Films with: Ratoff, Gregory

Exodus

This film dramatizes part of the Israeli independence moment, dealing with various factions involved in the internecine struggle between the moderate Haganah and the radical terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi. Interspersed throughout are segments showing the migration of European Jews to the new land, paying special attention to the ragged survivors of Nazi death camps on board the vessel Exodus, blockaded in a Cyprus harbor by British warships. The film also depicts the struggle of the Jews in Palestine to gain partition, then profiles the main characters after the partition, fighting to continue as the nation of Israel.

DVD 6736

Fannie Hurst's Symphony of six million

"Symphony of Six Million follows a young Jewish doctor (Ricardo Cortez) who turns his back on his ghetto upbringing -- and on his crippled sweetheart (Irene Dunne) -- to make his fortune as a Park Avenue surgeon. Then tragedy strikes, forcing him to examine his life and rediscover his better self"--Container.

DVD 8327

Mae West the glamour collection /

Mae West had an inexhaustibly playful interest in language, and a rare, sometimes perplexing, and even lofty wit, spiced by low-down slang. Well before the second wave of feminism, she wrote all her own material, insisted on total control of her work, and was wildly popular for a short time, right before the Production Code lowered the boom on adult attitudes being expressed in films. She made only 12 movies, but three are first-rate, and these were enough to seal her fame and launch a legend. In her first film appearance, "Night after night," a successful ex-boxer buys a high-class speakeasy and falls for a rich society girl. As the bold Tira in "I'm no angel," she works as a dancing beauty and lion tamer at a fair. For "Goin' to town," West goes Western. Cleo Borden is a former dance hall queen who has become newly rich. She falls for--and pursues--an upper crust Englishman. This is followed by "Go west young man," where she plays Mavis Arden, a movie star stranded in the country. To stifle her boredom, she trifles with a young man's affections. "My little chickadee" pairs West with a legend of similar stature, W.C. Fields. As Flower Belle Lee, she is rightly suspected of illicit relations with the Masked Bandit, and run out of Little Bend. Surprisingly, things change very little when she arrives in Greasewood City to start over.

DVD 10543