"Actor: Richard Schafer"

• Anastasia/Inn of the Sixth Happiness double pack | DVD | (02/06/2003) from £9.43   |  Saving you £5.56 (58.96%)   |  RRP £14.99

  An Ingrid Bergman double-bill comes to DVD with the classy pairing of Anastasia (1956) and The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958). In Anastasia Bergman gives one of her memorable, haunting and haunted performances as an amnesiac chosen by a White Russian general (Yul Brynner) in 1928 to play the part of the long-rumoured but missing survivor of the Bolsheviks' murderous attack on the Czar's family. The twist is that Bergman's mystery woman seems to know more about the lost Anastasia than she is told. Based on the play by Marcelle Maurette and Guy Bolton, this film--directed by Anatole Litvak (Out of the Fog)--really does get under one's skin, not least of all because of its intriguing story but more so as a result of the strong chemistry between Bergman and Brynner. --Tom Keogh The Inn of the Sixth Happiness is an epic and extraordinary true story--or, at least, an extraordinary story based on a novel (Alan Burgess's The Small Woman) based on a true story. Gladys Aylward (an improbably mesmerising Ingrid Bergman) is a British would-be missionary with an obsession about China. As she has no experience, the Missionary Society won't let her go, but she goes anyway, alone, to a remote northern province. She is hated, then loved; finally she becomes both a significant political figure and the heroine of a miraculous escape in which she shepherds 100 children to safety across the mountains just ahead of a Japanese invasion. Curt Jurgens is suitably stony as Lin Nan, the half-Dutch, half-Chinese military officer who falls in love with her, and a visibly ailing Robert Donat (who died before this, his final film, was released) is the wily local mandarin who sees and makes use of her extraordinary abilities. Directed by Mark Robson, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness is a sweeping, stirring tear-jerker, a big tale told in a big landscape with acres of orchestrated strings by Malcolm Arnold. It's a beautiful and beautifully made film that's a classic of the "everyone said I couldn't but I did it anyway" genre.--Richard Farr

• Repeat Performance | Blu Ray | (18/02/2022) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Baryshnikov's The Nutcracker | DVD | (09/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The Nutcracker is Mikhail Baryshnikov's breathtaking and critically acclaimed Emmy-nominated production. Baryshnikov was at the height of his career as a classical dancer in 1977 when he staged this beloved holiday classic for the American Ballet Theatre. Gelsey Kirkland had left the New York City Ballet to dance with the Russian superstar and their partnership was magical. In this Soviet-influenced version Baryshnikov casts himself as the hero who is transformed from a wooden figure to a soaring prince and Kirkland plays an adolescent girl of delicacy and vulnerability. Alexander Minz portrays Drosselmeyer a mysterious wizard who not only conjures the fantasy but aslo dances with the romantic couple. Kenneth Schermerhorn conducts the National Philharmonic in a fast-paced performance of Tchaikovsky's music. Celebrated by critics and public alike Baryshnikov's The Nutcracker delivers a brilliant and sparkling adaptation of the famous E.T.A. Hoffmann tale along with Tchaikovsky's classic score.