Product Details

• Actors: George Bartenieff, MacIntyre Dixon, Jay Garner, Cliff Gorman, Howard Green
• Directors: Glenn Jordan
• Writers: Clifford Odets
• Producers: Glenn Jordan, Jac Venza
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Kultur Video
• DVD Release Date: April 30, 2002
• Run Time: 160 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000067IYM
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #92,130 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Paradise Lost (Broadway Theater Archive)" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

• This item is part of The Broadway Theatre Archive Series.

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Clifford Odets' portrait of the Depression, Paradise Lost, was premiered by the Group Theatre in a ground-breaking 1935 Broadway production directed by Harold Clurman and starring Luther and Stella Adler, Yiddish theatre legend Morris Carnovsky, Elia Kazan and Sanford Meisner, among others. It became one of the Group's most controversial plays and remains Odets' favorite. Set in 1932, Paradise Lost unfolds in the modest two-family home of Leo and Clara Gordon as misfortune strikes them and the people running with them. Less concerned with plot so much as characterization, it conveys what one critic calls Odets' "rich, compassionate, angry feelings for people." "It is my hope," wrote Odets, "that when people see [it], they're going to be glad they're alive. And I hope that after they've seen it, they'll turn to strangers sitting next to them and say 'hello.'" "A moving evocation of an apparently lost genre." --The Christian Science Monitor. With Bernadette Peters, Eli Wallach, Fred Gwynne, and Jo Van Fleet.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The scintilla in all of us, March 15, 2007

By	Luca Graziuso (NYC) - See all my reviews

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Clifford Odetts dramatized the American depression in a way that transcends time and space. It is of a rare and refined beauty which one must experience and absorb in order to fully appreciate. Depression seems to be the order of the day for the protagonists as they contend with life, memories and ineptitude. Intellectual superfluous men abound and political radicals skirt the staging of a home where its residents cope, carry-on and troop along suffering tragedies and circumstances, unable to accept their fate and forever awaiting a turn in their luck. All the while there remains a confused but ever-present faith in life and the meaning and values it preserves. It is indeed a play that makes you happy to be alive but in a more profound way than may be initially believed. Long after a first viewing it ferments in your thoughts to avidly flesh out a philosophy about truth and reason, life and meaning, the way we live and the effect it has on all. The acting is absolutely perfect. It is a long three act play and deserves repeated viewings. Immensely rich and a broadway masterpece by all standards.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great performance! Don't overlook it., January 21, 2003

By	R. Scharba "hen teaser" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I can't commend this highly enough. I saw it on the local Public Television station here in Chicago when it was first broadcast in the early 1970s, and it made a tremendous impact on me. This play, and the very similar "Awake and Sing," are depression era dramas written by Clifford Odets and originally produced for the stage in the mid 1930s, when they were the cutting edge of contemporary theatre and dealt with contemporary issues. These new DVDs contain television productions done with top-notch casts in the early 1970s. I found them unforgettable, and am delighted to be able to savor them again after 30-plus years. They're just as good as I remember.

They tell their stories from a rather specific perspective, i.e., that of well-educated middle- and upper-middle class Jewish families living in New York, and falling on hard times during the depression. These people have pretensions of gentility and high culture, but quickly-encroaching poverty is grinding at that façade and leaving them without much more than primal survival instincts. The main themes they deal with, as I read it, are familial love (and how it sometimes mutates into betrayal or hate under pressure of poverty), what we owe to our fellow humans and vise versa, grace or the lack of it under extreme pressure, and the wisdom or folly of optimism for the future. I expect there are themes, subtleties, and symbolisms that I overlook, but they're extremely rich brews of ideas that can keep you pondering long after having seen them. What they are most emphatically NOT is light entertainment. Dark and somewhat depressing, they explore how severe economic pressures degrade the quality of life, and poison relationships with our families, friends, co-workers, neighbors, community and government. In this, they are not the least bit dated, and show that while individual issues may vary with time, human nature doesn't.

All of the above may make Odets' plays sound a bit ponderous or academic, but they're really gripping dramas, done here by superb players. Eli Wallach's impassioned, desperately optimistic speech at the end of "Paradise Lost" always gets me a bit teary-eyed.

The only reason I wouldn't give it 5 stars is that the dated video source presents a slightly fuzzy picture with inconsistent color quality, and the sound quality is mediocre at best. This, to me, is of little importance when dealing with such excellent content. The fact that there are no other comments here thus far suggests that people are passing these up. It's really great stuff. Don't miss it. Buy it, to encourage more of the same on DVD.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clifford Odets' Paradise Lost, July 29, 2008

By	Michael Epstein (San Francisco Bay Area) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Thank Kultur and Broadway Theater Archive for making this wonderful TV production of Clifford Odets' play "Paradise Lost" available on DVD. First saw it over 30 years ago and never forgot it. Riveting. [ASIN:B000067IYM Paradise Lost (Broadway Theater Archive)]