"Actor: Lucile Watson"

• Harriet Craig (Limited Edition) | Blu Ray | (17/02/2025) from £16.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  From director Vincent Sherman (Affair in Trinidad) comes the classic drama Harriet Craig, starring Joan Crawford (Strait-Jacket) and Wendell Corey (Rear Window). Manipulative and possessive Harriet (Crawford) controls every aspect of the lives of her husband Walter (Corey) and cousin Clare (K T Stevens, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice), and schemes to destroy their chances of happiness. However, when they become aware of her treachery, her world begins to fall apart... Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Craig's Wife by George Kelly (The Show-Off), Harriet Craig boasts one of Joan Crawford's most devastating performances.

• My Forbidden Past | DVD | (27/09/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  My Forbidden Past

• Mr & Mrs Smith | DVD | (21/04/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Before Hollywood had entirely typecast Alfred Hitchcock as the master of suspense, with Mr & Mrs Smith he was allowed to fashion an elegant romantic trifle starring Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard. It probably won't replace Rear Window or Psycho in your affections, but the film is more than a curious footnote to the director's career. The two leads play David and Ann Smith, a devoted but endlessly squabbling couple who discover their three-year marriage isn't legal. When he unexpectedly hesitates to arrange a second wedding, she storms out in a huff and soon begins dating his solid, dependable business partner Jeff (Gene Raymond). The rest follows the formula laid down by such previous screwball comedies as The Awful Truth (1937) and Bringing Up Baby (1938): David employs fair means or foul to win back Ann's heart, causes all sorts of complicated mischief, then... well, three guesses what happens in the end. The intriguing thing about the movie is how Hitchcock takes Norman Krasna's paper-thin script and adds sly undercurrents of menace. You may note, for instance, that the ostensibly happy Smiths treat each other with subtle sadism right from the start, and that David's tactical pursuit of his ex-wife (spying on her and deliberately offending Jeff's parents) involves them both in humiliations that are really quite sinister and ugly. Violence seems about to erupt in the recurring scenes where Ann shaves her husband (suggestively holding a razor up to his throat)--and make what you will of our hero's symbolic nosebleeds. There's a touch of Vertigo in one scary moment when a jammed amusement park ride leaves two characters dangling helplessly high above the ground--and a touch of shall we say relief for Hitchcock's well-known love of toilet humour in another oddball sequence. Montgomery and Lombard keep the mood acceptably frivolous, while indicating the flawed nature of the marital relationship. From the evidence of this one-off, Hitchcock might have been among the best comedy directors in the business, had he so wished. --Peter Matthews

• Made For Each Other | DVD | (29/09/2003) from £5.79   |  Saving you £-0.80 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  This highly appealing comedy drama stars James Stewart and Carole Lombard as a young couple battling illness lack of money inept servants and interfering in-laws...

• Three Smart Girls | DVD | (07/03/2011) from £5.98   |  Saving you £7.01 (54.00%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Three sisters set off from Switzerland with their divorced mother to go to New York in order to stop their father marrying a calculating socialite...

• The Garden Of Allah | DVD | (06/08/2001) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-7.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In 1936 'The Garden Of Allah' was billed as Selznick's showcase for Technicolour. It turned out to be a visually stunning film with vibrant colour realism seldom seen in pictures. Bizarrely the film was not nominated for Best Picture Oscar as the Academy felt that 'its natural beauty would outpoint conventional product'. Now fully restored and digitally re-mastered it still looks wonderful even by today's standards Marlene Dietrich is Domini a young heiress who journeys to t

• My Forbidden Past | DVD | (08/08/2011) from £17.53   |  Saving you £-4.54 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A passionate romance starring Ava Gardner as a beautiful heiress driven to extreme lengths when her dreams of true love are cruelly thwarted. New Orleans the 1800's: Barbara Beaurevel (Gardner Mogambo) inherits a fortune from her grandmother a woman with a notorious reputation. Barbara pledges to use the money for good works but her noble intentions are quickly tested... Barbara's in love with Dr Mark Lucas (Mitchum Angel Face); when he returns to the city with a new bride Corinne Barbara becomes desperate. She pays her wicked cousin Paul to seduce Corinne hoping Mark will then abandon his wife. But when Corinne is murdered Mark is blamed. Only Barbara can save him but she could lose everything if she does...

• Made For Each Other | DVD | (27/01/2003) from £10.99   |  Saving you £6.00 (54.60%)   |  RRP £16.99

  This highly appealing comedy drama stars James Stewart and Carole Lombard as a young couple battling illness lack of money inept servants and interfering in-laws...

• Made For Each Other / James Stewart On Film | DVD | (01/11/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  Produced in a time when films were both literally and figuratively black and white, Made for Each Other was unique in its effective blending of the comedic, the dramatic and, as perhaps some would insensitively say, the melodramatic. Beautiful Carole Lombard and likeable James Stewart are Jane and John Mason, a couple who meet, fall madly in love, marry and quickly have a baby. But while they--and the audience--are confident that they are meant for each other, life intercedes and the couple must meet with disapproving in-laws, job stress, financial challenges and, finally, a devastating illness.Lombard and Stewart--and the genuinely good people they portray--are utterly compelling and charming. Say yawningly what you will about tradition but the Masons' path is one that many, if not most, go down. And unlike the wonderful but wholly fantasy world of peer Preston Sturges, director John Cromwell's universe is, like real life, full of ups and downs. It's an accessible, sensitive portrayal. He gives the audience characters they want to see succeed, and to see stay together in the process. It may be a tale of triumph of the human spirit but its ultimate sentiment--one that celebrates the kindness of strangers--is thoroughly sweet, though in no way saccharine. Look for a great supporting cast, including a blustery Charles Coburn as John Mason's boss and Lucile Watson as Mason's interfering mother. --N F Mendoza