatic line of dialogue preserved and without the insertion of unscripted action sequences. This is pure Shaw, well-directed, beautifully-acted, surprisingly moving. Highly recommended.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One of my favorite GBS plays, September 5, 2006

By 

Reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Devil's Disciple (DVD)

I so much wanted to like this production. I bought it because I was flipping channels not long ago and came across a film version with Kirk Douglas and, in the role of Gentlemanly Johnny Burgoyne, a fantastic actor who I realized only later was Laurence Olivier. I had missed some of Olivier's best lines and so tried to buy the film here on Amazon, only to realize that it wasn't available for purchase in DVD. So the BBC production was the next best thing.

Still, I had very high hopes for it -- with Patrick Stewart and Ian Richardson it seemed almost impossible for it to go wrong. However, if I had thought it through and noticed the date I would have realized that Stewart was playing the Minister, not Burgoyne, which is the role I foolishly expected him in. I'm sure that if it were made again with him in that part he would do it beautifully, as indeed Ian Richardson does here. But Stewart is less suited to the Minister role and I was disappointed not to be getting his Burgoyne.

All in all, the production, while generally enjoyable, was somehow rather tepid. Richard's opening scene should have some irony in it; he should be looking for a reaction in every line that he says, as the only purpose for his hamming it up is to unsettle his relatives; here it is played entirely straight, as if he wholly means what he is saying.

Similarly, Minister Anderson should always give a slight impression of a powerful man not quite placed in his life until he comes into his own at the end; instead, he is curiously bland. The acress playing Judith (the minister's wife) is very good, especially at the end, but should have been made up and costumed to denote younger and prettier; her youth and beauty are what most of the characters respond to for most of the play,and are indeed at the heart of her own self-image, so the audience needs to understand that.

In terms of acting, I actually thought that the best scene was in the last few minutes, when the actor playing Richard makes us suddenly realize just how young the character is meant to be. I was especially impressed when I looked the actor up afterward and realized that he must have been about 40 at the time of the filming. It was beautifully done.

If you're looking to see a production of the play I would not hesitate to recommend this -- it was wonderful to hear the language being spoken by some fine actors. But if you know the play well and have a strong idea of the line readings, then this may disappoint somewhat; too many of the readings seem simply to miss much of the sublety that Shaw, in my view, had in mind.