Nancy Goes To Rio / Two Weeks With Love - Jane Powell (Double Feature, Slim Case

Description: Free Shipping in the USA Enjoy a double feature of classic musicals with this special edition DVD set. Featuring Jane Powell, Nancy Goes To Rio and Two Weeks With Love are both included in this slim case. The videos are formatted for NTSC and come with English and French subtitles. The DVD is region code 1 (US, Canada...) and has a rating of NR. Directed by Robert Z. Leonard and Roy Rowland, this movie is a must-have for any fan of classic musicals. The features of this DVD include subtitles and the release year is 2008. Get your hands on this fantastic DVD set today! Nancy Goes to Rio DVD (1950) Jane Powell, Ann Sothern / Two Weeks With Love / Ricardo Montalban / Double Feature DVD This may be a little long, but I have so much to say. I am a Jane Powell fan. I had never seen either film. The treasure is the Jane Powell interview with Robert Osborne after "Two Weeks with Love". Miss Powell goes into some interesting detail about M.G.M. and the studio system. People will find this fascinating, confusing, and I suppose a little sad. May I set the stage? All of the studio's worked in the same fashion. A talent discovered. A star is born. How much can we make? A star in decline. A star no longer! M.G.M. was so perverse in the way they used their stars. One could say that Marion Davies was replaced by Jean Harlow. After Miss Harlow died in 1937, the studio needed a new Harlow. Lana Turner! The seven year contract held the star in check for three years. If the studio picked up the option, the star got two more years, again the option for the last two years, to finish out the seven year deal.By 1942, M.G.M. had dumped; Marion Davies, Louise Rainer, Garbo, Crawford, Norma Shearer, Jeannette Macdonald, to name a few. The famous, so called ladies director; George Cukor seems to be tied to the final films of so many female stars. One wonders how much he really helped. Well my point is; that M.G.M. needed a new Jeannette Macdonald. Enter Miss Powell.This my idea, and a good one. M.G.M. would fashion a new Macdonald in Powell. The stars were designed to fit a certain mold, discard the star, and use the mold to make a new star! Here comes miss Powell. She was assigned to Lillian Burns, the drama coach who taught all of the M.G.M. ladies to try to sound alike. Powell had little education. By luck and by talent, Powell became a star. But! One can see how the studio is constantly at her "Look". The hair changes color. The brows are raised and heightened. They gave her the infamous Crawford marvelous mouth. The weight changes. In glorious color, Powell manages to survive and with the singing voice, she at once breaks my heart, and gives me joy and promise.Ann Sothern was a marvelous actress. Best remembered perhaps for her role in; "A letter to three Wive's". Playing Powells mother In; "Nancy goes to Rio" at about fourty years of age, she completed her contract at M.G.M. Nine years earlier in the lead role in the charming, "Lady be Good" she played the side kick of a fading star; Eleanor Powell. Southern, occupied the fifties in her role as a very funny, very to the point, and always plucky secretary. "Nancy goes to Rio" gives Sothern some wonderful moments. Sothern and Powell and Louis Calhern do a heavenly number together; "Shine on, Harvest Moon". Louis Calhern brings the two ladies together in all the glamour that men and women share. Yes! Sothern could sing, all three put a smile on your face. I bring "outdated music and film" to my students, and they just listen, and say, "please play it again"! There is an interesting finale, with Powell doing a not bad, Ginger Rogers routine, yes the braids in the hair ala Rogers in; "The Barkleys of Broadway", flowing gown and a bunch of rather bored looking male dancers. I could not take my eyes off Powell as she danced. The movie seems fragmented, in bits and parts that don't mesh. We are not aware the finale is the finale,, until suddenly; " The End " slams on the breaks. For movie fans the barn set used in Judy Garlands last film at M.G.M. "Summer Stock", is easy to pick out. I was prepared to dislike Two weeks with Love, but it is A+. The film was obviously a work of love. The color is refined and rich, subtle and sure. Watch Powell as she glides in a boat alone on a lake, in and out of the shadows. The color range is as beautiful as a Monet painting. The violet and mauve colors, the willows weeping adding to the shade, as well as the dappled sunlight. The story line is sincere, one believes it, one is able to experience gaslit rooms, a different way of life. The actors believe in what they are doing and it pays off. The times may have changed, and life may move too fast for some, but the theme of growing up, and fitting in; is timeless.Louis Calhern is the father in the movie. He had a way of making it look so easy, and funny, and just a little elegant. Fun comparing his performance and his "look" in both films. Louis Calhern turns up in many important films of the late 1940's 1950's. Calhern was nominated for an Oscar for his role in "The Magnificent Yankee". Ann Harding portrays the mother. Hardings career is difficult to access. She was a star for a while in the early talkies. I suspect her films are sadly lost. She had this very soft silk and velvet voice, and never seemed to get upset or hysterical,,, even though one would. She played the wife of Frederic March in "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit". There are opportunities galore to run amok in "Two weeks with love". But it just plays out in a natural and human way. After viewing the two films please run the Robert Osborne interview with Jane Powell. At one point she explains that she was planning to leave M.G.M.. Do the math. If she signed a seven year contract in 1947-48. It would have expired in 1954-55 with her last M.G.M. film "Hit the Deck" 1955. At 24-25 she was washed up? She made a few more films ,,,, some t.v. and then a slow fade? A clue; Debbie Reynolds is in "Two Weeks with Love", was she M.G.M.s new Jane Powell? This could very well be. Miss Reynolds had a budding career of her own on her hands and a very tough road ahead with M.G.M. In 1964 Jane Powell was thirty five years old. Was there nothing but revivals and t.v. for her? The answer is in the Osborne interview. Jane Powell lived as an average person would. Now and again the studio would call her with news of a film role, and she would go to work. I do not think the lady had an idea as to how really good she was. I have a feeling that she has come to accept her talent, as well as her place in film history. She is out and about and letting a curious public have a look at her. I highly encourage the "Ruggles of Red Gap" cd available through amazon, with the extra material featuring Jane Powell. Recordings made in the 1950's. The raw power of her voice, and the way she delivers a song will leave the listener breathless.

Price: 12.97 USD

Location: Stamford, Connecticut

End Time: 2024-11-13T22:35:43.000Z

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