Hollywood Couples (Passport 5 DVD set)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Episodes: B

 

 

In the late 1990s for a few years, Passport produced a series of programs on Hollywood stars and they have often surfaced as supplements on other releases and even sometimes on their own with other extras.  Hollywood Couples collects 25 hour-long programs set up in a rough chronological order to look at various couples beginning in the late silent era to a few years ago.

 

Early programs on Rita Hayworth & Orson Welles, Laurence Olivier & Vivian Leigh and even George Burns and Gracie Allen are nice, but later shows on Tom Cruise & Nicole Kidman, Alec Baldwin & Kim Basinger and Brad Pitt & Jennifer Aniston are now ironic as the couples later broke up.  There are inaccuracies about the film histories here and there that could have been prevented by a little bit of simple research, but the shows pull no punches on the darker sides of the stories they tell, so any perceived cheapness should be ignored.  Particularly good are the pieces on Sonny & Cher, Tony Curtis & Janet Leigh and the remarkably bitter story on Clint Eastwood & Sondra Locke, so bad that the some of the awful fallout between them is still a mystery.  Despite some roughness, the set is worth your time and a must see for serious film fans.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image originated on older professional analog NTSC video and shows its age on and off throughout, but the film clips often look good and many are just too valuable to pass up.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 sound is simple stereo at best, though many of the clips are monophonic.  There are no extras.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo