Product Details

• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Wgbh Boston
• VHS Release Date: March 28, 2000
• Run Time: 60 minutes
• ASIN: B00000F0P7
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #400,013 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

At a time when the business of movies has become common currency, Great Escape rapturously recalls how motion pictures rapidly evolved from nickelodeon novelty to the world's most popular and profoundly influential art form.

Narrated by John Forsythe, this program is itself a great escape for film buffs. In the grandest movie palaces and the humblest traveling tent cinemas, the earliest movies had a uniquely transporting and transforming power. "It was three for a dime," rhapsodizes one New York City moviegoer. "It was worth three million."

From a silent-film accompanist in New York to a projectionist in Rome to moviegoers around the world, Great Escape is a valentine to the movies that had the power to "enthrall, entertain, and seduce." A Parisian man recalls that when he was 10, he couldn't sleep for two nights after seeing Miriam Hopkins on screen. An Italian woman states, "I learned how to kiss and hug at the movies." Adds an Indian woman, "If I had not gone to the cinema so often, I don't think I would have romance in my life. I would have been married off to the man of grandfather's choice."

Like other videos in this award-winning series, Great Escape is not simply a compilation of well-worn classic clips. Lesser-known films such as World War II-era documentaries illustrate film's effective use as propaganda.

Movies are more popular today than ever, yet as the interviews in this program illustrate, they have lost much of their innocence. Italy's Duilia Bartoli perhaps says it best: "Sometimes I don't remember what I did yesterday. But I remember these movie scenes. I will remember them forever." --Donald Liebenson

Product Description

Educational public performance rights are now available! By the mid-1920s, millions are already confirmed "moviegoers." Movies reflected and affected the way people dressed, thought and spoke, teaching the inexperienced about love, courage—and the proper cut of a Western suit. And governments around the globe were quick to realize the power of film: this new mass entertainment would also prove an unrivaled tool of mass persuasion.

In Great Escape, moviegoers remember how film persuaded and influenced, enthralled, seduced, and entertained them—and offered a welcome refuge from the century's pressures and tempo.

The people remember: silent movies, Charlie Chaplin, movie palaces, Hollywood stars, American musicals and westerns, WWII propaganda films.