Search - Sophie's Choice on DVD

MPAA Rating: R Content Advisory: Violence, Adult Situations, Not For Children, Adult Language, Sexual Situations Movie Release: 1982 DVD Release: 04/21/1998 Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV Audio Tracks: English Subtitles: Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 2 hrs 30 mins Studio: Live/Artisan Members Wishing: 8 Genres: Drama, Romantic Drama, Period Film, Psychological Drama

The year is 1947. Aspiring southern author Stingo (Peter MacNichol) heads to New York to seek his fortune. Moving into a dingy Brooklyn boarding house, Stingo strikes up a friendship with research chemist Nathan Landau (Kevin Kline) and Nathan's girlfriend, Polish refugee Sophie Zawistowska (Oscar-winner Meryl Streep). There is something unsettling about the relationship; Nathan is subject to violent mood swings, while Sophie seems to be harboring a horrible secret. Stingo soons learns that both Nathan and Sophie are strangers to truth; the audience is likewise led down several garden paths by a series of sepia-toned flashbacks, depicting Sophie's ordeal in a wartime concentration camp. The scene in which we discover the facts behind Sophie's "choice" is a gut-wrenching one; it might have been even more powerful had not the film taken so long to get there. It is betraying nothing to reveal that the character of Stingo is the alter ego of William Styron, upon whose best-selling novel the film was based. The film is rated R, due in great part to a disposable scene wherein Stingo tries to put the make on a "liberated" female intellectual. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Meryl Streep - Sophie Zawistowska
Kevin Kline - Nathan Landau
Peter MacNicol - Stingo
Rita Karin - Yetta Zimmerman
Stephen D. Newman - Larry

Alan J. Pakula's award-winning drama Sophie's Choice comes to DVD with a standard full-frame transfer that fails to preserve the original theatrical aspect ratio. The English soundtrack is rendered in Dolby Digital Surround. Spanish subtitles are accessible and the soundtrack is closed-captioned. Supplemental materials include a commentary track recorded by the director, a making-of documentary, and trailers. This is a decent disc from Artisan that would be quite good if only it contained a widescreen transfer. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide