Arms and the Man
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Helena Bonham-Carter, Patsy KensitBrand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 104 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-05-16
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: E2533
Studio: BBC Worldwide
Product features:
- One night, a frightened Swiss soldier of fortune climbs into the bedroom of a young Bulgarian girl, Raina (Helena Bonham Carter), and soon deflates her romantic notions about love and valor. The cast of characters includes a jealous fiance fighting for the other side, a bumbling military father, and a domineering and social-climbing, mother not to mention the servants who see and hear all. This hi
Movie Reviews of Arms and the Man
Movie Review: My favorite Shaw play
Summary: 5 Stars
This is my favorite Shaw play. I first saw it performed at the old Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis when Michael Moriarty played the roll of the Swiss mercenary soldier, Captain Bluntschli. I was delighted with it then, and I have to admit it still pleases me now. At the time, the Viet Nam war was in progress, and the play seemed to resonate with my own feelings about it.
Like most of Shaw's plays, Arms and the Man deals with a social ill---in this case war---by making fun of the behavior. As the author tells us through the dialogue, war is only glorious to those who've never faced the bloodshed and the deprivation of it. The author implies that the audience, safe in its ignorance, is just as naive as the Bulgarian girl Raina. Men die horrible deaths, while other men escape by shear accident and others by flight. Some of them fight for the honor and glory they think will be theirs, others for money, and some because they are compelled to do so by circumstances. In the end everyone goes home, and even enemies become friends. So what was the fight really about? What's the point? It's a very good question, and one that has yet to be answered. Shaw wrote the play in 1894 to standing ovations--only one person in the audience booed, and Shaw, ever the wit, said, "My dear fellow, I quite agree with you, but what are we two against so many?" Yet World War I and World War II were still to come, and Shaw himself lived to see both of them. (He died in 1950).
The BBC production is a delight. Helena Bonham Carter, in a roll early in her career, plays the young Raina Petkoff to whose room the Swiss soldier retreats. Her portrayal of the proud local aristocrat is delightful. At one point she seeks to impress by stating that she washes her hands at least once a day, and that her house is quite splendid because it has real stairs by which to climb to the second floor. Her attitude towards war and its glory is a perfect foil for that of Pip Torrens' Captain Bluntschli, who sees it for what it is: something to be gotten through by whatever means possible. The real star of the presentation, however, is a young Nicholas Chagrin, whose Sergai is quintessential: part baffoon, part acrobat. He reveals to the audience the weaknesses behind the facade of bravado; he is both hero and fool. Of all the characters, his is the one who learns most about himself. Probably the wisest of the characters is Nicola, who reveals to us that everyone is someone's servant and that there are trade offs to be made in every life and at every level of society.
Because the production is an older one, it has the feel of a stage production. Even action that takes place outdoors is performed on a stage set, so the entire work has the character of theater as opposed to TV or cinema. In short it has a more intimate ambiance. For anyone who has not had the opportunity to attend a live performance, this will give you at least an inkling of what live theater is like. Since the audience to some extent participates in the production---at least in so far as it suspends disbelief and provides feedback to the actors---it is a much more active experience than TV.
Summary of Arms and the Man
ARMS AND THE MAN (GEORGE BERNARD SHAW - DVD MovieA delightful Helena Bonham Carter stars as Raina, a Bulgarian woman from "a civilized family." News arrives that Bulgaria has prevailed in its war against the Serbs, a charge led by Raina's fiancé, Sergius, reportedly the deciding factor. On "the happiest night of my life," Raina receives an unexpected visitor in her bedroom, a chocolate-scarfing Swiss soldier of fortune who had been fighting for the Serbs and is fleeing for his life. His views on the military ("Remember, nine soliders out of ten are born fools") and disdainful account of the vainglorious Sergius's foolhardy charge are counter to her starry notions and high ideals. The return after the war of her "chocolate crème soldier" set in motion romantic entanglements that include Louka (Patsy Kensit), the family maid who is having a clandestine affair with Sergius. Satire may be what closes on Saturday night, as playwright George S. Kaufman famously quipped, but it plays very well on the BBC, from which this sterling 1989 production of Bernard Shaw's 1894 play originated. Shaw himself called his subversively funny play an "anti-romantic comedy," but it is more an anti-romantic-notions comedy whose observations about the "romance" of war and heroism still sting. --Donald Liebenson
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