Product Details

• Actors: Danielle Darrieux, LEO GENN
• Directors: Marc Allegret
• Format: NTSC
• Region: All Regions
• Number of discs: 1
• Studio: Orsay Films
• DVD Release Date: September 19, 2008
• Run Time: 101 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B001GE2CFK
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #279,350 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An old grainy print with overbright areas that take bites out of the white subtitles, September 4, 2010

By 

J. Faulk (New York NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lady Chatterley's Lover (DVD)

This DVD is issued by Mad Phat Enterprises (amadphat) whose products usually state, "licensed by Video Yesteryear, plastic case, no artwork." The discs are dubs from VHS cassettes whose sources are unrestored 16mm films for classroom use, having only a single projector. Thus midway in the DVD, a screen appears: "Please wait while we change reels."

A diehard foreign-film buff can still appreciate this updating of Lawrence's post-WWI novel to 1955, as evidenced by Danielle Darrieux's (Lady Chatterley) dresses. Leo Genn (rich Lord Chatterley) is wheelchair-bound owing to war injury; as the insensitive owner of the coal mine, he is disliked by the citizenry. His wife has accommodated to the impossibility of sexual congress, but one evening he shocks her by saying he wants her to have a child (to become the Lord's property) by a worthy man of her own choosing. But that's not at all a prompting when she encounters the estate caretaker Mellors (Erno Crisa) at his woodland domicile, and they begin a sexual relationship (he is separated from his troublesome wife). By the time she becomes pregnant by him, she feels strongly linked to him, in the flesh, in the soul. Independent Mellors loves her but makes no claim on her. But the Lady faces up to the Lord, walks out on him, and walks away with Mellors to his new employer.

The strong dramatization of the novel undoubtedly owes a good bit to an earlier stage play by two French coauthors. The casting targets French, English, and Italian audiences. Darrieux's performance is, like, enervated--let the camera do the work. Genn's distinctive timbre and pattern of English delivery are carried over into his French, to curious effect. Erno Crisa (short life: 1924-1968) may have Italian blood, and many of his 50 films were made in Italy, but actually he was born in Tunisia and speaks French fluently. The present role seems to be his best, and indeed it is he who energizes the picture.