| ||||||||||||||||||
From director J.J. Abrams comes the next installment in the Star Trek saga, Star Trek Into Darkness. See it at Cinemark theaters now and pre-order on Blu-ray, 3D Blu-ray, DVD, and the Exclusive Starfleet Phaser Gift Set. Shop Star Trek Into Darkness and more in the Star Trek Store. Learn more |
Frequently Bought Together
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
Special Features
Audio commentary on Brief Encounter by film historian Bruce Eder
New interviews with Noel Coward scholar Barry Day on all of the films
Interview with cinematographer-screenwriter-producer Ronald Neame from 2010
Short documentaries from 2000 on the making of In Which We Serve and Brief Encounter
David Lean: A Self Portrait, a 1971 television documentary on Lean’s career
Episode of the British television series The Southbank Show from 1992 on the life and career of Coward
Audio recording of a 1969 conversation between Richard Attenborough and Coward at London’s National Film Theatre
Trailers
PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by Ian Christie, Terrence Rafferty, Farran Nehne, Geoffrey O’Brien, and Kevin Brownlow
Editorial Reviews
In Which We Serve In the midst of World War II, the renowned playwright Noel Coward engaged a young film editor named David Lean to help him realize his vision for an action drama about a group of Royal Navy sailors (roles that would be filled by Coward himself, Great Expectations’ Bernard Miles, and Ryan’s Daughter’s John Mills, among others) fighting the Germans in the Mediterranean. Coward and Lean ended up codirecting the large-scale project—an impressive undertaking, especially considering that neither of them had directed for the big screen before (this would be Coward’s only such credit). Cutting between a major naval battle and flashbacks to the men’s lives before they left home, In Which We Serve (an Oscar nominee for best picture) was a major breakthrough for both filmmakers and a sensitive and stirring piece of propaganda.
1942
114 minutes
Black & white
Monaural
1.37:1 aspect ratio
This Happy Breed David Lean brings to vivid emotional life Noel Coward’s epic chronicle of a working-class family in the London suburbs over the course of two decades. Robert Newton (Oliver Twist) and Celia Johnson (Brief Encounter) are surpassingly affecting as Frank and Ethel Gibbons, a couple with three children whose modest household is touched by joy and tragedy from the tail end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second. With its mix of politics and melodrama, This Happy Breed is a quintessential British domestic drama, featuring subtly expressive Technicolor cinematography by Ronald Neame and a remarkable supporting cast including John Mills, Stanley Holloway (My Fair Lady), and Kay Walsh (The Horse’s Mouth)
1944
111 minutes
Color
Monaural
1.37:1 aspect ratio
Blithe Spirit Blithe Spirit, David Lean’s delightful film version of Noel Coward’s theater sensation (onstage, it broke London box-office records before hitting Broadway), stars Rex Harrison (Unfaithfully Yours) as a novelist who cheekily invites a medium (The Importance of Being Earnest’s Margaret Rutherford) to his house to conduct a séance, hoping the experience will inspire a book he’s working on. Things go decidedly not as planned when she summons the spirit of his dead first wife (Kay Hammond), a severe inconvenience for his current one (Constance Cummings). Employing Oscar-winning special effects to spruce up Coward’s theatrical farce, Blithe Spirit is a sprightly supernatural comedy with winning performances.
1945
96 minutes
Color
Monaural
1.37:1 aspect ratio
Brief Encounter After a chance meeting on a train platform, a married doctor (The Third Man’s Trevor Howard) and a suburban housewife (This Happy Breed’s Celia Johnson) enter into a muted but passionate, ultimately doomed, love affair. With its evocatively fog-enshrouded setting, swooning Rachmaninoff score, and pair of remarkable performances (Johnson was nominated for an Oscar for her role), David Lean’s film of Noel Coward’s play Still Life deftly explores the thrill, pain, and tenderness of an illicit romance, and has influenced many a cinematic brief encounter since its release.
1945
86 minutes
Black & white
Monaural
1.37:1 aspect ratio
Customer Reviews
Briefly, all four films are extraordinary examples of propaganda at its best. Lean and Coward were both fervently patriotic, and England was the underdog at the time in a war. Lean was just beginning his astonishing career; Coward had just finished a dozen or so years of incredible success on the stage, but considerably less success, or even attempts, at a film career. In 1941, Germany bombed London for 57 consecutive evenings.
Coward wrote and Lean directed these films, with Coward playing the lead for In Which We Serve. Coward also produced, wrote the screenplay, composed the score, and officially codirected, though he handed the reigns to Lean in his directorial debut.
Coward was entertaining the troops during the shooting of the other three films, yet his mark is clearly visible in each films. The cameraman for the quartet was Ronald Neame, perhaps less a household name, yet later the director such gems as The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, I Could Go on Singing and The Horse's Mouth.
In Which We Serve is the story of a ship, sunk off the coast of Crete during the war. Based on incidences in the life of Coward's great friend Lord Louis Mountbatten, flashbacks tell the story of the few remaining survivors, clinging to a lifeboat, waiting for rescue. In lesser hands, this narrative technique would be worse than banal, but the creators, relying so very strongly on flashbacks, allow the audience to see war through the eyes of the women left at home, waiting, not knowing when or if their sons, husbands or boyfriends will return.
Brief Encounter is based on a slight one-act play Coward wrote for Tonight at 8:30 entitled Still Life. A man and a woman, both more or less happily married to other people, meet quite by accident in a train station. To the overused strains of Rachmaninoff, they fall hopelessly, helplessly and enormously in lover. Again, in lesser hands, this stiff-upper-lip-do-the-right-thing sort of drama could be cloying and irritating, but the moral quandary this couple feels somehow slips into the audience's brain, and the horrible realization that although love is usually just nifty, it can cause extraordinary heartache and pain. Parenthetically, Andre Previn has just turned this text into an opera.
This Happy Breed, an ordinary story about an ordinary family living an ordinary life just before the war, grabs the audience with its specificity and universality, until the ordinary becomes extraordinary, and the small pains and pleasures of everyday life insinuates into the audience's psyche. Based on an early play of Coward and drawing on his own lower-middle class background, the triumph here is really Robert Newton and Celia Johnson as the father and mother experiencing the trials and triumphs of everyday life.
The final film, Blithe Spirit, is perhaps the most well known. Rex Harrison stars as an author, re-married after the death of his first wife, hiring psychic Margaret Rutherford to perform a séance so he can learn the lingo of the telepathic trade for his new book. Alas, Madame Arcarti, Rutherford's character, somewhat ineptly brings back the ghost of his first wife, with hilarity and confusion ensuing.
Criterion's restruck prints are wonderful, the extras are pretty astounding, with the complete South Bank show on Coward and some lovely interviews with author and critic Barry Day who has made Coward very much something of his own cottage industry. Day resembles someone who might be in an unexpurgated Alice in Wonderland, but has that fuzzy British charm which can be so endearing. All in all, we owe a deep debt of gratitude to Criterion.
Now, if we could get them to clean up and release the nearly unavailable films Coward acted in, such as The Scoundrel, The Astonished Heart, and perhaps even the television version of Blithe Spirit?
All four films, two of which are in Technicolor, have been magnificently remastered. The colors are brilliant and balanced; the black-and-white images sharp and solid.
I'm not going to use much space talking about the individual movies, since anybody who decides to purchase this collection will, undoubtedly, be well familiar with them.
IN WHICH WE SERVE (1942) was co-directed by Coward and Lean and deals with a ship of the Royal Navy, sunk in the Mediterranean during the early days of World War II. This event occurs at the start of the picture, thus most of the narrative is told via flashback as the survivors cling to a life raft, being strafed by German planes while they await rescue.
Coward plays the ship's captain, and we follow his story, as well as the histories of several crew members. Among the cast in this stirring film, nominated for a Best Picture Oscar,are John Mills, Bernard Miles, Celia Johnson, Kay Walsh, Michael Wilding and Richard Attenborough.
THIS HAPPY BREED (1944) is the story of an average middle class British family seen over a period of twenty years, from the end of The Great War to just before the beginning of World War II. It is a tale of the vicissitudes of life.
The Technicolor film stars Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, John Mills, Kay Walsh and Stanley Holloway.
BLITHE SPIRIT (1945), also in color, is a sparkling comedy about a man (Rex Harrison) who must explain to his present wife (Kay Hammond) why his late wife (Constance Cummings) has decided to haunt them. Margaret Rutherford plays the wacky medium who has brought the poor fellow's problems about. The players are all in top form. A delightful fantasy, adapted from Coward's popular stage play.
BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945) is one of the finest romantic films ever produced, an absorbing love story, adapted from Coward's play, STILL LIFE.
The plot is very simple. Married doctor Trevor Howard and suburban housewife Celia Johnson happen to meet on a train platform and enter into a quietly passionate, ultimately, doomed, love affair.
This collection includes a fabulous cornucopia of extras. Among them are new interviews on all the films with Noel Coward scholar Barry Day, a 2010 interview with cinematographer/screenwriter/producer Ronald Neame, documentaries on the making of IN WHICH WE SERVE and BRIEF ENCOUNTER, a 1971 television documentary on David Lean, a 1969 audio conversation between Coward and Richard Attenborough, a 1992 British television show about the life and career of Coward and much more, including a 46 page booklet filled with essays about the various movies and the talented men who made them.
© Michael B. Druxman
is a worthy addition to anyone's art film collection. Read more
