Complicated Women (2003)
Documentary, TV Movie • 56m
Director: Hugh Munro Neely
Cast: Jane Fonda, Frances Dee, Karen Morley, Kitty Carlisle, Mae Madison, Mark Vieira, Mick LaSalle, Molly Haskell, Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, C. Aubrey Smith, Chester Morris, Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Dolores del Río, Fred Astaire, Fredric March, Gene Raymond, Ginger Rogers, Greta Garbo, Helen Twelvetrees, Irving Thalberg, James Cagney, Jean Harlow, Joan Blondell, Joan Crawford, John Gilbert, Johnny Weissmüller, Katharine Hepburn, Kay Francis, Leslie Howard, Lewis Stone, Loretta Young, Norma Shearer, Mae West, Marlene Dietrich, Maureen O'Sullivan, Miriam Hopkins, Myrna Loy, Ricardo Cortez, Robert Montgomery, Ruth Chatterton, Tallulah Bankhead, William H. Hays, Gilbert Roland, Lee Phelps, Nat Pendleton, Warner Oland, Maurice Murphy, Herbert Marshall, George F. Marion, Aline MacMahon, Dorothy Mackaill, Paul Lukas, Jack La Rue, Allen Jenkins, Olin Howland, Jean Hersholt, Ann Harding, Cary Grant, William Gargan, Douglass Dumbrille, Cecil Cunningham, Gary Cooper, Maurice Chevalier, Virginia Bruce, Charles Bickford, Robert Barrat, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery
About the film
Looks at the stereotype-breaking films of the period from 1929, when movies entered the sound era, until 1934 when the Hays Code virtually neutered film content. No longer portrayed as virgins or vamps, the liberated female of the pre-code films had dimensions. Good girls had lovers and babies and held down jobs, while the bad girls were cast in a sympathetic light. And they did it all without apology.
Flicker Alley Children of Divorce Blu-ray extras
Available in Flicker Alley Children of Divorce Blu-ray extra, although since it was a TV movie, its source is still likely SD
More Documentary on Blu-ray
Mono: 1999 WB DVD
5.1: Criterion 4K Blu-ray
Director: Werner Herzog
Director: Steve James
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has excellent master in SDR and a good encode. BD caps here.
Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has poor audio: The 2.0 is fine but unremarkable, the 5.1 is presumably an upmix with a botched, strongly raised LFE channel which makes the entire track unlistenable on well-tuned equipment. Audio graphs here.
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
While it's included on both Criterion The Palm Beach Story extras and Arrow's Sullivan's Travels' extras, Criterion uses a different source and is vastly superior, see caps
Director: Ebrahim Golestan
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