The Millionairess
by William Slater
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Avril Angers, John Garrie, Maggie Smith, Peter Barkworth, Tom BakerDirector: William Slater
Brand: Warner Brothers
Producer: Cedric Messina
Writer: George Bernard Shaw
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 100 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-05-16
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: BBC Warner
Movie Reviews of The Millionairess
Movie Review: Excellent production
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an excellent production. If you are at all interested in this, I recommend getting "The Shaw Collection" DVD set instead. These are a series of televised BBC "Play of the Month". The production values aren't always top-notch, but the acting is typically quite good. The direction and sets are very stage-like as opposed to a TV or cinema movie.
This would be more enjoyable for Shaw, literature, or theater fans than your average public. Maggie Smith does a fantastic job. The rest of the cast is excellent. I haven't read the play so I don't know if anything was changed. The first time I tried watching it, I fell asleep several times. The next time I watched it I was glued to the screen.
Summary of The Millionairess
Epifania (Maggie Smith) is glamorous, clever...and also the richest woman in the world. After yet another row with her spendthrift husband, Epifania meets an intriguing Egyptian doctor (Tom Baker). But she faces the challenge her money-mad father imposed on her before his death: She can only consider for marriage a man who can convert 150 pounds into 50,000 pounds within six months. Coincidentally, the good doctor has a similar challenge from his mother and can only consider for a wife a woman who can make her own living for six months with only 35 pence to start. Will Epifania be able to prove her profitability? And is the good doctor even interested in the challenge of a woman used to getting whatever she wants?Though Bernard Shaw's The Millionairess may rank among his lesser works, it is given a top-drawer staging in this 1972 BBC production. Maggie Smith (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, California Suite) is priceless as Epifania Ognisanti di Parerga Fitzfassenden, a woman every bit as impossible as her name. Epifania, "a woman brought up on seven figures" is, as her amused lawyer observes, "a comic figure in her misery." Her feckless husband has taken up with a more affectionate younger woman. Epifania's own "Sunday wife" (Charles Gray from Rocky Horror Picture Show) is an equally worthless chap. But she meets her match in a principled and idealistic English doctor (Tom Baker of Dr. Who fame) who challenges her to transform 35 shillings into her own fortune. The play's farcical first act is best, with the assorted couples and companions descending on the lawyer's office. Things bog down a bit with the introduction of the good doctor, but to watch the incomparable Smith tackle this most juicy of roles as "the most interesting woman in England," for whom money means power, security, and freedom, is "legitimate bliss." --Donald Liebenson
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