The bad news about Fanny is that it is not a musical.
The marvelous score that Harold Rome composed for the 1954 Broadway hit has been reduced to background music for this 1961 motion picture, directed by Joshua Logan.
The good news is that Fanny is, otherwise, a delightful movie; an endearing dramatic love story, adapted from the works of Marcel Pagnol.
Sumptuously photographed in Marseilles, the film stars Leslie Caron (pictured with Maurice Chevalier) in the title role, an eighteen-year-old girl in love with the son (Horst Buchholz) of a waterfront bar owner (Charles Boyer).
Buchholz has a need for adventure, thus he runs away to sea, not realizing that he has left Caron pregnant. To save her reputation, she accepts the marriage proposal of the wealthy Chevalier, who happily agrees to raise the child as his own.
Chevalier and Boyer, as bickering old friends, walk away with top acting honors.
The DVD release from Image Entertainment includes a CD of the original soundtrack album.
Anchor Bay Entertainment has released 2 Winona Ryder movies onto DVD; one new and one vintage.
Three foxy teenage girls named Heather (plus one Veronica) form their high school's #1 clique called "Heathers" in Heathers, the 1989 black comedy from director Michael Lehmann, now available in a 2-disc "20th High School Reunion Edition".
Veronica (Ryder), does not really like her three "best friends." She abhors their snobbishness and their cruel pranks played on the less "beautiful" students. Secretly, she wishes them "dead."
When she meets enigmatic school newcomer Jason Dean (Christian Slater), who dispatches two bullies by firing a pistol filled with blanks at them, love and lust blossom. She doesn't realize that he's a psychopath until he makes her secret wish a reality.
Funny and, considering some of the shocking events that take place at schools these days, also frightening, Heathers boasts a witty script by Daniel Waters and sharp performances from the two stars.
Lehmann and others provide interesting audio commentary, and there are retrospective featurettes.
In the hilarious black comedy, Sex and Death 101, Winona plays "Death Nell," a mysterious femme fatale who becomes an urban folk hero when she targets men guilty of sex crimes against women.
Simon Baker co-stars in the picture, cast as a successful executive whose life is turned around by an e-mail that includes the names of all his sex partners, past and future.
Writer/director Daniel Walters supplies audio commentary on the DVD.
Bing Crosby fans will be happy that two of the crooner's most popular films have been released individually onto DVD by Universal Studios Home Entertainment with many extras. Both titles came out awhile back, but I'm just catching up to them.
Fred Astaire co-stars with Bing in the delightful Holiday Inn (1942), which features a fabulous score by Irving Berlin that includes "White Christmas". The singer and the hoofer complement each other well.
This Special Edition is filled with extras, including a Crosby/Astaire retrospective, a "Making of" featurette, plus audio commentary with archived comments by the two stars.
Director Leo McCarey's Going My Way won Crosby the Best Actor Oscar, and it took 1944's Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Barry Fitzgerald) and Best Director awards that year, too. Bing plays a priest, who comes to rejuvenate Fitzgerald's failing parish. Songs include "Swinging on a Star."
The movie is introduced on the DVD by Robert Osborne.
