Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) * * *

(first title card)
Title Card: It is the stated position of the U.S. Air Force that their safeguards would prevent the occurrence of such events as are depicted in this film. Furthermore, it should be noted that none of the characters portrayed in this film are meant to represent any real persons living or dead.

(first lines)
Narrator: For more than a year, ominous rumors had been privately circulating among high-level Western leaders that the Soviet Union had been at work on what was darkly hinted to be the ultimate weapon: a doomsday device. Intelligence sources traced the site of the top secret Russian project to the perpetually fog-shrouded wasteland below the Arctic peaks of the Zhokhov Islands. What they were building or why it should be located in such a remote and desolate place no one could say.

Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) is a mentally unstable commander of a United States Air Force base who plans to attack the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons, hoping to thwart a Communist conspiracy to "sap and impurify" the "precious bodily fluids" of the American people with fluoridated water. This theory came to him during sexual intercourse, and he believes it to be the cause of his post-coital fatigue.

Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk... ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children's ice cream.
Mandrake: Lord, Jack.
Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?
Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.
Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. Nineteen forty-six, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.
Mandrake: Uh, Jack, Jack, listen, tell me, tell me, Jack. When did you first... become... well, develop this theory?
Ripper: Well, I, uh... I... I... first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love.
Mandrake: Hmm.
Ripper: Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue... a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I... I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence.
Mandrake: Hmm.
Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women uh... women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh... I do not avoid women, Mandrake.
Mandrake: No.
Ripper: But I... I do deny them my essence.

Ripper orders the nuclear armed B-52s of the 843rd Bomb Wing past their failsafe points--where they normally wait for possible orders to proceed--and into Soviet airspace. He also tells the personnel of Burpelson Air Force Base that the US and the USSR have entered into a "shooting war". Although a nuclear attack should require Presidential authority to be initiated, Ripper uses "Plan R", an emergency war plan enabling a senior officer to launch a retaliation strike against the Soviets if everyone in the normal chain of command, including the President, has been killed during a sneak attack. According to the movie's plot, Plan R was intended to discourage the Soviets from launching a decapitation strike against the President in Washington to disrupt U.S. command and control and stop an American nuclear counterattack.

Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers), an RAF exchange officer serving as General Ripper's executive officer, realizes that there has been no attack on the U.S. when he turns on a radio and hears pop music instead of Civil Defense alerts. When Mandrake reveals this to Ripper, and Ripper refuses to recall the wing, Mandrake announces that he will issue the recall on his own authority, but Ripper refuses to disclose the three-letter code necessary for recalling the bombers and locks the two of them in his office.

Ripper: The base is being put on Condition Red. I want this flashed to all sections immediately.
Mandrake: Condition Red, sir, yes, jolly good idea. That keeps the men on their toes.
Ripper: Group Captain, I'm afraid this is not an exercise.
Mandrake: Not an exercise, sir?
Ripper: I shouldn't tell you this, Mandrake, but you're a good officer and you've a right to know. It looks like we're in a shooting war.
Mandrake: Oh, hell. Are the Russians involved, sir?
Ripper: Mandrake, have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?
Mandrake: Well, no, I can't say I have. Do I look all rancid and clotted? You look at me, Jack. Eh? Look, eh? And I drink a lot of water, you know. I'm what you might call a water man, Jack--that's what I am. And I can swear to you, my boy, swear to you, that there's nothing wrong with my bodily fluids. Not a thing, Jackie. If you don't put that gun away and stop this stupid nonsense, the court of Enquiry on this'll give you such a pranging, you'll be lucky if you end up wearing the uniform of a bloody toilet attendant.

In the War Room at The Pentagon, Air Force General "Buck" Turgidson (George C. Scott) briefs President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers). Turgidson tries to convince Muffley to take advantage of the situation to eliminate the Soviets as a threat by launching a full-scale attack. Turgidson believes that the United States is in a superior strategic position, and a first strike against the Soviet Union would destroy 90% of their missiles before they could retaliate, resulting in a victory for the U.S. with "acceptable" American casualties of "no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops... depending on the breaks". President Muffley instead invites Soviet Ambassador Alexi de Sadesky (Peter Bull) to the War Room, contacts Soviet Premier Dmitri Kissoff on the hotline, and insists on giving the Soviets all the information necessary to shoot down the American planes before they can carry out their strikes.

President Muffley: But this is absolute madness, Ambassador! Why should you build such a thing?
Ambassador de Sadesky: There were those of us who fought against it, but in the end we could not keep up with the expense involved in the arms race, the space race, and the peace race. At the same time our people grumbled for more nylons and washing machines. Our doomsday scheme cost us just a small fraction of what we had been spending on defense in a single year. The deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a doomsday gap.
President Muffley: This is preposterous. I've never approved of anything like that.
Ambassador de Sadesky: Our source was the New York Times.

Over the phone, a drunken Premier Kissoff reveals to the Soviet Ambassador that their country has installed an active Doomsday device which will automatically destroy all life on Earth if a nuclear attack ever hits the Soviet Union. The Doomsday Device is operated by a network of computers and has been conceived as the ultimate deterrent: as a safeguard, it cannot be deactivated, or it will set itself off, because its hardware and programs have been configured in such a way that an attempt at its deactivation would be recognized as sabotage. This weapon is described as based on "cobalt-thorium-G"--this was inspired by the real idea of a cobalt bomb, conceived by nuclear pioneer Leo Szilard, founder of Council for a Livable World.

President Muffley: Why haven't you radioed the plans countermanding the go-code?
Turgidson: Well... I'm afraid we're unable to communicate with any of the aircraft.
President Muffley: Why?
Turgidson: As you may recall, sir, one of the provisions of Plan R provides that once the go-code is received, the normal SSB Radios on the aircraft are switched into a specially coded device which I believe is designated as CRM-114. Now, in order to prevent the enemy from issuing fake or confusing orders, CRM-114 is designed not to receive at all. Unless the message is the correct three-letter recall code prefix.
President Muffley: You mean to tell me, General Turgidson, that you will be unable to recall the aircraft?
Turgidson: That's about the size of it. However, at this moment our men are plowing through and transmitting every possible three-letter combination of the recall code. But since there are over 17,000 permutations... it's going to take us about two-and-a-half days to transmit them all.
President Muffley: How soon did you say our planes will be entering Russian radar cover?
Turgidson: About 18 minutes from now, sir.

The President next calls Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers), a former Nazi and strategy expert. Dr. Strangelove is also known as Dr. Merkwürdigliebe, the German translation of Strangelove. The wheelchair-bound Dr. Strangelove is a mad scientist whose eccentricities include a severe case of alien hand syndrome. His right hand, clad in a black leather glove, occasionally attempts to strangle Strangelove or make a Nazi salute. Dr. Strangelove occasionally addresses the President, as either "Mein President" or even "Mein Führer".

Strangelove explains the principles behind the Doomsday Device, which he says is "simple to understand... credible and convincing". He also points out that a Doomsday Device kept secret has no value as a deterrent. The Soviet Ambassador admits that his government had installed it a few days before they were going to announce it publicly to the world, because Kissoff "loves surprises".

U.S. Army paratroopers sent by the President arrive at Burpelson to arrest General Ripper. Because Ripper has warned his men that the enemy might attack disguised as American soldiers, the base's security forces, and Ripper himself with a machine gun kept in his golf bag, open fire on them. The Army forces win the battle and gain access to the base, and Ripper, fearing torture to extract the recall code, commits suicide. Colonel "Bat" Guano (Keenan Wynn) shoots his way into Ripper's office, but suspects that Mandrake, whose uniform he does not recognize, is leading a mutiny of "deviated preverts" and proceeds to arrest him. Mandrake convinces Guano that he has to call the President to tell him the recall code, which he has deduced from Ripper's desk blotter doodles to be based on the initials for the phrases peace on earth and purity of essence. Since office phone connections had been knocked out by the fighting at the base, Mandrake is forced to use a pay phone to try to contact the President. Not having the correct change to place a long-distance call to the Pentagon, Mandrake persuades Guano to shoot a Coca-Cola vending machine to get the change out of it, and eventually is able to forward the likely code combinations to Strategic Air Command.

The correct code "OPE" is given to the planes, and those that have not been shot down return to base--except for one. Its radio and fuel tanks were damaged by a Soviet anti-aircraft missile, with the result that the plane is neither able to receive the recall code nor to reach its primary or secondary target--where, at the urging of the U.S. President, the Soviets have concentrated all available defenses. On the crew's own initiative, the plane proceeds instead to a target of opportunity that is undefended.

As they start their bomb run the damaged B-52's bomb bay doors will not open. Aircraft commander Major T. J. "King" Kong (Slim Pickens) goes down to the bomb bay to open them himself, straddling a nuclear bomb as he tries to fix sparking wires overhead. As the B-52 reaches its target the doors open, triggering the bomb to fall without further warning. Kong rides the bomb to the ground like a rodeo cowboy, whooping, hollering and waving his cowboy hat.

The bomb explodes, triggering the Doomsday Machine. According to the Soviet ambassador, life on Earth's surface will be extinct in ten months. Dr. Strangelove recommends to President Muffley that a group of several hundred thousand people be relocated into deep mine shafts, where the nuclear fallout cannot reach them, so that the U.S. can be repopulated afterwards. Because of space limitations, Strangelove suggests a gender ratio of "ten females to each male", with the women selected for their sexual characteristics, and the men selected on the basis of their physical strength, intellectual capabilities, and importance in business and government--which would include all those present in the room. General Turgidson rants that the Soviets will likely create an even better bunker than the U.S., and argues that America "must not allow a mine shaft gap". Meanwhile, the Soviet Ambassador retreats to a corner of the War Room and starts taking pictures with a spy camera disguised as a pocket watch.

President Muffley: You mean people could actually stay down there for a hundred years?
Dr. Strangelove: It would not be difficult, Mein Führer. Nuclear reactors could--heh, I'm sorry, Mr. President--nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely.

At the conclusion, a visibly excited Dr. Strangelove stands up out of his wheelchair, shouting "Mein Führer, I can walk!". Abruptly, the film ends with a barrage of nuclear explosions, accompanied by Vera Lynn's famous World War II song "We'll Meet Again".

(last lines)
Dr. Strangelove: Sir! I have a plan! (standing up from his wheelchair) Mein Führer! I can walk!

DR. STRANGELOVE, OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB, commonly known as DR. STRANGELOVE, is an American/British comedy film loosely based on Peter George's Cold War thriller novel "Red Alert" (aka "Two Hours to Doom"). Arguably the greatest black comedy ever made, Stanley Kubrick's cold-war classic is the ultimate satire of the nuclear age. It's a perfect spoof of political and military insanity. Beautifully filmed in black and white, it features some impressive sets and effective, documentary-style combat footage. DR. STRANGELOVE is one of dirctor Stanley Kubrick's finest films, uncompromising as it condemns proud macho posturing on all sides. It does it with a weapon more effective in the long run than A-bombs and H-bombs: comedy.

The cast also includes: James Earl Jones (Lt. Lothar Zogg), Tracy Reed (Miss Scott), Jack Creley (Mr. Staines), Frank Berry (Lt. H.R. Dietrich), Robert O'Neil (Adm. Randolph), Glenn Beck (Lt. W.D. Kivel), Roy Stephens (Frank), Shane Rimmer (Capt. G.A. "Ace" Owens), Hal Galili (Burpelson AFB Defense Team member), Paul Tamarin (Lt. B. Goldberg), Laurence Herder (Burpelson AFB Defense Team member), Gordon Tanner (Gen. Faceman), and John McCarthy (Burpelson AFB Defense Team member). Laurie Johnson composed the original music. Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, and Peter George wrote the screenplay based on Peter George's novel. Produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick.

Columbia Pictures agreed to provide financing for the film only on the condition that Peter Sellers would play at least four roles, because much of the success of LOLITA (1962), Kubrick's previous film, was based on Sellers' performance. Peter Sellers plays three of the four roles initially written for him. At the start of production he was to play the role of Air Force Major T. J. "King" Kong, the B-52 Stratofortress aircraft commander, but Sellers sprained an ankle and could not play the role, as technical constraints would have confined him to the cramped space of the cockpit set. Sellers improvised much of his dialogue during filming, and Kubrick incorporated the ad-libs into the screenplay, so that the improvised lines became part of the screenplay, a technique known as retroscripting.

The title character, Dr. Strangelove, is not in the original book. He serves as President Muffley's scientific advisor in the War Room, presumably making use of prior expertise as a Nazi physicist. When General Turgidson expresses to Mr. Staines (Jack Creley) that "Strangelove" is a very bizarre name, Staines responds that Strangelove's original German surname was "Merkwürdigliebe", without mentioning that "Merkwürdigliebe" translates as "Strangelove" in English. Twice in the film, Strangelove addresses the President as "Mein Führer". With dialogue such as "You can't fight here! This is the war room!" and images of Slim Pickens's riding a bomb to oblivion, this movie has become a part of our cultural vocabulary.

Kubrick stated: "My idea of doing it as a nightmare comedy came in the early weeks of working on the screenplay. I found that in trying to put meat on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully, one had to keep leaving out of it things which were either absurd or paradoxical, in order to keep it from being funny; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in question."

After deciding to turn the film into a black comedy, Kubrick brought in Terry Southern as a co-writer. Peter Sellers is also sometimes considered an uncredited co-writer, as he changed many lines with improvisation. DR. STRANGELOVE was filmed at Shepperton Studios in London, because Peter Sellers was in the middle of a divorce at the time and unable to leave England. The sets occupied three main sound stages: the Pentagon War Room, the B-52 Stratofortress bomber and the last one containing both the motel room and General Ripper's office and outside corridor. The studio's buildings were also used as the Air Force base exterior. The original musical score for the film was composed by Laurie Johnson and the special effects were by Wally Veevers.

Many characters' names involve sexual wordplay. Group Captain Lionel Mandrake's last name refers to the Mandrake plant, which has mythical fertility properties. The Soviet Ambassador Alexei de Sadesky is named for the Marquis de Sade, and Premier Dmitri Kisov's last name is pronounced "Kissoff", a pun on "kiss off". Major "King" Kong rides a phallic-looking H-bomb, which explodes as he approaches the "target of opportunity", when they are unable to reach the primary target. Laputa in Spanish means "the whore". President Merkin Muffley's first and last name crudely imply that he is a "pussy" by nature, since a merkin is a female pubic wig used by prostitutes in the 18th century, and muff, slang for pubic hair, refers to the area where the wig is applied. The name of General Buck Turgid(s)on is derived from turgid, a biological term meaning full of fluid to the point of hardness, as in an erection. And "buck" is an explicit symbol of virility, in other words a military "hard-on". Colonel "Bat" Guano's name is a scatological play on words meaning bat feces, which could echo the slang term bat-shit, meaning insanity.

DR. STRANGELOVE has been released on DVD quite a few times over the years. The 2 Disc Special Edition DVD has about 15 to 20 percent of the screen image removed. If you look, you will see that this edition of Dr. Strangelove is presented in anamorphic widescreen, with a 1.66:1 aspect ratio. This is the first time DR. STRANGELOVE has ever been presented this way because it was not shot that way. It was filmed with a varying aspect ratio, mostly 1.33:1. They did the same with GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) with a pseudo-widescreen version in the late 1960s, and such bastardized versions of movies should be avoided. It diminishes the video quality, ruins the composition, and hides things you are supposed to see. As with the last DVD release, the 45th Anniversary Blu-ray disc gives us a matted 1.66:1 ratio. The crispness of the shades of black and white coupled with solid contrast shows a remarkable level of detail for a film of this age, and the blacks never become muddy or gray. For audio, the original mono track has been included and it sounds excellent. It clearly gives us everything from the front without the sound getting mushy or muddled. Also included is a new Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix that makes the audio sound even better. The Blu-ray comes with a variety of bonus materials, but most have been released previously on DVD.

"The Cold War: Picture-in-Picture and Pop-Up Trivia Track" is the only new feature to the Blu-ray bonus materials, and it's very informative. Using pop-up boxes and videos, the track discusses the Cold War, real military parallels, the movie, how they all interacted, and how the movie influenced real life. "No Fighting in the War Room or: Dr. Strangelove and the Nuclear Threat" (30:04 minutes) has more discussion about the Cold War. "Inside: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (46:04 minutes) is the making-of feature, quite thorough and several notches above the standard fare. It covers the entire movie, leaving you well informed. "Best Sellers or: Peter Sellers and Dr. Strangelove" (18:27 minutes) features actors, comedians, and famous people gushing over how great Peter Sellers was in this movie and how great he was in everything he ever did. "The Art of Stanley Kubrick: From Short Films to Dr. Strangelove" (13:50 minutes) is a discussion of the life and times of Kubrick up to DR. STRANGELOVE. "An Interview with Robert McNamara" (24:26 minutes) is an interview with the former US Secretary of Defense (1961-68) in which he talks about the Cold War and not about the movie. "Split Screen Interviews with Peter Sellers and George C. Scott" (7:17 minutes) is the oddest bonus item, part of an interview with each, but it is not very informative or interesting. Lastly is a Digibook release and the content inside is a nice mixture of photos and essay.

Kubrick's film regularly appears on film critics' lists of the all-time best. Roger Ebert has DR. STRANGELOVE in his list of Great Movies, saying it is "arguably the best political satire of the century." It is also rated as the fifth greatest film and the highest rated comedy in Sight & Sound’s directors’ poll. In 2000 readers of Total Film magazine voted it the 24th greatest comedy film of all time. It is ranked 15th top movie of all time on TopTenReviews Movies. In addition, the movie is ranked # 6 in the All-Time High Scores chart of Metacritic's Video/DVD section with an average score of 96. It is also currently ranked the 27th greatest movie of all time on the intenet's IMDb. Additionally, it was listed as # 3 on the American Film Institute's "100 Years... 100 Laughs", the top 100 funniest American films of all time. In 1989, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

All About Eve (1950) * * *

ALL ABOUT EVE opens with the image of an award trophy described by an off-camera narrator: "The Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement is perhaps unknown to you. It has been spared the sensational and commercial publicity that attends such questionable honors as the Pulitzer Prize--and those awards presented annually by that film society."

We are told the elite of the theatrical world attend the annual presentation of the coveted Sarah Siddons Award for dramatic achievement in the theater: "This is the dining hall of the Sarah Siddons Society. The occasion is its annual banquet and presentation of the highest honor our theater knows--the Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement...The minor awards, as you can see, have already been presented. Minor awards are for such as the writer and director since their function is merely to construct a tower so that the world can applaud a light which flashes on top of it. And no brighter light has ever dazzled the eye than Eve Harrington. Eve. But more of Eve later, all about Eve, in fact."

The cynical and acid-tongued New York drama critic Addison De Witt (George Sanders) introduces himself before going further: "To those of you who do not read, attend the theater, listen to unsponsored radio programs or know anything of the world in which you live--it is perhaps necessary to introduce myself. My name is Addison De Witt. My native habitat is the theater. In it, I toil not, neither do I spin. I am a critic and commentator. I am essential to the theater."

Narrator De Witt introduces the other main characters in the ceremony's audience at the same table, including Karen Richards (Celeste Holm), wife of playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe): "She is the wife of a playwright, therefore of the theater by marriage. Nothing in her background or breeding should have brought her any closer to the stage than Row E, Center. However, during her senior year at Radcliffe, Lloyd Richards lectured on the drama. The following year, Karen became Mrs. Lloyd Richards."

Next at the table to be introduced is Max Fabian (Gregory Ratoff), the theatrical producer of the play which has won the award for Eve: "There are in general two types of theatrical producers. One has a great many wealthier friends who will risk a tax deductible loss. This type is interested in art. The other is one to whom each production means potential ruin or fortune. This type is out to make a buck."

Finally there is Broadway actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis): "Margo Channing is a star of the Theater. She made her first stage appearance, at the age of four, in "Midsummer Night's Dream". She played a fairy and entered--quite unexpectedly--stark naked. She has been a star ever since. Margo is a great star. A true star. She never was or will be anything less or anything else."

Miss Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), an actress who we soon learn all about in flashbacks, is being honored as the youngest recipient ever to win the Sarah Siddons Award as Best Actress: "Such a young lady, young in years, but whose heart is as old as the theater. Some of us are privileged to know her. We have seen beyond the beauty and artistry that have made her name resound through the nation." From the reactions of audience members who have been introduced--false smiles, unmoving faces, cynical looks, and unapplauding hands, we sense the sham of the awards ceremony for Eve: "We know her humility, her devotion, her loyalty to her art, her love, her deep and abiding love for us, for what we are and what we do, the theater. She has had one wish, one prayer, one dream--to belong to us. Tonight, her dream has come true. And henceforth, we shall dream the same of her."

As the glamorous Eve rises to triumphantly accept the award, the voice-over continues, but when she reaches out for the award, the shot freeze-frames: "Eve. Eve the Golden Girl, the Cover Girl, the Girl Next Door, the Girl on the Moon. Time has been good to Eve. Life goes where she goes. She's the profiled, covered, revealed, reported. What she eats and what she wears and whom she knows and where she was, and when and where she's going. Eve. You all know all about Eve. What can there be to know that you don't know?"

For the rest of the movie, events from early October to June which led to the award ceremony are unfolded through the thoughts and actions of each important character in attendance. Margo Channing is one of the biggest and most successful stars on Broadway, but she is beginning to show her age. After a performance one night Karen Richards brings in infatuated fan Eve Harrington to meet Margo. Eve claims to be Margo's biggest fan and tells the group gathered in Margo's dressing room--Karen and Lloyd, Margo's lover Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill), and Margo's maid Birdie Coonan (Thelma Ritter)--that she followed Margo's theatrical tour to New York after seeing her in a play in San Francisco. However, Eve actually has theatrical aspirations of her own to become a big star on Broadway.

Karen: You're talented, famous, wealthy, people waiting around night after night, just to see you, even in the wind and the rain.
Margo: Autograph fiends, they're not people. Those are little beasts that run around in packs like coyotes...They're nobody's fans. They're juvenile delinquent, they're mental defective, and nobody's audience. They never see a play or a movie even. They're never indoors long enough.

Margo quickly befriends Eve, who willingly offers to assist Margo, and soon she gives Eve a job as assistant. Eve's calculated, guileless manipulation of Margo's vanity and sentiments help her maneuver her way into Margo's life. Everyone is taken by lovely Eve's shy charm, helplessness, naivete, lack of pretension and passion. But Margo's maid, friend and companion Birdie reacts skeptically to Eve's fabricated, ingratiating "make-believe" image and stories, and says, "What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." Margo stops her from criticizing Eve: "There are some human experiences, Birdie, that do not take place in a vaudeville house--and that even a fifth-rate vaudevillian should understand and respect!"

Supposedly Eve's father was a poor farmer, so to help out, she quit school, moved to Milwaukee, and became a secretary in a brewery. She says, "It's pretty hard to make believe you are anyone else. Everything is beer." There was a little theater group there--"like a drop of rain on the desert." Supposedly she married Eddie, a radio technician, and during the war, he flew in the Air Force in the South Pacific. She learned she was a war widow when she was in San Francisco. Stranded, she remained there, found a job, and lived off her deceased husband's insurance. She saved herself from devastation by attending Margo's performances: "And there were theaters in San Francisco. And then one night, Margo Channing came to play in "Remembrance" and I went to see it. Well, here I am."

Margo: Funny business, a woman's career---the things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. That's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted. And in the last analysis, nothing's any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed, and there he is. Without that, you're not a woman. You're something with a French provincial office or a book full of clippings, but you're not a woman. Slow curtain, the end.

Eve begins working to replace Margo, scheming to become her understudy and take advantage of her, tricking her into missing a performance. Knowing in advance she will go on, Eve invites the city's theater critics to the theater that night. She makes a pass at Bill Sampson, but he rejects her. Eve then schemes to secure the role of Cora through blackmail, a role Lloyd Richards has written for Margo. In a classic scene, wet-eyed Eve uses her captivating acting abilities to tell her dressing room audience the hard-luck, melancholy tale of her life story which began in Wisconsin as an only child. "But somehow, acting and make believe began to fill up my life more and more. It got so I couldn't tell the real from the unreal. Except that the unreal seemed more real to me."

Margo's fiance-to-be, theatrical director Bill Sampson, a show business veteran and one of Margo's inner circle, is on his way to Hollywood for a month-long stay and a one-picture deal: "Zanuck is impatient. He wants me, he needs me."

Margo: Don't let me kill the point. Or isn't it a story for grownups?
Bill Sampson: You've heard it--about the time I looked into the wrong end of the camera finder.
Margo: Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke.
Eve Harrington: I'd like to hear it.
Margo: Some snowy night, in front of the fire.
Bill Sampson: We started talking--she wanted to know about Hollywood. She seemed so interested.
Margo: She's a girl of so many interests.
Bill Sampson: Pretty rare quality these days.
Margo: A girl of so many rare qualities.
Bill Sampson: So she seems.
Margo: So you've pointed out so often! So many qualities so often--her loyalty, efficiency, devotion, warmth, and affection, and so young! So young and so fair!
Bill Sampson: This is my cue to take you in my arms and reassure you. But I'm not going to--I'm too mad.
Margo: Guilty!
Bill Sampson: Mad! Darling, there are certain characteristics for which you are famous, on stage and off. I love you for some of them, in spite of others. I haven't let those become too important. They're part of your equipment for getting along in what is laughingly called our environment. You have to keep your teeth sharp--all right--but I will not have you sharpen them on me, or on Eve!
Margo: What about her teeth? What about her fangs?
Bill Sampson: She hasn't cut them yet, and you know it! So when you start judging an idealistic, dreamy-eyed kid by the barroom Benzedrine standards of this megalomaniac society, I won't have it! Eve Harrington has never, by word, look, thought, or suggestion indicated anything to me but her adoration for you and her happiness at our being in love. And to intimate anything else doesn't spell jealousy to me--it spells a paranoiac insecurity that you should be ashamed of!
Margo: Cut! Print it! What happens in the next reel? Do I get dragged off screaming to the snake pits?

Bill Sampson defines the word theater for Eve: "The theatuh, the theatuh--that book of rules says the theater exists only within some ugly buildings crowded into one square mile of New York City? Or London, Paris, or Vienna? Listen, junior. And learn. Want to know what the theater is? A flea circus. Also opera. Also rodeos, carnivals, ballets, Indian tribal dances, Punch and Judy, a one-man band--all theater. Wherever there's magic and make-believe and an audience--there's theater. Donald Duck, Ibsen, and the Lone Ranger. Sarah Bernhardt and Poodles Hanneford, Lunt and Fontanne, Betty Grable, Rex the Wild Horse, Eleanora Duse--they're all theater. You don't understand them, you don't like them all--why should you? The theater's for everybody--you included, but not exclusively--so don't approve or disapprove. It may not be your theater, but it's theater for somebody, somewhere...It's just that there's so much bourgeois in this ivory greenroom they call the theater. Sometimes it gets up around my chin."

Eve attempts to climb higher by using theater critic Addison DeWitt. Just before the out-of-town opening of her play, Eve faces DeWitt with her next plan: to marry playwright Lloyd Richards after he divorces his wife. DeWitt is infuriated that Eve has outwitted his own plans and reveals that he knows her background story is all lies.

Addison DeWitt: What do you take me for?
Eve: I don't know that I'd take you for anything.
Addison DeWitt: Is it possible, even conceivable, that you've confused me with that gang of backward children you play tricks on, that you have the same contempt for me as you have for them?
Eve: I'm sure you mean something by that, Addison, but I don't know what.
Addison DeWitt: Look closely, Eve. It's time you did. I am Addison DeWitt. I am nobody's fool, least of all yours.
Eve: I never intended you to be.
Addison DeWitt: Yes you did, and you still do.
Eve: I still don't know what you're getting at, but right now I want to take my nap. It's important...
Addison DeWitt: It's important right now that we talk, killer to killer.
Eve: Champion to champion.
Addison DeWitt: Not with me, you're no champion. You're stepping way up in class.
Eve: Addison, will you please say what you have to say, plainly and distinctly, and then get out, so I can take my nap?
Addison DeWitt: Very well--plainly and distinctly--though I consider it unnecessary because you know as well as I do what I'm going to say: Lloyd may leave Karen, but he will not leave Karen for you.
Eve: What do you mean by that?
Addison DeWitt: More plainly and more distinctly: I have not come to New Haven to see the play, discuss your dreams, or pull the ivy from the walls of Yale. I have come here to tell you that you will not marry Lloyd, or anyone else for that matter, because I will not permit it.
Eve: What have you got to do with it?
Addison DeWitt: Everything, because after tonight, you will belong to me.
Eve: Belong? To you? I can't believe my ears!
Addison DeWitt: What a dull cliché.
Eve: Belong to you--why, that sounds medieval, something out of an old melodrama!
Addison DeWitt: So does the history of the world for the past twenty years. I don't enjoy putting it as bluntly as this. Frankly, I'd hoped that somehow you would have known, that you would have taken it for granted that you and I...
Eve: Taken it for granted that you and I... (laughs)
Addison DeWitt: (slaps her) Now, remember, as long as you live, never to laugh at me--at anything or anyone else, but never at me.
Eve Harrington: (walks to the door and opens it) Get out!

Eve becomes a Broadway star and is presented with an award for her performance in the role of Cora. She arrives home and encounters an apparently infatuated young fan Phoebe (Barbara Bates) who had sneaked into her apartment. Phoebe begins to attend to Eve's needs and answers the door to Addison DeWitt who has returned with Eve's forgotten award. While Eve rests in the other room Phoebe tries on Eve's gown and poses in front of the mirror with the award.

One of the best movies ever written, ALL ABOUT EVE (1950) brought Bette Davis "back from the dead" as an actress and became a feather in the cap of everyone involved. Bette Davis' leading role as Margo Channing is considered her greatest career performance and her most memorable role. Her part as an aging, 40 year old Broadway actress fit the 42 year old Davis perfectly, at a time when acting roles were drying up for her. Besides her signature cigarette smoking and smashing, ALL ABOUT EVE also showcased another Bette Davis trademark, her willingness to appear unattractive in scenes when the story demanded. Davis played opposite co-star Gary Merrill--with whom she had an affair during filming, and soon married after waiting for each other's divorce. It was her fourth and last marriage, that lasted from 1950 to 1960.

With a solid script, a strong cast, a beautiful music score, great production values, wonderful cinematography and a great director in peak form, ALL ABOUT EVE received the most Academy award nominations (14) in film history. Showered with 6 Oscars, this witty and bitchy comedy written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz won: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (George Sanders), Best Director (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), Best Screenplay (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), Best Sound Recording, and Best B & W Costume Design. Four actresses in the film were nominated, all lost, but the film holds the record for the most female acting nominees.

The cast also includes: Hugh Marlowe (Lloyd Richards), Marilyn Monroe (Miss Casswell), Walter Hampden (Aged Actor), Randy Stuart (Eve's friend on telephone), Craig Hill (Leading Man in "Footsteps on the Ceiling"), Leland Harris (Doorman), Barbara White (Autograph Seeker), Eddie Fisher (Stage Manager of Theatre), William Pullen (Clerk), Claude Stroud (Pianist), Eugene Borden (Frenchman), Helen Mowery (Reporter), Steven Geray (Captain of Waiters), Gertrude Astor, Ralph Brooks, Jack Chefe, James Conaty, Franklyn Farnum, Bess Flowers, Thomas Martin, Harold Miller, Stanley Orr, Marion Pierce, "Snub" Pollard, Larry Steers, and Robert Whitney. Alfred Newman composed the original music. Joseph L. Mankiewicz wrote the screenplay from Mary Orr's story "The Wisdom of Eve" with dialogue by Erich Kästner. Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed.

The film was adapted and transformed into the Broadway play "Applause" in 1970, with Lauren Bacall, who was later replaced by Anne Baxter as Margo Channing. Eddie Fisher's sole scene was cut from the final movie version, although he still received screen credit as Stage Manager. The film is often noted as a "three suicide movie", for the deaths of George Sanders, Barbara Bates, and Marilyn Monroe--although it was probably a murder in her case.

Writer and director Joseph L. Mankiewicz based his script for the film on a short story entitled "The Wisdom of Eve" which appeared in the May 1946 issue of International Cosmopolitan Magazine. More than just a great script with excellent performances, ALL ABOUT EVE also showcases a number of first-rate actors and actresses in supporting roles, including Thelma Ritter as Birdie, Margo's housekeeper and confidant, and Celeste Holm as Karen Richards, Margo's best friend. This is a film dominated by women. It is the antagonism between them that moves the film, what they want and what they do.

The original DVD is OK, but the film deserves a better edition with some commentary or a brief documentary, production notes and other extras. There is only a trailer. In the newer DVD the video and audio have been restored from original source material with noticeable improvements over the previous DVD transfer. The picture has none of the scratches and dust that were present on the earlier version, and there is a Dolby stereo option as well as the original mono. The stereo soundtrack offers greater clarity and depth and there's no low-level hum or hiss. It also includes a good selection of extras. There's a 25 minute "Backstory" from AMC that is very informative and entertaining. Two separate commentary tracks are included, one with Celeste Holm, Christopher Mankiewicz (Joseph's son), and Kenneth Geist, the other with Sam Staggs, author of "All About 'All About Eve'". There are promotional interviews with Davis and Baxter, four newsreels, a trailer, and a restoration comparison. The comparison is very strange. Instead of an audio track explaining the problems and processes involved in the transfer, there's a series of screens with text printed on them, followed by a series of comparisons from various versions of the film.

Widely regarded as a classic in cinema history, ALL ABOUT EVE was selected in 1990 by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It was among the first 50 films to be registered. ALL ABOUT EVE is listed at # 16 on the American Film Institute's definitive 1998 list of the 100 greatest American movies of all time, as determined by more than 1500 leaders from the American film community.

The Seven Year Itch (1955) * * *

(first lines: narration)
The island of Manhattan derives its name from its earliest inhabitants--the Manhattan Indians. They were a peaceful tribe, setting traps, fishing, hunting. And there was a custom among them. Every July when the heat and the humidity on the island became unbearable, they would send their wives and children away for the summer, up the river to the cooler highlands, or if they could afford it, to the seashore. The husbands of course, would remain behind on the steaming island to attend to business--setting traps, fishing, and hunting. Actually, our story has nothing whatsoever to do with Indians. It plays 500 years later. We only brought up the subject to show you that in all that time, nothing has changed. Manhattan husbands still send their wives and kids away for the summer and they still remain behind in the steaming city to attend to business, setting traps, fishing, and hunting. (As soon as the Indian squaws are out of sight, the Indian chiefs follow an attractive Indian squaw.) Now we want you to meet a typical Manhattan husband whose family is leaving for the summer...

Middle-aged married publisher Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell) is alone in his Manhattan apartment in July when his wife Helen (Evelyn Keyes) and son Ricky (Butch Bernard) go to Maine for a summer vacation. He must remain behind "in the hot city and make money", and sees them off at the train station. Following the orders of Helen and his doctors, he has promised to eat properly, and not to smoke or drink. He is also determined to lead a sensible life and not to play around as soon as his wife leaves town like many other men.

The film's narrator explains that Richard Sherman is a publisher of paperback books: "He works for a publishing firm, Brady and Co. They're publishing those pocket editions, you know, two bits in any drug store. Old Mr. Brady is the boss, but to tell you the truth, Mr. Sherman is the key man. He keeps the whole operation together. In the 25 cent book business, you can sell anything, even the old classics, no matter how dreary they are. The trick is, you've got to soup up the title a little, and get yourself a cheerful and interesting cover. It's all a question of imagination, and Mr. Sherman has a lot of imagination."

After work, Sherman resists giving in to any form of temptation, and goes to a vegetarian restaurant on 3rd Avenue for dinner: "Health, that's the stuff. The human body is a very delicate machine, a precision instrument. You can't run it on martinis and Hungarian goulash especially in this hot weather." The restaurant displays its typical offerings, Spinach Loaf, Yogurt, and Dandelion Salad, but Richard has ordered the #7 Special: Soybean Hamburger with french-fried soybeans, soybean sherbert, peppermint tea, and a drink to start--a sauerkraut juice on the rocks. All the other diners in the restaurant are elderly. The waitress (Doro Merande) is plain and middle-aged, and although she doesn't accept tips, she does solicit contributions for a fund established for a nudist camp, explaining: "Nudism is such a worthy cause. We must bring the message to the people. We must teach them to unmask their poor suffocating bodies and let them breathe again. Clothes are the enemy. Without clothes, there would be no sickness, there'd be no war. I ask you sir: Can you imagine two great armies on the battlefield, no uniforms, completely nude? No way of telling friend from foe, all brothers together."

Waitress: Oh, yes, sir. Now let's see... we had the number seven special, a soybean hamburger with french-fried soybeans... Soybean sherbet and peppermint tea.
Sherman: Don't forget I had a cocktail to start.
Waitress: Oh yes, we had the sauerkraut juice on the rocks, didn't we? You will be proud to know that your entire meal with the cocktail was only 260 calories.
Sherman: I am proud.

He returns to his apartment, commenting to himself: "It's peaceful with everybody gone. Sure is peaceful. No Howdy Doody, no Captain Video. No smell of cooking, no 'What happened at the office today darling?'" But he accidentally steps on one of his son's roller skates, falls and lands flat on his back. His apartment's buzzer rings and he meets the new summer tenant. It's a stunning, curvaceous, sexy, wide-eyed blonde (Marilyn Monroe) wearing a tight white dress. She forgot her outer building key so she hit his buzzer to get in. "The Girl" is a model who is renting the apartment upstairs while she is in town to make TV commercials for a toothpaste.

One evening, while proof reading "Man and the Unconscious", written by psychiatrist Dr. Ludwig Brubaker (Oskar Homolka), he learns that a significant proportion of men have extra-marital affairs in the seventh year of marriage. He has an imaginary conversation with Helen, trying to "convince" her in three fantasy sequences that he is irresistible to women, bragging: "Women have been throwing themselves at me for years. That's right, Helen. Beautiful ones. Plenty of them. Acres and acres of them." In short vignettes of passionate flings with women, he tells of attempted seductions that he has resisted, first with his secretary Miss Morris (Marguerite Chapman) in the privacy of his office. He continues, "This thing about women and me. I walk into a room. They sense it instantly. I arouse something in them. I bother them. It's a kind of animal thing I've got. Really quite extraordinary." In another vignette, he describes being seduced in his hospital bed by Miss Finch (Carolyn Jones), a beautiful night nurse. His wife refuses to take him seriously, laughing at his manufactured stories: "You read too many books and see too many movies." In his third fantasy he parodies the famous love scene in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953) and his wife's best friend Elaine (Roxanne) seduces him on a moon-lit deserted beach with waves crashing onto the shore. Again, Helen sees only his "tremendous imagination. Lately you've begun to imagine in Cinemascope, with stereophonic sound."

Dr. Brubaker: At fifty dollars an hour, all my cases are interesting. My 3:00 patient jumped out of the window in the middle of his session. I have been running fifteen minutes ahead of schedule ever since. Until you are able to commit a simple act of terror, I strongly advise you to avoid anything as complex as murder. When something itches, my dear sir, the natural tendency is to scratch.
Sherman: Last night I scratched.

Sherman reassures himself about how his wife and women in general age differently than men: "She probably figures she isn't as young as she used to be. She's 31 years old. One of these days, she's gonna wake up and find her looks are gone and then where will she be? Well, no wonder she's worried. And especially since I don't look a bit different than I did when I was 28. It's not my fault that I don't. It's just a simple biological fact. Women age quicker than men. Yeah, probably won't look any different when I'm sixty. I have that kind of a face. Everybody will think she's my mother."

He returns to reality when Helen calls and tells him her old boyfriend Tom McKenzie (Sonny Tufts) is also up at the resort. Getting up from his chair, a tomato plant crashes into his lounge chair. The Girl accidentally knocked it over, and apologizes. Richard invites her to come down for a drink.

The Girl: Let me just go put something on. I'll go into the kitchen and get dressed.
Sherman: The kitchen?
The Girl: Yes, when it's hot like this--you know what I do? I keep my undies in the icebox.
Sherman: (to himself) What am I doing anyway? Well, this is absolutely ridiculous. The first night Helen leaves and I'm bringing dames into the apartment...Now take it easy. There's absolutely nothing wrong with asking a neighbor down for a drink. Nothing. Why I just hope she doesn't get the wrong idea, that's all.
The Girl: Do you have any kids?
Sherman: No. None. No kids. Well, just one. Little one. Hardly counts.
The Girl: Hey, did you ever try dunking a potato chip in champagne? It's real crazy!
Sherman: There's gin and vermouth. That's a martini.
The Girl: Oh, that sounds cool! I think I'll have a glass of that. A big tall one!

As he waits for her to put on her underwear that she keeps cool in the refrigerator and gets dressed, Richard has a fantasy that The Girl is a femme fatale overcome by his playing of Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto. While playing Chopsticks, Richard in his fantasy grabs The Girl in a big hug that causes them to fall off the piano bench. She shrugs it off, but he feels guilty and contrite, and asks her to leave.

Over the next few days, they grow closer. His resolve to resist temptation fuels his fear that he is succumbing to the "Seven Year Itch", an urge to be unfaithful after seven years of matrimony, with a desire to satisfy one's sexual urges. The Girl doesn't realize her effect on him but he's got an air condtioner and it's hot upstairs. She's completely guileless. A classic scene is when The Girl's white dress is blown upward by wind from a subway grating of a passing train. He seeks out Dr. Brubaker for help, but to no avail. His imagination then kicks into overdrive: Helen and Ricky watch The Girl on TV as she warns the women of New York City about "this monster named Richard Sherman". The Girl tells a plumber (Victor Moore) how Sherman is "just like The Creature from the Black Lagoon". Then the plumber repeats her story to the horrified patrons of the vegetarian restaurant Sherman ate at. The Shermans' hunky neighbor Tom McKenzie arranges to be alone on a hayride with Helen, so the wronged Helen returns home for revenge. The fantasies turn Richard into a paranoid wreck.

Sherman: If Helen sent you to get a divorce...
Tom MacKenzie: A divorce?
Sherman: I absolutely refuse! I'll fight it in every court!
Tom MacKenzie: She sent me for the paddle.
Sherman: Because I can explain everything: the stairs, the cinnamon toast, the blonde in the kitchen.
Tom MacKenzie: Wait! Wait a minute Dickey-Boy. What blonde in the kitchen?
Sherman: Oh, wouldn't you like to know! Maybe it's Marilyn Monroe!

After a crazed confrontation with McKenzie, whom Helen has asked to drop by to pick up Ricky's canoe paddle, Richard comes to his senses. He tells The Girl she can stay at his apartment, then runs off to catch the next train to Maine.

THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH is a delightful, sophisticated and witty farce, using the caustic humor of director Billy Wilder on the subject of sex. It was adapted from the Broadway hit play of the same name by George Axelrod, with Tom Ewell reprising his Broadway role. On stage Ewell had played opposite Vanessa Brown. The film's entire story is an elaboration of the first scene in Wilder's directorial debut film THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR (1942). Although the play is about an actual consummated affair, it was modified due to the puritanical Hays Code in force at the time, and many of the best lines from the play were cut.

This entertaining and smoothly crafted comedy is best known for the performance of Marilyn Monroe in her 19th film portraying herself as a blonde bombshell, and known simply as The Girl. The film's promotional tease photographs packaged her as the sexy girl next door--the perfect fantasy figure. In the film, one wonders whether Marilyn Monroe's character is an actual person or rather the living embodiment of the urban executive's wild imagination, just a fantasy. Keeping his marriage vows and fidelity in the face of Marilyn Monroe's flirtations proves hilariously tough when challenged by the notorious "Seven Year Itch." Monroe is perfect as The Girl and Ewell personifies the Everyman confronted with temptation when left on his own. Monroe is breathtaking in Technicolor and her performance speaks volumes about her comic talent. The subway grating scene caps her legend as a sex symbol, but when you watch her performance you see she was much more than that.

Ewell's crack timing is matched by Monroe's zesty comic flair. Robert Strauss is funny as Kruhulik the lecherous greasy-looking janitor, who quotes from "Porgy and Bess" to describe the antics of summer bachelors: "Summertime, an' the livin' is easy, when the fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high." Doro Merande has a funny line as a waitress whose pro-naturalist camp stance extends to pacifist sentiments. And Carolyn Jones, best known as Morticia Addams in the TV sitcom THE ADDAMS FAMILY, plays a red-haired nurse smitten by Sherman in an imagination sequence.

The cast also includes: Robert Strauss (Mr. Kruhulik the janitor), Marguerite Chapman (Miss Morris), Victor Moore (Plumber), Dolores Rosedale (Elaine), Donald MacBride (Mr. Brady), Carolyn Jones (Miss Finch the night nurse), Steven Benson (Kid at Train Station), Dorothy Ford (Indian Girl / Tall Beauty at Train Station), Doro Merande (Waitress at Vegetarian Restaurant), Ron Nyman (Indian), Ralph Sanford (Train Station Gateman), and Mary Young (Woman in Train Station). Alfred Newman composed the original music. Billy Wilder and George Axelrod wrote the screenplay based on George Axelrod's play "The Seven Year Itch". Billy Wilder directed.

"The Seven Year Itch" is a three-act play by George Axelrod. It premiered at the Fulton Theatre on Broadway on November 20, 1952. The titular phrase, which refers to declining interest in a monogamous relationship after seven years of marriage, has actually been used by psychologists. The characters of Elaine, Marie, and the inner-voices of Sherman and The Girl were dropped for the movie. But the characters of the Plumber, Miss Finch, the Waitress, and Kruhulik the janitor were added. Many lines and scenes from the play were cut or re-written because they were deemed indecent by the Hays office. Axelrod and Wilder complained that the film was being made under straitjacketed conditions. This led to a major plot change: in the play, Sherman and The Girl become intimate, but in the movie the romance is supposedly all in his head.

The footage of Monroe's dress billowing over a subway grate was shot twice: a first take was shot at Manhattan's Lexington Avenue at 52nd Street and the second on a sound stage. The sound stage footage is what made its way into the final film, as the original on-location footage's sound had been rendered useless by the over excited crowd present during filming. The movie was filmed between September 1 and November 4, 1954, and was the only Wilder film released by 20th Century Fox.

The DVD presents the film in 2.55:1 anamorphic widescreen utilizing 22 scene selections. The source material was in rougher shape than any of the other films in the Diamond Collection and considerable work was necessary to restore it, particularly on one reel that was badly scratched. The results are commendable. On the whole, this is a fine looking transfer. The picture is perhaps slightly softer looking than several of the others in the Collection, but colors are bright and accurate. Edge enhancement appears to be minimal. It's too bad something couldn't have been done to improve the opening credits, though. As originally designed, they're quite hard to read and an insult to the cast and crew responsible for the film. The sound track is available in both 3.0 and 2.0 stereo Dolby Digital. There is little noticeable difference between the two. They both deliver this dialogue-driven movie quite adequately--free of any distraction.

Extras include an AMC Back Story on the making-of the film with an informative profile and two deleted scenes as delightful additions. There's a Movietone newsreel on a sneak preview of the film, English and Spanish trailers, several one-sheet poster images, and a restoration comparison. The latter provides a very clear indication of how improved the current version is over previous video incarnations. Footage of Walter Matthau testing for Sherman is included on the DVD.

Nicolas Roeg's film INSIGNIFICANCE (1985) features a character based on Monroe and a re-enactment of the subway scene. THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH was listed at number 51 on the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 American comedy films of the past 100 years. Tom Ewell won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor--Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. Billy Wilder was nominated for a Directors Guild of America Award.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) * * *

Renowned lawman Wyatt Earp (Burt Lancaster) and consumptive Dr. John "Doc" Holliday (Kirk Douglas) become reluctant allies despite a mutual dislike for each other. Wyatt is a U.S. marshal, whereas Doc is a gambler, shootist, and trouble maker. Holliday is a skeptical about lawmen, and Wyatt, while skeptical about gamblers, can't help but like the ex-dentist. Most versions of this true story start with Wyatt Earp riding into Tombstone and planning to hang up his guns for a prosperous civilian life, but this one features a succession of little frontier towns introduced by a somber common thread--Boot Hill. While the rapid turnover of locations is never confusing, it shows that Holliday keeps wearing out his welcome, and also introduces the other side of the lawman's coin, the aging, weakened Sheriff Cotton Wilson (Frank Faylen).

In the small Texas town of Fort Griffin, Wyatt questions Holliday about Ike Clanton (Lyle Bettger) and Johnny Ringo's (John Ireland) whereabouts. Holliday refuses to tell the lawman where the outlaws went since he carries a grudge against the Wyatt family because Wyatt's brother Morgan (DeForest Kelly) once threw Holliday out of Deadwood and impounded $10,000 of his gambling winnings. Despite a law against carrying guns in town limits, Ed Bailey (Lee Van Cleef) has a small derringer concealed in his boot. Ed wants revenge for Doc Holliday killing his brother in a fair fight. Holliday has his back to the bar but is watching Bailey in the mirror. Wyatt had earlier tipped Holliday off to the derringer in an argument that set up the relationship between the two lead characters. Bailey stands up with the derringer in his hand, but Holliday whirls around, produces a knife from his collar, and skewers Bailey. Cotton Wilson, the town's cowardly marshal, released outlaws Ike Clanton and Johnny Ringo from custody three days earlier, despite the outstanding warrants for their arrest. He arrests Holliday and incarcerates him in his hotel room under guard. Wyatt pistol whips the guard and helps Holliday escape just before the lynch mob gets to the hotel. From this beginning the two men begin a friendship that ripens to a point where either man is willing to risk his life for the other.

Holliday: I'm a gambler. Money's just a tool of my trade.
Wyatt Earp: Of course, you will guarantee you won't lose.
Holliday: I never lose. You see, poker's played by desperate men who cherish money. I don't lose because I have nothing to lose, including my life.
Wyatt Earp: Look, Holliday, as long as I'm the law here, not one of those cowpokes is going to cross that deadline with a gun. I don't care if his name is Shanghai Pierce.
Holliday: Well spoken. I'll repeat those words at your funeral.
Wyatt Earp: We'd like you to come to the wedding, Doc--if it doesn't interfere with your poker.
Holliday: I'm not good at weddings--only funerals. Deal me out. If I'm going to die, at least let me die with the only friend I've ever had!
Wyatt Earp: Raise your right hand. Do you... oh, forget it come on.
Holliday: Don't I get a badge?
Wyatt Earp: Not on your life!

The action shifts to Dodge City, Kansas, where Wyatt is marshal and is told by his deputy, Charles "Charlie" Bassett (Earl Holliman), that Holliday and Kate Fisher (Jo Van Fleet) have arrived in town. Holiday, not grateful for the good turn, shows up right in the middle of all kinds of trouble, this time mostly on Wyatt's side. Wyatt orders the gunfighter to leave, but when Holliday informs him that he is penniless, the lawman allows him to stay if he promises not to cause any trouble. His attention is then drawn to another new arrival in Dodge City, the beautiful Laura Denbow (Rhonda Fleming). After being told by Wyatt that female gamblers are not allowed within the city limits, Laura is arrested for "disturbing the peace" after a drunken cowboy attempts to come to her defense. Under pressure from Holliday and Bassett, Wyatt has a change of heart and releases Laura, on the condition that she confine her gambling to the saloons' side rooms. Later, Wyatt is forced to deputize Holliday when a local bank is robbed and its cashier killed, as all his deputies are out on a posse with Bat Masterson (Kenneth Tobey). Wyatt leaves town with Laura, enabling cattleman Shanghai Pierce (Ted de Corsia) to ride into Dodge City with his cowboys and shoot up the town. When Bassett tries to arrest Pierce, Johnny Ringo shoots him. Wyatt then returns to town just as Pierce and his men are breaking up a church bazaar. Outgunned, Wyatt is saved when a well-armed Holliday appears from a back room, and Pierce and his men are quickly arrested.

Kate Fisher: What difference does it make to you where I go or who I take up with?
Holliday: Shut up! (throwing her dress on the floor) Get your things together. You're leaving!
Johnny Ringo: (entering from the bedroom) She's staying here!
Holliday: Keep out of this, Ringo!
Johnny Ringo: You got no right to come bustin' in here!
Holliday: I'm talking to Kate. Take a walk!
Kate Fisher: Anything you got to say you can say in front of him.
Holliday: You slut!
Johnny Ringo: Wait a minute, Holliday. You don't talk to my woman like that!
Holliday: Your woman? Anybody's woman!

Wyatt Earp tells Doc Holliday that he is giving up the law and moving to California with Laura, despite being offered the post of U.S. Marshal. Wyatt wants to retire, join his brothers in Tombstone, and gets ready to settle down with Laura. At that exact moment a telegram from brother Virgil Earp (John Hudson) arrives. He is in trouble and needs help immediately. Virgil is the town marshal of Tombstone, in the Arizona Territory. Wyatt immediately gets his gun and horse, then sets off to meet his date with destiny, much to the chagrin of Laura Denbow. Along the trail Doc Holliday appears, just after a run of bad luck at the poker tables of Wichita. As they stop to camp for the night, Wyatt talks about the virtues of clean mountain air compared to the stinking saloons that Holliday usually inhabits. While they sleep, three villains attempt to assassinate them, but Holliday’s ready Colt makes short work of the trio. "Clean mountain air, indeed," fumes Holliday.

At Tombstone we meet the rest of the Earp clan, including Virgil, Morgan and younger brother James "Jimmy" Earp (Martin Milner). It is a real homey atmosphere, one that Wyatt and Holliday have sorely missed. Virgil tells them that Ike Clanton has rustled thousands of heads of Mexican cattle, but cannot ship them to market as long as the Earps control Tombstone's railway station. All agree that Wyatt should be in charge of the situation, though Morgan criticizes his older brother's association with Holliday. Wyatt, in turn, defends Holliday and insists that the gambler remains welcome in Tombstone as long as he stays out of trouble. But the problem of cattle rustling by the Clanton family and their gang of cowboys must be resolved. Cotton Wilson, the new county sheriff, offers Wyatt a $20,000 bribe from Ike if he allows the Clantons to ship their stolen cattle.

Cotton Wilson: There's $20,000 in it for you--cash!
Wyatt Earp: $20,000! The wages of sin are rising!
Cotton Wilson: $20,00 against a six foot hole in Boot Hill or a $20 a month pension--if you live long enough to collect it.

Ike and his men then ride into Tombstone, only to be turned away by the Earp brothers. Later, Johnny Ringo returns to town with Kate, and Holliday quickly challenges him to a duel, but is stopped by Virgil. Meanwhile, Wyatt heads out to the Clanton ranch to inform Ike that he has been made U.S. Marshal for the territory and orders the crooked cattleman to take his stolen herd back to Mexico. Unable to find any legal loopholes around Wyatt, the Clantons decide to ambush the lawman while he makes his rounds that night, but they mistakenly kill James instead. While questioning Kate about James' murder, Holliday collapses from an attack of tuberculosis. That night, Billy (Dennis Hopper), the youngest Clanton, is sent into town to challenge the Earps to a family duel. The Earps decide to settle it the only way the Clantons will understand. The three brothers set off on an October morning at sunrise. As Wyatt gets his shotgun, Doc Holliday appears at his door, willing to come along. This is a good thing because the odds are now only 6 to 4 in the Clanton's favor.

Billy Clanton: I don't know why I get into gunfights. I guess sometimes I just get lonely.
Holliday: (after shooting a few antagonists) Anybody else want to try their luck?
Wyatt Earp: (herding the arrested cowboys to jail) Get moving! Keep moving, all of ya!
Johnny Ringo: (holding his wounded arm) All right, Doc. (In a threatening tone) We ain't finished yet!
Holliday: You would have been, but I felt in a charitable mood tonight.
Wyatt Earp: (to Billy Clanton) You think you're pretty tough, don't ya, son? I never knew a gunslinger yet so tough he lived to celebrate his 35th birthday. I learned one rule about gunslingers. There's always a man faster on the draw than you are, and the more you use a gun, the sooner you're gonna run into that man.

The Clantons are already at the Corral, hiding behind a wagon, when the Earps and Holliday arrive. The Earps scatter and hit the dirt. Wyatt finally gets to confront the Clanton/McLowery outlaw gang led by Ike Clanton. The gunfight consists of fire and maneuver with the Earps winning even though they are out-numbered. Since the time-span of the actual gunfight is at most 90 seconds, the bulk of the film concerns the tensions across many months leading up to the famous battle. The gun battle begins, and Morgan is quickly wounded. Holliday shoots and kills Finn (Lee Roberts). His death is quickly followed by that of the two McLowerys. After Virgil is wounded, Wyatt kills Ike with a shotgun blast. Though wounded by Billy, Holliday follows Johnny Ringo into a barn and kills him, while Wyatt chases after the youngest Clanton. Billy is then offered a chance to surrender, but he refuses and is killed by Holliday when Wyatt hesitates to shoot the young man. Afterward, while his brothers tend to their wounds, Wyatt joins Holliday for a final drink before heading off to California and a waiting Laura.

Of the many filmed versions of the real shootout that took place on October 26, 1881 at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL is the best, most elaborate and star-studded, the greatest Hollywood tribute to the legendary gunfight. This character driven Western that looks deeply into the relationship of Earp and Holiday is considered to be one the greatest Westerns ever made. It's a landmark movie that authentically depicts the famous showdown between Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday and the Clanton Gang, while exploring the friendship between the rugged marshal and the dentist turned gunfighter. The film is mainly a build-up to a showdown which comes in blazing fury at the end, and was released on May 30, 1957.

GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL is the best interpretation of the legendary battle for several reasons. The casting of Burt Lancaster as the stern, upright Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas as the colorful, rum-soaked Doc Holliday was inspired, and the power of the leading actors’ performances overshadows that of later versions. Secondary roles are played by competent actors like Earl Holliman, John Ireland, Jo Van Fleet, Jack Elam, Rhonda Fleming, DeForest Kelly, and Dennis Hopper. The story is accurate as far as the reasons why the two sides squared off, and the dialogue is witty, well-written and does not use euphemisms and profanity to get its point across. Sets are more accurate than those in other interpretations, and the geographic location looks like Tombstone. Cinematography and direction are very good with interesting camera angles, deep blue skies, parched yellow fields, cactus, mountainous backdrop, gunfights, romance, tension, and saloon bars. It's a big colorful picture in VistaVision. The weapons sequences are better than other interpretations: six shooters shoot six times, shotguns fire twice, and recoil is evident from the shooting.

And there is Dimitri Tiomkin's music score, pushing the movie's momentum as relentlessly as the two driven heroes, complete with a theme song underscoring the major transitions of scenes that is impossible to forget. Even though the Frankie Laine song sounds a little dated, it is typical of the era, a very haunting tune that pulls things together. Director John Sturges always regarded GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL as a Hal B. Wallis film for which he was just a hired hand without a lot of control. The script wasn't his and the project wasn't his, but he did his job very well, pulling out two of the more complex performances ever given by Burt Lancaster or Kirk Douglas. Sturges produced and directed a more fact-based and realistic version of the story--focusing mostly on its aftermath--a decade later in HOUR OF THE GUN (1967), starring James Garner, Jason Robards, Jr., and Robert Ryan. Produced by his own production company, it is more accurate in its historical portrayals, but less dramatic, romantic, accessible, attractive and successful. After GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL, there would not be so impressive a lineup of talent at the OK Corral again until the twin Wyatt Earp biopics of 1994, WYATT EARP and TOMBSTONE.

The action inevitably leads to the legendary battle between the two heroes and the villainous Clanton gang, but the film is also very much about the conflicts each man faces with women, with one another, and with their own destinies. Lancaster is terrific as the downbeat Earp, and Douglas has one of his best roles as Holliday. The thoughtfulness of the tale is matched by Sturges' captivating way with the dramatic duel. Basically the film appeals both as a solid action piece and as a fascinating two-character study.

The cast also includes: Whit Bissell (John P. Clum, "Tombstone Epitaph" Editor), George Mathews (John Shanssey, Griffin Saloonkeeper), Joan Camden (Betty Earp, Virgil's Wife), Olive Carey (Mrs. Clanton), Brian G. Hutton (Rick), Nelson Leigh (Dodge City Mayor Kelly), Jack Elam (Tom McLowery), Don Castle (Drunk Cowboy in Longbranch Saloon), Dorothy Abbott (Girl), Tom Arnold (Barrel-Rolling Boy), William Bailey, John Benson, Frank Carter, Roger Creed, James Davies, Franklyn Farnum, Joseph Forte, Paul Gary, Frank Hagney, Len Hendry, Charles Herbert, Edward Ingram, Anthony Jochim, Kenner G. Kemp, Ethan Laidlaw, Morgan Lane, Gregg Martell, John Maxwell, William Meigs, Harry B. Mendoza, Walter Merrill, Dennis Moore, Max Power, Richard Reeves, Lee Roberts, Bing Russell, Court Shepard, Mickey Simpson, Bert Stevens, Glenn Strange, Robert Swan, Arthur Tovey, and Trude Wyler. Dimitri Tiomkin composed the original music. The screenplay is by novelist Leon Uris from a magazine story by George Scullin. John Sturges directed.

Sometimes you can't help but notice crotch bulge shots, and this film is tied with AUNTIE MAME (1958) as the best and most famous example. Both Forrest Tucker in AUNTIE MAME and John Ireland in GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL are equal to their horses in the endowment department. In GUNFIGHT, there are two scenes where Ireland's bulge is obscenely visible: in the hotel room with Kirk Douglas and in the saloon fight half way through the movie. Like Tucker, Ireland loved showing off his huge bulge in movies and always "freeballed", that is he did not wear underwear. And look out for STAR TREK favorite DeForest Kelly as Wyatt's brother Morgan Earp. Ten years later, as Doctor McCoy, he and others from a USS Enterprise landing crew enter Melkotian space and are transformed into Clantons who face the Earps in episode 60 of STAR TREK titled "Spectre of the Gun".

The DVD has an excellent picture with a scope of 2.35:1 Enhanced, and sound is mono. There are no extras, not even a trailer.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) * * *

In 1866 Professor Pierre M. Aronnax (Paul Lukas) and his apprentice Conseil (Peter Lorre) are on their way to Saigon but get stuck in San Francisco by the halting of ships. Rumours of a sea monster attacking ships in the Pacific Ocean have created apprehension and fear among sailors, disrupting shipping. The U.S. Government invites Prof. Aronnax to an expedition to either prove or disprove the monster's existence. One of their fellow crew mates is the cocky master harpooner Ned Land (Kirk Douglas). After months of searching, the monster strikes, ramming their frigate. Ned, Aronnax, and Conseil are thrown overboard, and watch in horror as their ship, badly disabled, is unable to rescue them.

The three drift into a strange-looking metal vessel, and realize the "monster" is a man-made "submerging boat", that seems to have been deserted. It's a fully functional submarine capable of ramming ships and sending them to the ocean floor. Inside, Aronnax goes down into the Salon, where he finds a large viewing window and sees an underwater funeral taking place. Then the submarine crew returns to their ship and capture the three castaways. The captain introduces himself as Nemo (James Mason), master of the Nautilus and a mad scientist. Wavering between genius and insanity, Nemo has launched a deadly crusade across the seven seas. He returns Ned and Conseil to the deck, but Prof. Aronnax, whom he knows from his research work, is allowed to stay. He tempts Prof. Aronnax to remain with him, but Aronnax prefers to share his companions' fate and thereby passes a test of character.

(boarding the Nautilus for the first time)
Prof. Aronnax: There is great genius behind all this.
Conseil: Yes, and great evil. Don't forget this, this is an engine of destruction.
Captain Nemo: Accept one of these cigars, professor.
Prof. Aronnax: Thank you. (he lights it) Delightful smoke. Different somehow. Havana?
Captain Nemo: Seaweed. I am not what is called a civilized man, Professor. I have done with society for reasons that seem good to me. Therefore, I do not obey its laws. Think of it. On the surface there is hunger and fear. Men still exercise unjust laws. They fight, tear one another to pieces. A mere few feet beneath the waves their reign ceases, their evil drowns. Here on the ocean floor is the only independence. Here I am free! Imagine what would happen if they controlled machines such as this submarine boat. Far better that they think there's a monster and hunt me with harpoons.

Captain Nemo: There's a fork on your left, Mr. Land. Or aren't you accustomed to utensils?
Ned Land: I'm indifferent to 'em.
Captain Nemo: Eat your pudding, Mr. Land.
Ned Land: I ain't sure it's puddin'. (Ned cautiously samples his "pudding") What is it?
Captain Nemo: It's my own recipe, sauté of unborn octopus.

After dinner that night, Nemo takes them all on an underwater expedition to gather supplies, and Ned tries to salvage a treasure chest from a sunken wreck, almost getting attacked by a shark. Later on, Nemo takes Prof. Arronax to the penal colony island of Rora Panthe. Nemo reveals he was once a prisoner himself, as was the crew of the Nautilus. At sunset, the Nautilus rams a munitions ship, killing the entire crew. When confronted by Prof. Aronnax, Nemo says his actions have just saved thousands from death in war, and also disclosing that this "hated nation" that had taken him prisoner, had killed his wife and son in an attempt to force him to reveal his atomic secrets.

Captain Nemo: I asked you to leave, Professor.
Prof. Arronax: You also asked me ashore, to show me man's inhumanity to man. Why? To justify this? You are not only a murderer, you are a hypocrite. The proof lies out there.
Captain Nemo: You call that murder? Well, I see murder, too. Not on those drowned faces out there, but on the faces of dead thousands! They are the assassins, the dealers in death. I am the avenger! Do you know the meaning of love, professor?
Prof. Aronnax: I believe I do.
Captain Nemo: What you fail to understand is the power of hate. It can fill the heart as surely as love can.
Prof. Aronnax: I'm sorry for you. That's a bitter substitute.

Meanwhile, Ned has found the co-ordinates of Nemo's secret island base, and has been putting messages in bottles, hoping somebody will pick these up and free him from captivity. Off the coast of New Guinea, the Nautilus gets stranded on a reef. When Ned and Conseil go ashore to collect specimens, they are chased back to the Nautilus by cannibals, who are repelled from the ship by electrical charges on the Nautilus.

Captain Nemo: The natives over there are cannibals. They eat liars with the same enthusiasm as they eat honest men.
Conseil: Cannibals! Hundreds of cannibals! Captain, Captain, scores of boats!
Ned Land: Captain, we're under attack!
Captain Nemo: Naturally, since you invaded their privacy, they have every right to invade ours.

A warship approaches, firing and striking the submarine. As the Nautilus breaks free of the reef, it descends into the depths, where it attracts the attentions of a giant squid. The electric charge fails to repel the monster, so Nemo and his men are forced to fight the creature on the surface. During the battle, Nemo is caught in one of the squid's tentacles, but Ned jumps to his rescue and saves his captor's life. This event causes Nemo to have a change of heart and share his brilliant scientific secrets with the world.

Captain Nemo: Mr. Land, you saved my life. Why?
Ned Land: That's a good question. Well, there's only one thing a fella can do when he's made a mistake as big as this.
Conseil: What?
Ned Land: Get drunk!

As the Nautilus nears Vulcania, Nemo finds the island is surrounded by warships, whose marines are converging on his hideout. He goes ashore to set a time bomb and destroy his discoveries, but when returning to the Nautilus he is struck by enemy fire and mortally wounded. After navigating the Nautilus out of Vulcania, Nemo announces he is "taking the Nautilus down for the last time." Loyal to Nemo to the very end, his entire crew declares that they will accompany their captain in death.

Prof. Arronax, Conseil, and Ned are taken by force to their cabins. Ned fights back, escapes to the now deserted bridge, and manages to surface the Nautilus--hitting a reef in the process which begins to rapidly flood the ship. After rescuing Prof. Aronnax and Conseil, the three escape in a lifeboat. In his final moments, Nemo staggers to the viewing window, collapses, and looks at his beloved ocean one last time before he dies.

Because they must escape quickly, Ned Land knocks Prof. Aronnax unconscious and carries him out when he tries to go back and retrieve his journal, which contains an account of the voyage. The companions witness Vulcania destroyed in an explosion, followed by a mushroom cloud. The shock from the explosion causes the Nautilus to begin sinking, and as it disappears beneath the waves forever, Nemo's last words to Aronnax echo: "There is hope for the future. And when the world is ready for a new and better life, all this will someday come to pass. In God's good time." Prof. Aronnax's diary of the voyage is lost, and when Ned apologizes for having hit him, the Professor replies "Perhaps you did mankind a service, Ned".

This entertaining Jules Verne story of adventure under the sea was Walt Disney's debut into live-action films. It is the first sci-fi film produced by Walt Disney Pictures, as well as the only science fiction film produced by Walt Disney himself. We see the future technology that Verne dreamed up in his novel, including diving equipment and sea farming. The film's physical prowess is anchored by the Nautilus, an impressive full-scale gothic submarine complete with red carpet and pipe organ. In the era of big sets, 20,000 LEAGUES set a precedent for films shot on the water and deservedly won Oscars for art direction and special effects. An inventive film and spellbinding adventure, it has great sets, good performances, and exciting action such as a giant squid attack. James Mason is the perfect Nemo, taut and private, clothed in dark fabric that counters the Technicolor ship and the red and white shirted Kirk Douglas. Paul Lukas adds another brilliantly understated performance to his memorable career and narrates some of this movie. While Kirk Douglas and Peter Lorre are hardly the Ned Land and Conseil of the Verne novel, they have wonderful chemistry and give the film considerable charm. The movie works as peerless family adventure over half a century after its production. 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA is a mesmerizing masterpiece, very enjoyable from start to finish.

At the time of its release, 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA was the single most expensive motion picture ever made. Ironically it would loose that distinction later the same year to another film featuring James Mason, A STAR IS BORN (1954). All of the money spent shows onscreen. Many of Disney's live-action films are fondly remembered, but few have had enduring fame or claim to be art--but this film is the exception. Although the episodic nature of the story seems a little sluggish from time to time, it remains an important milestone and one of the most influential films of its decade.

The cast also includes: Robert J. Wilke (First Mate of the Nautilus), Ted de Corsia (Capt. Farragut), Carleton Young (John Howard), J.M. Kerrigan (Old Billy), Percy Helton (Coach Driver), Ted Cooper (Mate on "Lincoln"), John Daheim (Nautilus Seaman), Jack Gargan (Reporter from The Post), Harper Goff (Minister in San Francisco Steam Packet office), Fred Graham (Casey Moore), Harry Harvey (Ticket Agent), Dayton Lummis (Reporter from The Bulletin), Eddie Marr (Shipping Agent), Laurie Mitchell (One of Ned's Girlfriends), T. Monaghan (Crewman), Gloria Pall (Blonde Girlfriend), Jack Pennick (Cannon Mate Carson), Jack Stoney (Police Detective), S. Tarnell (Crewman), Herb Vigran (Reporter for the Globe) and Esmerelda the seal. Paul J. Smith is credited with composing the original music. Earl Felton wrote the screenplay from Jules Verne's novel. Richard Fleischer directed.

Earl Felton's script deviates noticeably from the original Jules Verne book by including elements of the lesser known Jules Verne book "Facing the Flag", whose main attraction is an invention of peril which Felton re-interpreted as nuclear power rather than the super nitroglycerin Verne had envisioned. Other elements borrowed from "Facing the Flag" were Ned Land's messages in bottles and Nemo's base Vulcania, inspired by Ker Karraje's pirate hideout Buttercup Island. Among the many other changes:

* Ned Land is an unwilling passenger in both versions, but only in the film is he locked up in the brig.
* In the book, Prof. Aronnax is more deliberate about joining the original expedition than in the film.
* In the book, Ned Land is described as a man of few words, but in the film he is talkative and outgoing.
* Conseil doesn't speak in the third person, as in the book.
* Esmerelda, the trained seal, was created for the film as comic relief.
* The film's main song, "A Whale of a Tale," was also created for the film. The theme was used 19 times throughout the movie by music composer Paul J. Smith as Ned's musical motif. Al Hoffman (music) and Norman Gimbel (lyrics) composed "Whale of a Tale", however, Disney didn't list the two men in the credits of the film and this has not changed for the DVD releases.
* The Nautilus in the novel is described as being streamlined and cigar-shaped, while the Nautilus of the film is shown to be massive, looking like a cross between an alligator and shark and is capable of incredible surface speed.

Film critic Steve Biodrowski wrote that the film is "Far superior to the majority of genre efforts from the period (or any period, for that matter), with production design and technical effects that have dated hardly at all." and that it "may occasionally succumb to some of the problems inherent in the source material (the episodic nature does slow the pace), but the strengths far outweigh the weaknesses, making this one of the greatest science-fiction films ever made."

In May 2003 a 2 Disc DVD was released, packed with outstanding extras. It's like like a "Criterion Collection" DVD of 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA at half the cost. The movie has been beautifully restored and you won't find a better Disney classic anywhere. While labeled as a "Special Edition", this DVD doesn’t deviate in the slightest from the "Vault Disney" line of 2 Disc sets--the presentation and organization of the material and the menus are exactly the same. Both discs are held in a white alpha keepcase that is double the thickness of the standard amaray cases. A single-page chapter listing and an advertisement for MSN internet service are also kept inside. The first Disney movie made in Cinemascope widescreen, the film is represented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of about 2.55:1, and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions. This is a first-rate transfer for a very old movie, in which detail and colors are sensational.

A Dolby Digital 5.1 track is very good. The audio coming from the rear speakers mainly supports what’s going on in the front channels. The sound is very rich, with good handling of higher pitches and delivering exceptional response in the bass. There are two extras on the first Disc along with the feature. The cartoon short that originally played along with the film in theaters, "Grand Canyonscope" (6:50 minutes) stars Donald Duck as he visits the famous national park. An audio commentary is provided by film historian Rudy Behlmer, who interviews director Richard Fleischer. Enlightening information on the nature of the project covers the constraints from shooting during the era of the 1950s, the complicated special effects, and the rivalry between Walt Disney and the director’s father, Max Fleischer.

Disc 2 featues bonus materials. "The Making of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (87:37 minutes) is a feature-length look at the production of this landmark motion picture. Rudy Behlmer and Richard Fleischer come back from the audio commentary, next to actor Kirk Douglas, Roy E. Disney, photographic effects man Bob Broughton, matte painter Peter Ellenshaw, Senior Vice President of the Creative Department John Hench, stuntmen Al Hansen and Bill Stropahl, set decorator Emile Kuri’s son John Kuri, photographic techniques developer Ub Iwerks’ daughter Leslie Iwerks, collector of movie memorabilia Bob Burns, and sci-fi illustrator Vincent Di Fate. This documentary is truly an in-depth overview, discussing details on the script, the actors, the sets, the shoot, and the final release. Archival footage is always presented alongside corresponding topics. This is the most comprehensive making-of on any of the Vault Disney DVDs.

"Jules Verne and Walt Disney: Explorers of the Imagination" (16:09 minutes) brings Rudy Behlmer, Vincent Di Fate, and Bob Burns back from the previous documentary, and further insights are given from sci-fi writers Samuel R. Delany and Gregory Benford, University of California Professor George A. Slusser, and collector & editor Forrest J. Ackerman. "The Humboldt Squid: A Real Sea Monster" (7:07 minutes) takes a real-life look at the monster that attacks the Nautilus. Filmmaker Scott Cassell provides facts about the giant sea creature, and goes on to show real footage of the animal from the bottom of the sea. Cassell comments on how being amidst these creatures can be quite frightening. "Lost Treasures: The Sunset Squid" (3:16 minutes) was long thought to be destroyed. After a scrolling text puts it into context, black-and-white behind-the-scenes footage of the original version of the squid attack scene is revealed. It is set at sunset, as the title says, making the squid appear less believable than the final nighttime version.

The "Galleries" section is divided into many more sub-sections. Each gallery is a marathon of flipping through full-screen stills, instead of the thumbnail presentation found on other Disney DVDs that I prefer. "Production Stills" (422 stills) has photos of the cast and crew hard at work. Concept art, costumes, and storyboards are inside "Production Art" (253 stills). "Biographies" (70 screens) are provided for James Mason, Peter Lorre, Kirk Douglas, Paul Lukas, and Richard Fleischer. Posters, lobby cards, publicity posters, and merchandise are kept in "Advertising" (139 stills). "Documents" (244 stills) has shooting schedules, call sheets and notes on the movie from Harper Goff to a magazine editor. A "Screenplay Excerpt" (11 stills) is taken from the climax, and gives the option of viewing the completed scene after reading. All this adds up to over 1,100 stills. "Production Gallery" (3:23 minutes) is a slideshow of select photos from the aforementioned still frame gallery. "The Musical Legacy of Paul Smith" (10:37 minutes) is a featurette on the film's composer. Richard Sherman and Alexander Rannie shed light on Smith’s career and the work he did for Disney, and give their thoughts on the music itself. "Touring the Nautilus" (5:21 minutes) dissects a model of the submarine and uses photos of the actual set to show us around. "Storyboard-to-Scene Comparison" (7:02 minutes) is self-explanatory, using a split screen to show storyboards next to segments from the film, particularly an underwater diving sequence and the squid attack.

A welcome addition is "Monsters of the Deep" (6:38 minutes), a clip from a 1955 episode of the Disneyland TV anthology series, in which Walt Disney introduces Kirk Douglas and Peter Lorre, who show off storyboards, sets, and some movie clips. "Movie Merchandise" (9:05 minutes) features collectors Larry & Paul Brookes. "Unused Animation" (3:02 minutes) exhibits a lot more material than what finally ended up in the movie. More footage shows up in "Trims" (8:59 minutes)--several silent, behind-the-scenes snippets that Walt was planning to show on his TV show, but were unused. Then there's the lengthy original Theatrical Trailer (4:33 minutes). "Audio Archives" takes us to a jukebox. Available for playing are three Radio Spots (2:37 minutes), looping session audio in "Peter Lorre’s ADR Tracks" (6:13 minutes), and recordings for "Captian Nemo’s Organ Music" (5:21 minutes). The last bonus is a signature to all "Vault Disney" DVDs: "Disney Studio Album" (4:08 minutes) is a rapid-cut montage of the many events at the mouse house in 1954. Film, television, and theme parks are glimpsed at in this closing featurette.

On January 6, 2009, Disney announced that a remake entitled "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo" was being planned with McG attached to direct. It will be his next directorial project after "Terminator Salvation". Serving as an origin story for the central character, Captain Nemo, and apparently having little to do with Verne's novel, it was written by Bill Marsilli and Justin Marks was brought on to do a rewrite. It will be produced by Sean Bailey with McG's Wonderland Vision and Sound.

Annie Hall (1977) * * *

(first lines)
Alvy Singer: (addressing the camera) There's an old joke--um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life--full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly. The... the other important joke, for me, is one that's usually attributed to Groucho Marx; but, I think it appears originally in Freud's "Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious," and it goes like this--I'm paraphrasing--um, "I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member." That's the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women.

Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) is a neurotic Jewish comedy writer living in Manhattan in a relationship with exuberant Annie Hall (Diane Keaton, née Diane Hall), an aspiring midwestern night club singer. He met Annie at a quick game of indoor tennis, and the film follows the up and down relationship of the two mismatched neurotics over several years, intercut with imaginary trips into each other's history. For example, Annie is able to "see" Alvy's family when he was only a child, and Alvy observes Annie's past sexual relationships. In the first flashback showing Alvy as a child, we learn he was raised in Brooklyn and his father operated a bumper cars concession on Coney Island. The family home was located below the Thunderbolt roller coaster, which Alvy thinks accounts for his "nervous personality".

Alvy Singer: Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here. My grammy never gave gifts. She was too busy getting raped by Cossacks.

Alone in her apartment for the first time, Alvy and Annie engage in a self-conscious conversation. As they speak, subtitles flash their unspoken thoughts: "I'm not smart enough for him" and "I sound like a jerk." Despite all their caution, they connect, and we're swept up in their new romance. Annie is an extrovert, knows what she wants and radiates self-confidence, but after she meets Alvy she also begins to see a psychiatrist. Alvy ponders his quest for love and romance with Annie. The twice-divorced Alvy knows that it's not easy to find a mate when the options include pretentious New York intellectuals and lifestyle-obsessed writers, but Annie seems different. They discuss such topics as endless therapy, movies vs. TV, the absurdity of dating rituals, anti-Semitism, drugs, and, in one of the best set pieces, repressed midwestern WASP insanity vs. crazy Brooklyn Jewish boisterousness.

During a visit to a Long Island beach house, Annie sifts through her college course catalogue and considers taking Modern American Poetry or Introduction to the Novel. Alvy advises: "Just don't take any course where they make you read Beowulf." As Alvy begins to prepare to make love, he suggests: "We should just turn out the lights, you know, and play hide the salami." He complains that Annie is sexually idiosyncratic--she always needs to smoke pot each time before they have sex. Annie mentions his years-long Freudian psychoanalysis.

Alvy: Yeah, grass, right? The illusion that it will make a white woman more like Billie Holiday.
Annie: Well, have you ever made love high?
Alvy: Me? No. I - I, you know, If I have grass or alcohol or anything, I get unbearably wonderful. I get too, too wonderful for words. I don't know why you have to get high every time we make love.
Annie: It relaxes me.
Alvy: You have to be artificially relaxed before we can go to bed?
Annie: Well, what's the difference anyway?
Alvy: Well, I'll give you a shot of sodium pentothal. You can sleep through it.
Annie: Oh come on. Look who's talking. You've been seeing a psychiatrist for 15 years. You should smoke some of this. You'd be off the couch in no time.

To stimulate himself, Alvy produces "an erotic artifact"--a red lightbulb to create "a little old New Orleans essence." Without grass, while they go through the motions of making love, in a clever use of double-exposed film, Annie's bored and detached spirit leaves her body's position on the bed during intercourse and sits on a nearby chair to watch her conversation with him. He talks to her alter ego and makes love to Annie at the same time. He is frustrated because he cannot entirely possess her, saying "I want the whole thing."

Alvy: Hey, is something wrong?
Annie: No, why?
Alvy: I don't know. It's like you're removed. (she rises from herself on the bed)
Annie: No, I'm fine.
Alvy: Are you with me?
Annie: Uh, huh.
Alvy: I don't know. You seem sort of distant.
Annie: Let's just do it, all right?
Alvy: Is it my imagination, or are you just going through the motions?
Ghost Annie: Alvy, do you remember where I put my drawing pad? Because while you two are doing that, I think I'm going to do some drawing.
Alvy (gesturing at the Ghost version of Annie): You see, that's what I call removed.
Annie: No you have my body.
Alvy: Yeah, but I want the whole thing.
Annie: Well, I need grass.
Alvy: Well, it ruins it for me if you have grass. Because you know, I'm like a comedian. So if I get a laugh from a person who's high, it doesn't count, you know, 'cause they're always laughing.
Annie: Were you always funny?
Alvy: Hey, what is this--an interview? We're supposed to be making love.

In one scene Alvy is standing in line at a cinema with Annie and listening to someone behind him talk about Marshall McLuhan's work. He leaves the line to speak to the camera directly. The man then speaks to the camera in his defense, and Allen resolves the dispute by pulling McLuhan himself from behind a free-standing movie posterboard to tell the man that he is wrong. Another scene is animated, featuring a cartoon Allen and the Wicked Queen from Snow White. In another scene Alvy again addresses the audience, and then stops several passers-by to ask questions about love. Alvy breaks the fourth wall, and Woody Allen explained, "because I felt many of the people in the audience had the same feelings and the same problems. I wanted to talk to them directly and confront them."

(Alvy addresses a pair of strangers on the street)
Alvy: Here, you look like a very happy couple, um, are you?
Female street stranger: Yeah.
Alvy: Yeah? So, so, how do you account for it?
Female street stranger: Uh, I'm very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.
Male street stranger: And I'm exactly the same way.
Alvy: I see. Wow. That's very interesting. So you've managed to work out something?

It becomes clear that the two are on separate tracks, and what was once appealing becomes annoying. After many arguments and reconciliations, the pair realize they are fundamentally different and split up. Annie moves in with Hollywood record company executive Tony Lacey (Paul Simon). She likes California, but Alvy hates it. Alvy soon realizes he still loves her and tries to convince her to return with him to New York. He fails and returns home to write a play about their relationship, recycling the conversation just exchanged but ending with him winning Annie back.

Annie: It's so clean out here.
Alvy: That's because they don't throw their garbage away, they turn it into television shows.
Annie: So you wanna go into the movie or what?
Alvy: No, I can't go into a movie that's already started, because I'm anal.
Annie: That's a polite word for what you are.

Later, with Annie back in New York, the two are able to meet on good terms as friends, now with different lovers. Alvy ends the film by musing about how love and relationships are something we all require despite their often painful and complex nature.

(last lines)
Alvy Singer: After that it got pretty late, and we both had to go, but it was great seeing Annie again. I... I realized what a terrific person she was, and... and how much fun it was just knowing her; and I... I, I thought of that old joke, y'know, the, this... this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y'know, they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and... but, uh, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us... need the eggs.

Woody Allen's romantic comedy of the Me Decade mixes the slapstick and fantasy from such earlier Allen films as SLEEPER (1973) and BANANAS (1971) with the more autobiographical comedy of his stand-up routines and screenplays, using the movie techniques of talking heads, splitscreens, and subtitles. With funny dialogue and sight gags, Allen and co-writer Marshall Brickman reversed the happy marriage of opposites found in classic screwball comedies. Considered Allen's most mature and personal film, ANNIE HALL beat out STAR WARS (1977) for Best Picture and also won Oscars for Allen as director and writer and for Keaton as Best Actress. Audiences loved Allen's take on contemporary love and turned Keaton's rumpled menswear into a fashion trend. Diane Keaton's baggy wardrobe provided a welcome alternative to polyester pantsuits and flared trousers in the 1970s.

It's a charming, clever and thought-provoking movie, not very exciting or gripping, even boring at times, but very enjoyable. ANNIE HALL brought a new level of seriousness to Allen's work, and is not so much about two people falling in love as about two individuals trying to negotiate a mutually beneficial relationship. The neurotic, self-obsessed commentary is pointed but relatively gentle, free of the bitterness that sometimes marks Allen's later work. This film is a series of insights that leave the viewer feeling strangely optimistic--or at least very amused--about human nature. Much of this is due to Alvy and Annie themselves. Unlike the oddly but perfectly matched couples who walk off into the sunset in the majority of romantic comedies, Alvy and Annie continue with further introspection, obsessive analysis, and reflection. The appeal of ANNIE HALL is that there are no easy answers. This movie elevated Allen to the forefront of modern filmmakers, promoting him from a comedian who made films to a comic filmmaker. It also set a new standard, its name becoming synonymous with the sub-genre of the intelligent, New York-based romantic comedy.

ANNIE HALL includes Allen's central themes: his love affair with New York and hatred of Los Angeles, how impossible relationships are, and his fear of death. One scene concerning death is when Annie moves into Alvy's apartment, and Alvy discovers a book of Sylvia Plath's poems, which contradicts Hall's later statement when she is moving out that all the books about death were given to her by Alvy. The film has been widely assumed to be semi-autobiographical, but Allen has denied this. It was originally intended to be a drama centered on a murder mystery with a comic and romantic subplot, and it was filmed that way. According to Allen, the murder occurred after a scene that remains in the film, the sequence in which Annie and Alvy miss the Ingmar Bergman film FACE TO FACE (1976). After shooting had completed, the film's editor persuaded Woody Allen to cut the mystery plot and make the film a romantic comedy. Allen has said that ANNIE HALL was "a major turning point" both thematically and technically: "I had the courage to abandon... just clowning around and the safety of complete broad comedy. I said to myself, 'I think I will try and make some deeper film and not be as funny in the same way. And maybe there will be other values that will emerge, that will be interesting or nourishing for the audience.' And it worked out very very well."

The cast also includes: Tony Roberts (Rob), Carol Kane (Allison), Shelley Duvall (Pam), Janet Margolin (Robin), Colleen Dewhurst (Mrs. Hall), Christopher Walken (Duane Hall), Donald Symington (Mr. Hall), Helen Ludlam (Grammy Hall), Mordecai Lawner (Mr. Singer), Joan Neuman (Mrs. Singer), Jonathan Munk (Alvy Singer - Age 9), Ruth Volner (Alvy's Aunt), Martin Rosenblatt (Alvy's Uncle), Hy Anzell (Joey Nichols), Rashel Novikoff (Aunt Tessie), Russell Horton (Man in Theater Line), Marshall McLuhan (himself), Christine Jones (Dorrie), Mary Boylan (Miss Reed), Wendy Girard (Janet), John Doumanian (Coke Fiend), Bob Maroff (Man #1 Outside Theater), Rick Petrucelli (Man #2 Outside Theater), Lee Callahan (ticket Seller at Theater), Chris Gampel (Doctor in Brooklyn), Dick Cavett (himself), Mark Lenard (Navy Officer on Dick Cavett Show), Ved Bandhu (Maharishi), Sigourney Weaver (Alvy's Date Outside Theater), Truman Capote (Truman Capote Look-Alike), and many others. The screenplay was written by Marshall Brickman and Woody Allen, who also directed.

Film critic Roger Ebert wrote: "Few viewers probably notice how much of Annie Hall consists of people talking, simply talking. They walk and talk, sit and talk, go to shrinks, go to lunch, make love and talk, talk to the camera, or launch into inspired monologues like Annie's free-association as she describes her family to Alvy. This speech by Diane Keaton is as close to perfect as such a speech can likely be... all done in one take of brilliant brinkmanship."

Woody Allen says he gets approached "all the time" about making a sequel to ANNIE HALL, but has always declined. However, he admitted in a 1995 interview that for a time he considered it, saying, "I did think once--I'm not going to do it--but I did think once that it would be interesting to see Annie Hall and the guy I played years later. Diane Keaton and I could meet now that we're about twenty years older, and it could be interesting, because we parted, to meet one day and see what our lives have become. But it smacks to me of exploitation....Sequelism has become an annoying thing. I don't think Francis Coppola should have done Godfather III because Godfather II was quite great. When they make a sequel, it's just a thirst for more money, so I don't like that idea so much."

Like all Woody Allen movie DVDs, ANNIE HALL has no fancy extras such as commentary tracks or "Making of" documentaries. In 2000 readers of Total Film magazine voted it the forty-second greatest comedy film of all time. Zagat Survey Movie Guide in 2002 ranked ANNIE HALL one of the top ten comedies of all time, one of the top ten movies of the 1970s and as Allen's best film as a director. In 1992, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".