badgersdrift

I'm 74, never bought a copy of Vogue in my life, my brief exposure to the rag trade didn't (to say the least) endear it to me, I'm not even a movie fan. But I was utterly enthralled by this movie. Most thought-provoking documentary I've ever seen and certainly the most visually beautiful.

I admire Anna Wintour. I like that she's kept the same hair style since her teens--it's just right for her. I love the way she dresses; feminine, graceful, mostly soft print silks & handsome jackets. I love the way her face lights up and softens when she looks at her daughter. I like the colorful primitive pottery she seems to collect. I love the oriental rug in her office. I love her Golden Doodle dog.

I don't wonder at her brusque detachment; a sweet empathetic soul would be eaten alive in that jealous back-stabbing industry.

I adored honest, authentic, intelligent, sensitive, durable, tersely eloquent Grace Coddington: duck-footed in flat shoes, black sack dress, trademark wild red hair.

The shots of Paris/London/Milan/Rome are the most gorgeous travelogue ever.

There are so many marvelous things about the movie. The whole concept, the script, the pace, the film editing, the music, the glimpses into the mechanics of the business and the ordinary-to-surreal characters who people it.

I'll watch it again and probably more than once, and that's the highest accolade I can give.

The theme song often goes through my head after all these years. I was never much of a TV watcher, probably because I was just entering my busy teen years when my family bought our first set in 1948 and it never became part of my life. But from the first episode of Lawman I was hooked, and it is the only TV show I've ever scheduled my week around.

Intelligent, believable, well-written and well-acted, and John Russell is still to me the most beautiful man I ever saw. (Peter Brown was no dog, either :o)

I agree that it is one of the most underrated TV series of all time. I hope I can find some episodes for my grandchildren to watch.

A reviewer asked about the Bible verse quoted in the last scene: It's I Corinthians 13: 1: " Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity (agape love), I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal."

I too was confused by the ending until I woke up and noticed that in the congregation taking the Lord's Supper are Sally Fields' dead husband sitting with his family and the young black boy who killed him, her sister & husband, the already-departed school teacher and her husband, the kind old lady killed in her car during the cyclone....

If you really can't understand either the title or the last scene, I don't think it can be explained to you.

I think my favorite scene is near the end, when Sally Fields is sitting at the kitchen table after supper cutting cardboard soles for her son's worn-out shoes and John Malkovich comes in and asks if he might make a cup of tea. While he's waiting for the kettle to boil he finally gets out the question you could see he'd been trying to work up courage to ask: "What do you look like?" I can still see the play of expressions on both their faces and I can quote her sweet answer almost verbatim.

You are fairly certain, after that scene, that the two of them will end up together--and what a nice thought.

The novel should be on the very short list of Great American Novels and the movie comes closer to doing justice to a great book than any movie I know of.

The reviewer Leonard Maltin has said it all: "Perfect in every detail".

Peggy Ann Garner defies description. Not one false note, not one hint of "acting". She IS Francie Nolan. I think she must have been an amazingly intelligent child. I must read up on her later life. (Maybe it was her intelligence that made her decide she was not the Hollywood type :o)

No one else has mentioned two of my favorite scenes: the ritual family reading of Shakespeare and the immigrant grandmother's comment about the importance of reading, and the very last scene in the family apartment after Francie's graduation, when Lloyd Nolan comes to call.

I hope the movie will lead everyone who loves it to read the magnificent book for "the rest of the story".

I can't add much to the raves already posted.

The first song I remember my mother singing to me was "Smiling Through" ("But through all the long years, when the clouds brought their tears, those two eyes of blue came smiling through at me"), and she'd tell me the movie's story. I taught the song to my children and grandchildren, but until recent years there was no way to get a copy of the movie.

I thought I wanted the Jeannette MacDonald version because of her beautiful voice, but it was back ordered and only this one was available--lucky for me. It seems to be everyone's favorite of the three.

The wedding scene is a masterpiece--understated and heartbreaking, but I'm finally able to handle it. It's that very last scene that gets me every time. Best kind of tears, though: the kind you're "smiling through".

Norma Shearer, like Irene Dunne, is not only beautiful to look at but irresistibly likable.