The Hucksters (1947)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Deborah Kerr, Ava Gardner Clark GableProducer: Jack Conway
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); French (Unknown); French (Subtitled); English (Subtitled)
Format: Color
Running Time: 120 minutes
Studio: EuroCinema
Product features:
- The Hucksters DVD
Movie Reviews of The Hucksters (1947)
Movie Review: Classic Critique of Mad Ave, Drawn from Life. Re-release the DVD!
Summary: 5 Stars
Every veteran of the advertising industry is sure to find lots to enjoy and ponder in this Clark Gable-Debra Kerr classic. The Hucksters was an adaptation of Frederic Wakeman's devastating novel -- rumored to be a roman a clef -- about big-bucks corporate thuggery and Mad Ave skullduggery in the 1940s.
Returning ad executive Clark Gable and impoverished war-widow socialite Debra Kerr try to hang onto their integrity and each other in the freewheeling, utterly unprincipled world of Madison Avenue in the years after World War 2. They negotiate a minefield of high-stakes ad campaigns, sexually exploitative art directors, abusive CEOs, lickspittle corporate toadies (literally!), and cutthroat ad-agency politics where senior executives are FBI informants who destroy their rivals by ratting them out to the feds.
The media, mores, and strategies of advertising have changed completely since 1947, but the personalities remain the same. Scenes with Adolphe Menjou as the ad agency owner and unforgettable Sidney Greenstreet as a troglodyte soap tycoon all ring true, even today. Frederic Wakeman's bestselling novel "The Hucksters" was reportedly drawn from life -- years on the corporate floor of the American Brands Company. His pungent characters emerge intact in this film, and shake the viewer with their authenticity, even now.
The film has some flaws in pacing and it's deliberately morally ambiguous, but it really deserves a DVD release. What's the problem?