The Americanization of Emily [VHS]

The Americanization of Emily [VHS]
by Arthur Hiller

The Americanization of Emily [VHS]

List Price: ~~$14.98~~
Category: VHS Video
See more movie releases

Buy The Americanization of Emily [VHS] at Amazon.com

(Click here)

Buy this VHS video movie at online store in your country
Canada

Product details

Actor: James Coburn, James Garner, Joyce Grenfell, Julie Andrews, Melvyn Douglas
Director: Arthur Hiller
Cinematographer: Philip H. Lathrop
Editor: Tom McAdoo
Producer: John Calley
Producer: Martin Ransohoff
Writer: Paddy Chayefsky
Writer: William Bradford Huie
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, NTSC, Original recording reissued
Running Time: 115 minutes
Release Date: 2001-01-09
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Studio: Warner Home Video

VHS Movie Reviews of The Americanization of Emily [VHS]

Movie Review: Wonderful!
Summary: 5 Stars

A true delight. This film has a rare combination of charm, biting satire and critical intelligence. Chayefsky's screenplay was outstanding. The performances were all first rate.

Movie Review: James Garneer's favorite
Summary: 5 Stars

This is one of the best war/antiwar movies made, while at the same time being quite funny. It is Garner's favorite film and is still as topical and pertinent today as it was when made. His soliloquy about war is perhaps the most telling indictment of war, its causes, and its perpetuation ever. I have loved this film since I first saw it and have never met anyone who did not like it. Black and white, it gives one the chance to hear rather than see, to experience rather than imagine.I cannot recommend this film highly enough.

Movie Review: One of those quirky, delightful movies
Summary: 4 Stars

This is one of those sleeper movies with a delightful, quirky plot carried by superb writing and excellent performances of top actors. The plot is bizarre enough to be completely believable. Built around an Admiral's demented scheme to have a sailor to be the first U.S. serviceman killed on Omaha Beach in the Normandy invasion, our reluctant, anti-war hero, James Garner, struggles to survive and love through a scheme that puts him at the very center of a dangerous world at war. Paddy Chayefsky's wild, funny screen writing vividly illuminates the lunacy of war. Much like Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, when it's over they are all friends again and the viewer's delight comes from witnessing the experiences they have gone through together.

Movie Review: The Americanization of Emily
Summary: 5 Stars

Great movie to add to my collection. Received as promised. No problems at all.

Movie Review: "The first dead man on Omaha Beach must be a sailor!" ...and James Garner is a sailor
Summary: 4 Stars

Paddy Chayefsky's fluent, clever, pungent polemics have always seemed more than a little stagy to me. If there was an opportunity for Chayefsky to shake his finger at us and give us a speech, he couldn't resist. The Americanization of Emily, a clever romantic drama about war, heroics and practicality, is a good example. Nearly 45 years after it was filmed, the movie still packs a cynically amusing anti-war punch...but those speeches sure do go on. If James Garner, Julie Andrews and Melvyn Douglas weren't such sympathetic and skilled actors, we might be tempted to leave the movie playing while we take a bathroom break or make a fresh bowl of popcorn. The movie has a running time of nearly two hours, so you'll probably need to do both anyway.

If Chayefsky's speeches wind up doing turnabouts, the story line is simple and sweet. It's 1944 in London and Lieutenant Commander Charlie Madison (Garner) has used all of his charm and skill to stay far away from danger. He thinks war is a fool's game where people can get killed. The real heroes are the cowards who stay far away from the senseless killing. (Of course, Chayefsky gives Charlie a back-story that is touching, brave and good for a tear up or two.) He's comfortably on the staff of the aging political Admiral William Jessup (Douglas), working with a fellow Lieutenant Commander, Bus Cummings (James Coburn), to set up lavish parties for the brass and VIPs, with plenty of rationed goods -- dry-aged strip steaks, avocados and bourbon -- and friendly women. Then he meets Emily Barham (Julie Andrews), whose father died in an air raid, brother was shot down during the Blitz and whose husband was killed at Tobruk. Now she's in uniform serving as a driver. With much back and forthing about Brits, Americans, sex, Hershey bars, heroics, duty, bravery and heart-felt cynicism, etc., etc., etc., they fall in love. By then Admiral Jessup is going gaga and decides a movie about the heroic first man on the D-Day beaches would be a terrific PR scoop for the Navy. Charlie finds himself with no wiggle room and is soon wading through the surf on what could well be a dead hero's mission. Will Charlie survive? Will Bus set him up to be a dead hero? Will Emily inspire him? Will Chayefsky give just about everyone, but mainly Garner, long speeches for us to be charmed and challenged by? Need you ask?

Without Garner's and Andrew's likability, this movie would get tiresome quickly. It really needs to lose about half an hour and Chayefsky needs a tough-minded editor. Still, the polemics are often funny and uneasy and Garner was one of the best of the laid-back, charmingly skeptical leading men of his time. (Three roles that I think show him at his best, whatever one thinks of the movies, are Jason McCullough in Support Your Local Sheriff, Murphy Jones in Murphy's Romance and Raymond Hope in Twilight.) He does an exceptional job with Chayefsky's words.

Why not give the last word...well, the last many words, to Chayefsky wearing his Charlie Madison mask. Madison sure was a fluent, facile speechifier. Says Charlie: War isn't hell at all. It's man at his best; the highest morality he's capable of. It's not war that's insane, you see. It's the morality of it. It's not greed or ambition that makes war: it's goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons: for liberation or manifest destiny. Always against tyranny and always in the interest of humanity. So far this war, we've managed to butcher some ten million humans in the interest of humanity. Next war it seems we'll have to destroy all of man in order to preserve his damn dignity. It's not war that's unnatural to us, it's virtue. As long as valor remains a virtue, we shall have soldiers. So, I preach cowardice. Through cowardice, we shall all be saved.

Time to make the popcorn, or to run down to the store and buy a bag from Chayefsky.

The black-and-white DVD transfer looks just fine. There is a commentary track with the director, Arthur Hiller.

Write your own review

Summary of The Americanization of Emily [VHS]

Screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky (Marty) sinks his satirical fangs into this story of an American naval officer (James Garner) selected to be the first victim at the invasion of Normandy. Julie Andrews plays a prim, British war widow who falls for him. Cynical in tone, the story becomes an interesting collision of manipulative interests and renewed life, the same formula that worked so well in Chayefsky's scripts for Network and Hospital. --Tom Keogh

Comic Action Video

Video Genres

Movies most talked about in Comic Action Video

48 HRS [VHS]
Paramount; Release date: 1992-12-07; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $0.97
Price in other shops: ~~$9.95~~

Cotton Comes to Harlem [VHS]
MGM (Video & DVD); Release date: 2001-01-09; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $5.99
Price in other shops: ~~$9.94~~

Undercover Blues [VHS]
MGM (Video & DVD); Release date: 1994-08-08; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops: ~~$9.94~~

Any Which Way You Can [VHS]
Warner Home Video; Release date: 1998-01-13; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $4.95
Price in other shops: ~~$9.98~~

Midnight Run [VHS]
Universal Studios; Release date: 1992-03-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $3.28
Price in other shops: ~~$9.98~~

Brain Smasher - A Love Story [VHS]
Vidmark / Trimark; Release date: 1998-01-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $6.94
Price in other shops: ~~$9.99~~

Masterminds [VHS]
Sony Pictures; Release date: 1998-07-07; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops: ~~$14.95~~

Rush Hour [VHS]
New Line Home Video; Release date: 1999-06-15; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $0.40
Price in other shops: ~~$6.93~~

Smokey & The Bandit [VHS]
Universal Studios; Release date: 1992-03-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $4.49
Price in other shops: ~~$9.98~~

If Looks Could Kill [VHS]
wb; Warner Home Video; Release date: 1995-02-07; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $58.04

Similar Video, DVDs, Audio CDs

One Special Night
MTI; Release date: 2002-11-26; DVD
Best price: $4.69
Price in other shops: ~~$9.98~~

Torn Curtain
NEWMAN,PAUL; Release date: 2006-02-07; DVD
Best price: $10.52
Price in other shops: ~~$19.98~~

Advise and Consent
FONDA,HENRY; Release date: 2005-05-10; DVD
Best price: $3.95
Price in other shops: ~~$19.98~~

Operation Crossbow
Warner Brothers; Release date: 2006-12-19; DVD
Best price: $5.79
Price in other shops: ~~$19.97~~

Victor/ Victoria
ANDREWS,JULIE; Release date: 2002-06-04; DVD
Best price: $13.94
Price in other shops: ~~$19.98~~

Up Periscope
Warner Brothers; Release date: 2006-12-19; DVD
Best price: $5.24
Price in other shops: ~~$19.97~~

Star!
ANDREWS,JULIE; Release date: 2004-04-20; DVD
Best price: $5.76
Price in other shops: ~~$9.98~~

S.O.B.
ANDREWS,JULIE; Release date: 2002-06-04; DVD
Best price: $5.79
Price in other shops: ~~$19.98~~

Darling Lili
ANDREWS,JULIE; Release date: 2005-10-25; DVD
Best price: $9.29
Price in other shops: ~~$14.98~~

36 Hours Image

36 Hours
Warner Brothers; Release date: 2007-06-05; DVD
Best price: $3.89
Price in other shops: ~~$19.98~~