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Special Features
- 8 episodes on 3 discs
- Bonus documentary In Pursuit of Beauty
- 16 orchestral works from the music soundtrack
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The "Formal Gardens" segment, for instance, spans nearly 3,000 years, with the original gardens of the pharaohs providing fruit, shade trees, even herbs for embalming. The Persians introduced the concept of pleasure gardens, influenced by Islamic belief of heaven as a vast, restorative garden. The classical Greeks and Romans added statuary to the formal ideal; the Italians, cascading fountains; the French, the idea, embodied at Versailles, of man's mastery over nature. Every garden is breathtaking in its own way, yet there are principles that even a novice gardener can absorb: the notion of architecture and structure, inside which the "furniture" of flowers and other plants, as suggested by the British garden expert Penelope Hobhouse, can be placed just so. Along the way, and around the world through history, Hepburn is a compelling guide whose obvious passion for the subject makes the series as riveting as any nature documentary. Extras in the Special Tribute Edition include a documentary, In Pursuit of Beauty, in which Hepburn visits more than 30 locations (including Giverny, known as Monet's flower garden). It also includes an interview with Hepburn and a splendid soundtrack featuring selections by Debussy, Vivaldi, and Berlioz. --A.T. Hurley
Product Description
Customer Reviews
The DVD production is impeccable (and cheaper than VHS to boot). Color is wonderfully pure, and images crisp and sharp.
But above all, it is the many gorgeous gardens (worldwide) and Audrey Hepburn's appreciations of them that will hold you entranced. The scope is broad, and the loving care used in photography, presentation, and production are always evident. My own favorite is Monet's garden, but there are wonderful shots of many other spots as well.
This comes highly, and unreservedly recommended!
I bought this DVD because I'm a Hepburn fan and her participation in this project certainly lends the entire undertaking a touch of class. She introduces each segment, reads poetry (and Anne Frank), converses with gardeners, and makes observations of her own--usually as she drifts in or out of the picture wearing elegant Ralph Lauren outfits and swinging a straw basket or plucking a bloom or two. (Watching the episodes in quick succession, I realized how true it is that she always favors her left profile.) In some episodes, however, she is barely on screen at all. As these shows were taped the year before her death, I suspect her participation was limited by the state of her health and that she was not able to fly to every location.
Although the shows would have been much poorer without Ms Hepburn, they are substantial in their own right. I found the episode on "Tulips and Spring Bulbs" especially informative. The bulk of the script, it should be noted, fell into the lap of the narrator, Michael York. He rose to the occasion as best he could, but some of the text he was expected to read was surely not written to be read aloud by any human being. (One amusing moment occurred when Mr. York, using his best Oxonian English, referred to George Washington as "OUR founding father.")
The theme that seemed to run through all the episodes is that gardening is a delicate collaboration between man and nature. As Ms Hepburn states, quoting gardener Anne Leighton (?), "A garden, to be a garden, must represent a different world, however small, from the real world....Gardening offers man a chance to regulate at least one aspect of his life--to control his environment and show himself as he wishes to be."
tha love gardens, should have.
I really recomend it.
Martha
