Post Description

DVD Release Date: February 23, 2010

DVD Studio: Criterion

ABOUT THE BOXSET:
The hugely influential, Nobel Prize?winning critic and playwright George Bernard Shaw was notoriously reluctant to allow his writing to be adapted for the cinema. Yet thanks to the persistence of Hungarian producer Gabriel Pascal, Shaw finally agreed to collaborate on a series of screen versions of his witty, socially minded plays, starting with the Oscar-winning Pygmalion. The three other films that resulted from this famed alliance, Major Barbara, Caesar and Cleopatra, and Androcles and the Lion, long overshadowed by the sensation of Pygmalion, are gathered here for the first time on DVD. These clever, handsomely mounted entertainments star such luminaries of the big screen as Vivien Leigh, Claude Rains, Wendy Hiller, and Rex Harrison.


CONTENTS:

3 feature films (each on separate disc):

Major Barbara (Gabriel Pascal, 1941, 121 min.)
imdb.com/title/tt0033868/

Caesar and Cleopatra (Gabriel Pascal, 1945, 128 min.)

imdb.com/title/tt0038390/

Androcles and the Lion (Chester Erskine, 1952, 98 min.)
imdb.com/title/tt0044355/


Format: NTSC

DVD Size: 7.47 + 7.42 + 4.11 GB - Exact Untouched Copy

Time (total): 347 minutes

Type: Black and White | Color (Caesar and Cleopatra)

Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Sound (main features): English

Subtitles: optional English



DISC DETAILS
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DISC ONE
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MAJOR BARBARA
criterion.com/films/9904-major-barbara
1941, 121 min.
Filmed in London in 1941, during the Blitz, Major Barbara emerged from a troubled production to become a major success for George Bernard Shaw and producer-director Gabriel Pascal. Pygmalion's Wendy Hiller returns, this time as one of Shaw's most memorable and controversial characters, Barbara Undershaft, a Salvation Army officer who speaks out against the hypocrisy she believes exists in her Christian charity organization. Rex Harrison, Robert Newton, and Deborah Kerr costar in this merrily satirical morality play.

Black and White
1.33:1
English


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DISC TWO
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CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA
criterion.com/films/11334-caesar-and-cleopatra
1945, 128 min.
Vivien Leigh and Claude Rains pop off the screen in vivid Technicolor in Gabriel Pascal's version of Shaw's 1901 play about love and politics in ancient Rome and Egypt. At the time the most expensive British film ever produced (complete with real imported Egyptian sand), Caesar and Cleopatra is a lavish epic, featuring standout performances by its two stars.

Color
1.33:1
English


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DISC THREE
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ANDROCLES AND THE LION
criterion.com/films/6225-androcles-and-the-lion
1952, 98 min.
George Bernard Shaw's breezy, delightful dramatization of this classic fable -- about a Christian slave who pulls a thorn from a lion's paw and is spared from death in the Colosseum as a result of his kind act -- was written as a meditation on modern Christian values. And Pascal's final Shaw production plays it broadly, casting comic character actor Alan Young as the titular naif. He's ably supported by Jean Simmons, Victor Mature, Robert Newton, and Elsa Lanchester.

Black and White
1.33:1
English


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Posted in: a.b.dvd.criterion