"Actor: Esther Dale"

• The Awful Truth | DVD | (24/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  One of the top five screwball comedies of the 1930s, this helped to cement a genre that waxed golden until the end of the Second World War. Director Leo McCarey won an Oscar for Best Director for this 1937 romantic comedy--one of the most successful films of his career. Irene Dunne and Cary Grant are a squabbling couple who separates because of supposed infidelities on both sides. They part, but cannot really keep away from each other. Grant finds himself hooked up with a socialite, Dunne becomes engaged to a millionaire hick played by the hapless Ralph Bellamy (as if he ever stood a chance as the "other" man!). When not dating others or baiting one another in a verbal war, Grant and Dunne wage a custody battle over their pathetic pooch. Gags, double entendre, witty remarks, snide comments, and fast-paced dialogue helped this to garner six Academy Award nominations. The Awful Truth was awfully good to Dunne and Grant, as both were breaking out of much more serious moulds and this secured their positions. --Rochelle O'Gorman

• The Awful Truth | Blu Ray | (23/04/2018) from £17.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Cary Grant and Irene Dunne charm in Leo McCarey's Oscarwinning screwball comedy In this Oscar®winning farce, Cary Grant (in the role that first defined the Cary Grant persona) and Irene Dunne (Love Affair) exude charm, cunning, and artless affection as an urbane couple who, fed up with each other's infidelities, resolve to file for divorce. Try as they each might to move on, the mischievous Jerry can't help but meddle in Lucy's ill matched engagement to a cornfed Oklahoma businessman (His Girl Friday's Ralph Bellamy), and a mortified Lucy begins to realize that she may be saying goodbye to the only dance partner capable of following her lead. Directed by the versatile Leo McCarey (Make Way for Tomorrow), a master of improvisation and slapstick as well as a keen and sympathetic observer of human folly, The Awful Truth is a warm but unsparing comedy about two people whose flaws only make them more irresistible. Features: New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack New interview with critic Gary Giddins about director Leo McCarey New video essay by film critic David Cairns on actor Cary Grant's performance Illustrated 1978 audio interview with actor Irene Dunne Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film from 1939, starring actor Claudette Colbert and Grant PLUS: An essay by film critic Molly Haskell

• 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

• Monkey Business | DVD | (22/05/2006) from £23.81   |  Saving you £-10.82 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  After a chimpanzee gets loose in a pharmaceutical lab and randomly concocts a youth-restoring drug staid scientist Dr. Barnaby Fulton (Cary Grant) unknowingly samples the potion and acquires the energy and tempement of a college student!