Love romance in Drama DVDs & Videos

A FAREWELL TO ARMS (1932), CYRANO DE BERGERAC (1950), and THE SHEIK (1921) are just a few of the powerful films included on this collection. Also featured are a number of documentaries which cover the making of the films included here.

LOVE AFFAIR: The magic of a shipboard romance charms a Frenchman and an American woman (Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne) into each other's arms, but promises made to other people and the notoriously fleeting nature of affairs convince the couple to part for six months and meet again atop the Empire State Building to see if their love is a lasting one. Although their hearts remain true, an accident and a misunderstanding might lead to heartbreak. LOVE AFFAIR was written, directed, and produced by Leo McCarey as his first major foray into drama after a successful directorial career in comedies, including projects with the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy. McCarey remade LOVE AFFAIR almost 20 years later as the better-known AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr as the star-crossed couple. Film buffs continue to debate which film is better, though viewers of either will be swept up by the timeless romance captured so effortlessly--twice!--by McCarey and his delightfully well-matched actors. PENNY SERENADE: In one of his rare departures from the realm of comedy, Cary Grant stars along with Irene Dunne in this sentimental tale about the marriage of Roger and Julie Adams.Told in flashbacks by Julie as she considers divorce, the film traces the couple's earlier years, when her reluctant journalist boyfriend finally proposes after being posted to Japan by the newspaper where he works. When Julie joins him after a three-month delay, she announces that she's pregnant, and is greatly troubled by Roger's rash spending habits. Shortly thereafter, their house is destroyed by an earthquake, which also ends Julie's pregnancy. The couple returns to San Francisco only to find that Julie will no longer be able to bear children. Hoping to cheer his wife, Roger floats the idea of buying a small-town newspaper, but she remains inconsolable. He goes ahead with his plan to buy the paper, and the twosome rent an apartment above its offices. Meanwhile, their friend Applejack (Edgar Buchanan) begins gently coaxing the couple to adopt a child. Although the film is awash in sentimentality, it remains curiously compelling, which can be attributed to Stevens's restrained direction, the skillful interweaving of comic material, and excellent work by the two leads. JANE EYRE: The first version of JANE EYRE to use sound, this 1934 film stars Virginia Bruce as Jane, a fiercely independent orphan who as an adult makes her living as a governess. After she quits her job at the austere orphanage where she was raised, she moves to Thornfield Hall, the intimidating manor belonging to a brooding, reclusive man named Edward Rochester (Colin Clive), where she undertakes the care of his ward, Adele. Jane finds herself falling deeply in love with Rochester, but she is frightened by mysterious happenings in a locked wing of the mansion. The dark mystery at the heart of Thornfield cannot be suppressed forever and, when its secrets are revealed, Jane flees the mansion and attempts to forget Rochester, even finding a new beau. But on the eve of her wedding, some cataclysmic events unfold as the classic tale nears its end.