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Whistle Stopper - Hobson's Choice
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List Price: $29.95
Our Price: $65.00
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Manufacturer: Homevision
Starring: Charles Laughton, John Mills, Brenda De Banzie, Daphne Anderson, Prunella Scales
Directed By: David Lean
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786303038520
Format: Black & White
ISBN: 6303038522
Label: Homevision
Manufacturer: Homevision
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Homevision
Release Date: 2000-06-06
Running Time: 107
Studio: Homevision
Theatrical Release Date: 1954
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: David Lean, Charles Laughton, John Mills and, especially, Brenda De Banzie, make a fine film
Comment: For those who didn't know, and I was one of them, a Hobson's choice is a free choice, but where only one option is really available. At the end of Hobson's Choice, a fine, vulgar, poignant and very funny film directed by David Lean, this is what Henry Horatio Hobson faces. Elements of the plot are discussed.
Hobson (Charles Laughton) is a prosperous shoe and boot merchant in the small town of Salford, England. The time is the 1880s. Hobson is a widower, a blusterer, a man accustomed to his comforts, his drink and his ease. He is, thanks to Laughton, larger than life, a man we can laugh at but not a man we'd probably want as a neighbor. He has three daughters. Maggie (Brenda De Banzie) is 30. She is, says her father, "a bit ripe" for marriage at her age, and he plans to keep it that way. Maggie runs the store, keeps the books, sees to dinner and keeps the home above the store neat. Henry Hobson, or course, doesn't pay her wages because she is, after all, his daughter. His two younger daughters both have suitors, and that's just fine with him until he realizes he must give them dowries if they are to marry. There'll be no dowries from Henry Hobson.
And now we watch Maggie come into her own. She is a plain woman with an iron will, a determination that recognizes no barriers, and a very shrewd mind. If she is ever to get away from her father, she will have to find a man to marry her. And now we meet Willie Mossop (John Mills), the shoe worker who makes the shoes in the dingy basement under the store. Willie is just about illiterate, shy to a fault, naive, slow, honest and with very dirty hands. He is quite satisfied to stay in the basement making shoes. In Willie Mossop, however, Maggie sees not just escape from her father, but a man who makes marvelous shoes, and a man she could make into a success with his own...their own...shop. She knows she can do this, and she'll find a way to secure dowries from their father for her two sisters while she's at it. It should come as no surprise that Maggie accomplishes all she sets out to do; that Willie becomes William Mossop whose shoes sell, who is endearing and honest and who has a far better haircut after Maggie takes charge. While Henry Hobson roars about, deep in the drink, full of self-pity and bluster (and as entertaining as only Charles Laughton could make him), we settle back and enjoy the sight of Maggie using her head, with energy and determination, to get the better of her old rogue of a father. Maggie not only finds Willie, but love, too. By the end of the movie, we've come to know a contented and successful couple, and William with Maggie by his side have given Henry Hobson a choice he would be foolish to refuse.
This is a vastly entertaining and satisfying movie, thanks to Lean, Laughton, Mills and, especially De Banzie. Laughton came to loath De Banzie during the filming, and the reason is as plain as De Banzie's plain but attractive face. The movie ostensibly is a showcase for Laughton. He plays Hobson bolder than life, vulgar, squinting, staggering drunk, too smart for his own good...a man full of faults and foibles we can laugh at more readily than laugh with. He has two major bits playing the drunk or hungover Hobson and he's very good. There are two major sly and finagling scenes with him which are even better. But Brenda De Banzie, a marvelous actor, steals the show. Just as Maggie carries the day, it is De Banzie who carries the movie. Laughton must have realized this would happen during their first scenes together. De Banzie starts by giving us a no-nonsense woman who knows how to get things done. Her decision to make Willie Mossop her man, to marry him, slowly lets us see just a little vulnerability. She's not going to take "no" from Willie, she will make him a success, but we begin to realize without her saying a word that she wants Willie to not find her unattractive. Their wedding night and the morning after is played for smiles, but they're tender smiles. We realize that Maggie made a good choice in Willie and that Willie realizes just how lucky he was. Henry Hobson may continue to bluster, enjoy his drink, expect his comforts and make us appreciate Laughton's bits of over-acting, but it is Maggie and William we feel good about. Together, they're going to be running things...and successfully, too.
The movie was released long ago on VHS tape and can still be tracked down. It deserves first-rate DVD treatment, along with some long over-due recognition of just how fine an actor Brenda De Banzie was.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A true Masterpiece
Comment: I feel myself very fortunate having been introduced to this film some 30 years ago. I am dying to see it again, but refuse to fork out $49 to see it in VHS. I would happily pay that price for a criterion DVD and would by another for my father who first showed me this film.
Laughton is absolutely outstanding in this film as is the rest of the cast. The script is as funny as anything I have seen. It is amazing that it is not on the American Film Institutes list of top 100 funniest films. (Perhaps becasue it is not American?) It has been over thirty years since I last saw it. But it has been on my Amazon notice list for at least 12 years.
Will someone at Criterion please understand we have seen enough French films from the 50's and it is time to look somewhwere else?
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Breath of Fresh Air
Comment: It is a rare film that allows a woman to be feminine and a 'hero'. This is it. Maggie (played by Brenda de Banzie) is unmarried and thirty in an era when young women were married by the age of eighteen. She runs her widower father's (hilariously played by Charles Laughton) shop until he begins to selfishly take advantage of his daughters' labour to live the life of a well-to-do bum. Allowing them to marry would mean that he would have to work hard at the business himself and hire extra employees to boot.
Maggie thwarts his ambitions to be comfortably indolent by being neither shrill nor aggressive. She is assertive, intelligent and womanly all at once. She rarely steps out of her feminine role and when she is forced to, one can see her discomfort. It is such a breath of fresh air to see a film portray a woman in this situation as neither snivelling idiot nor raging [...]. She does not 'kick over the applecart' of her society by waving placards and screeching for 'empowerment' but works within its rules to carve out a good life for herself and those she loves. She even succeeds at starting a business that eventually eclipses that of her father's. Interestingly, there is a scene in which placard carrying temperance league protesters march down a street which she happens to be on. (The temperance leagues were both the forerunners and catalyst of the suffrage movement). Considering she is the daughter of a heavy-handed drunkard who, by the rules of Victorian society, owned her, you would think that the protest would have an appeal. She doen't even give it glance. Maggie, though, is not only concerned with her own life. She does not turn her back on her sisters and helps them to marry as well. She never sets out to hurt or avenge. Maggie fights for what she wants and prevails AS A WOMAN. Wow.
Should I mention the phenomenal performances in this film? So many legends, where to begin?
John Mills: Watch him turn from caterpillar to butterfly in a brilliant performance.
Charles Laughton: Sharp, clever and funny.
Prunella Scales: Later of "Fawlty Towers" fame.
And of course The Great David Lean directed. He directed "Bridge on the River Kwai" and "Lawrence Of Arabia", great men's 'Hero' movies, to name but a few. Watch this, his film about a woman 'Hero'.
So few films show women choosing such a path. Are you interested? Buy it. And let's hope some smart and enterprising person gets this gem released on DVD.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Magnificently humorous and poignant
Comment:
A wonderful movie in every way. Charles Laughton plays Henry Hobson, a vulgar old martinet and tippler, who runs a bootshop with his three unmarried daughters. The oldest, Maggie (played by Brenda de Banzie), decides to take matters into her own hands: she chooses the unpromising, lazy bootmaker (John Mills) for her husband (very much against her father's wishes) and they open up their own shop. She is smart and cunning and ambitious, and before long they are successful - so much so that by movie's end they take over Hobson's as equal partners. All three play their parts to perfection, especially de Banzie who has an iron will and knows exactly what she wants and how to get it. It's funny and poignant - and is one of the great movies of all time. Definitely worth a watch.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A RARE GEM OF A FILM
Comment: A rare gem of a film poignantly portrayed by a splendid cast. Though it, the Master, David Lean, tells the powerful, wonderful and timeless story of the profound difference a woman's "call" can make in her life, the life of her man, and the world. This is my wife's and my favorite film! Like fine wine, enjoy, be transformed, touched, inspired and moved to tears. Don't miss it and don't forget to share it with others!
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Editorial Reviews:
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David Lean backs up vicious wit with tender romance in this thrilling adaptation of Harold Brighouse's play. As Henry Hobson, a tyrannical bootshop owner, Charles Laughton (Mutiny on the Bounty, Ruggles of Red Gap) is a comical drunk of Falstaffian proportions. When Hobson forbids his daughters to marry (their unpaid labor supports his pub visits!), his eldest daughter defiantly sets her cap for Willie, the shop's best bootmaker. Brenda de Banzie (The Man Who Knew Too Much), as the eldest daughter, hounds the flabbergasted Willie into marriage, resulting in a thriving new shop of their own. As Willie, John Mills (Great Expectations, The Big Sleep) performs a gradual metamorphoses from painfully awkward to gently confident. Together, the sweet couple turn a crafty business deal into a loving partnership.
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