Search - Designing Woman on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Suitable for Children Movie Release: 1957 DVD Release: 02/05/2002 Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV - Closed Captioned Audio Tracks: English, French Subtitles: English, French, Korean, Spanish, Thai SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 58 mins Studio: Warner Home Video Members Wishing: 11 Genres: Comedy, Romance, Romantic Comedy, Sophisticated Comedy

Vincente Minnelli directed this sophisticated comedy, which owes a debt to Spencer Tracy/Katherine Hepburn vehicles. Sportswriter Mike Hagen (Gregory Peck) and fashion designer Marilla (Lauren Bacall) are New Yorkers who meet while both are vacationing in California. It's love at first sight, and the two decide on the spur of the moment to get married. However, once they return to the Big Apple, it starts to occur to them just how different they are after Mike moves out of his sloppy bachelor lair in the Village and joins Marilla in her luxury flat on the Upper East Side. While they try to sort out their differences, Mike encounters his former girlfriend Lori (Dolores Gray), while Marilla runs into her onetime beau Zachary (Tom Helmore); given the haste with which they married, neither of their exes had yet heard that Mike and Marilla were hitched, and the notion that they could still be lured away hangs in the air. Meanwhile, Mike has written a series of articles exposing corruption in boxing, which earns him no friends among some ill-mannered Gotham mobsters. Bacall's sparkling comic performance was a remarkable display of personal strength; as the movie was being filmed, her husband Humphrey Bogart was suffering from the last stages of the cancer that would soon claim his life. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Gregory Peck - Mike Hagen
Lauren Bacall - Marilla Hagen
Dolores Gray - Lori Shannon
Sam Levene - Ned Hammerstein
Tom Helmore - Zachary Wilde

While not quite up to the smart romantic comedies starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy that inspired it, this Warner Bros. DVD reissue of Designing Woman shows that the picture still has an appeal all it's own. Warner may control the home entertainment rights to the movie, but Designing Woman is very much a product of 1950s MGM: sumptuous Technicolor widescreen, lavish costumes, vast sets, and beautiful stars in the form of Lauren Bacall and Gregory Peck. Director Vincente Minnelli was the undisputed master of glossy Technicolor widescreen and this DVD does his beautiful work justice in an anamorphic transfer that finally returns the movie to its original aspect ratio. Old TV and video prints of Designing Woman were laughably bad, and were pan-and-scanned so poorly that much of the movie's main action was completely cut off the screen. George Wells' witty script won an Academy Award and you can listen to his snappy dialogue in a clean Dolby Digital Mono transfer in either English or French. Subtitles also come in languages as Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, and Thai. The disc includes an unintentionally funny interview with famed costume designer Helen Rose where she answers pre-prepared questions; it's obvious that her answers are scripted and that various television interviewers are supposed to be cut into the footage. While it would have been very nice for the disc to include a reunion interview or commentary track with the irreplaceable Bacall and Peck, this budget-priced DVD still scores on its technical merits alone. Turner Classic Movies should also be commended for restoring the Technicolor print. ~ Nick Dedina, All Movie Guide