Product Details

• Format: Black & White, Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Unapix / a-Pix Ent.
• VHS Release Date: September 14, 1999
• Run Time: 30 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: 157523677X
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #307,519 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Best known to Americans as the subject of an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical and a Madonna movie, Eva Peron is the subject of this Lifetime Intimate Portrait. Actress Jill St. John narrates the story of Evita, as she was known, and quotations from Evita's speeches and the autobiographies of her and presidential husband Juan Peron supplement the tale. Biographers, members of Juan Peron's cabinet, and a former boss from her radio soap-opera days also weigh in as the documentary explores the short but astounding life of the ill-fated heroine of the Argentine poor. She died at only 33, but managed to make the journey from a dusty prairie town to the balcony of the presidential palace in Buenos Aires by age 26. Born illegitimate and impoverished, she never forgot her roots and championed the poor in her South American country by creating thousands of hospitals, schools, and housing units for them. Archival footage of her speeches to cheering throngs and hundreds of still photos give haunting testimony to the life and death of this mesmerizing figure and her lasting impact on Argentina and the world. --Kimberly Heinrichs

From the back cover

Beautiful. Powerful. Loved and despised. Subject of the musical Evita and the subsequent Hollywood film starring Madonna, Eva Peron was no stranger to controversy. An outcast while growing up in a slum in Argentina, she dreamed of being an actress. Later, she became first lady of her homeland and before age 30 was hailed as "the most powerful woman in the world." Intimate Portrait follows the story from her early fame as a radio soap opera actress to her marriage to Juan Peron, when she was idolized by the poor and hated by the wealthy. Eva Peron poured millions of dollars from businesses into hospitals, schools and housing for the poor. Dead from cancer at 33, Peron's memory still inspires political and social forces in Argentina. With rare archival footage, photographs, radio broadcasts, interviews, and clips from Evita.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "She made the language of love a political language.", April 27, 2002

By 

Andrew Olivo Parodi (Oregon, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Intimate Portrait: Eva Peron [VHS] (VHS Tape)

"And it worked!" says Marysa Navarro in this video. Marysa Navarro, author of EVITA: THE REAL LIFE OF EVA PERON, is referring to the fact that Eva Peron did not speak to her public in political terminology but in the language of emotions. It is doubtful that Evita ever delivered a speech that did not refer to "my heart". "In Argentina today," wrote a reporter from the United States in 1948, "it's love, love, love. Love makes the Perons go round. They are constantly, passionately, madly in love." The same could be said for this video - love love love.

This video was released back in December of 1996 the same week as the A&E Biography EVITA: THE WOMAN BEHIND THE MYTHS. I watched the two productions back to back, and the difference is stunning. While the A&E version focuses on the political maneuverings of Juan Peron and how Evita aided him, this version focuses on Evita the icon and her incredible "rags to riches" story. There is no mistaking that this video INTIMATE PORTRAIT: EVA PERON by Lifetime Television is intended primarily for a female audience. It focuses almost exclusively on Evita's inner personal struggle, her emotional impact on the lives or Argentines, and re-counts Evita's life in the context of her being what Julie M. Taylor, author of EVA PERON: THE MYTHS OF A WOMAN, terms "an early feminist."

And from there begins the parade of evidence: Evita sat in on Peron's cabinet meetings despite the fact that his generals did not like his mistress's presence (especially a woman of her class), she helped gain Argentine women the right to vote, she organized the first powerful female political party in Argentine history, she advocated the law that granted "illegitimate" children the same rights as all others (under this law "illegitimate" children were now called "natural" children), and she worked up to 20 hours a day in her charitable foundation. As author Julie M. Taylor notes, "Evita never forgot what it was like to be poor. The things she gave were very practical, like sewing machines. What you can do with a sewing machine, it can change the life of your entire block!" Actress Jill St. John narrates this video in an almost angelic voice while music, somewhat reminiscent of the musical EVITA, plays in the background. Dramatized readings from Evita's autobiography LA RAZON DE MI VIDA (available on Amazon as EVITA BY EVITA) are given by a woman with a thick Hispanic accent, as well as dramatizations of Juan Peron's memoirs where he describes his initial reaction to meeting the woman who would become his wife.

Also interviewed in this video are: George Bryn, radio director who worked with Evita in her early days as an actress ("She was not one to give up easily. No, not her. She never did"), Benito Llambi, Ambassador to Switzerland ("[On her tour of Switzerland] people would come up to the car and see her and yell, 'Oh, what a beautiful woman!'"), and Juan Peron's advisor Jorge Antonio ("She didn't ask; she would order. Whenever it had something to do with the poor or the humble, she would tell the men in her husband's government what she needed. She didn't ask for favors.").

"As long as I can remember," reads the actress dramatizing Evita's autobiography, "the existence of injustice has hurt my soul as if a nail were being driven into it. From every period in my life I retain the memory of some injustice tearing me apart." And, as this video shows, Evita tried her best, and in many ways succeeded, in correcting some injustices in her country. The 50-year anniversary of the "Voto Femenino" (Argentine women's right to vote) was celebrated in 1997, and was commemorated with a coin bearing Evita's likeness.