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A Letter to Three Wives [Blu-ray]

Mankiewicz, Joseph L. (Director), Crain, Jeanne (Actor), Sothern, Ann (Actor) Rated:
Unrated
Format: Blu-ray
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 1,236 ratings
IMDb7.7/10.0
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Format Multiple Formats, Closed-captioned, Blu-ray, Full Screen, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, NTSC, Subtitled
Contributor Mankiewicz, Joseph L., Sothern, Ann, Crain, Jeanne, Darnell, Linda
Language English
Runtime 1 hour and 37 minutes
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Product Description

A flirt tells three women she's leaving town with one of their husbands. Oscar for director Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

Product details

  • Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
  • MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ Unrated (Not Rated)
  • Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 2.93 ounces
  • Director ‏ : ‎ Mankiewicz, Joseph L.
  • Media Format ‏ : ‎ Multiple Formats, Closed-captioned, Blu-ray, Full Screen, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, NTSC, Subtitled
  • Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 37 minutes
  • Release date ‏ : ‎ January 14, 2014
  • Actors ‏ : ‎ Crain, Jeanne, Sothern, Ann, Darnell, Linda
  • Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ English, French, Spanish
  • Studio ‏ : ‎ Twentieth Century-Fox
  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00DOB3MN4
  • Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 1,236 ratings

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
1,236 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Kristine
5.0 out of 5 stars Movie
Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2024
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It’s good
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Linda Darnell deserved an Academy Award for her remarkable performance!
Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2024
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The film concerns a letter sent to three wives (Linda Darnell, Jeanne Crain, Ann Sothern) telling them that one of their girlfriends is leaving with one of their husbands. Jeanne Crain plays a middle -class women married to an upper-class husband; Ann Sothern is a radio writer married to a teacher (Kirk Douglas); and Linda Darnell, is working class beauty married to a loud-mouth and obnoxious man (Paul Douglas). Miss Darnell was one of the most stunning beautiful stars to ever grace the screen. She was part Cherokee and excelled in every type of role. Here, she gives an extraordinary performance and is worthy of an Academy Award. In the latter part of her career she gave outstanding performances in My Darling Clementine, Forever Amber, Fallen Angels, and No Way Out, among others. She was always unforgetable!
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johnf
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the Late Forties' Best Films.
Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2017
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Joseph L. Mankiewicz was known as a producer but took over directing Dragonwyck in 1946 when Ernst Lubitsch was ill and he became one of Hollywood's best directors. He was terrific right from the start with films like Ronald Colman's The Late George Apley and Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. A year after A Letter To Three Wives, he made All About Eve, winning Academy Awards for directing and writing for both films, a rare feat. His career was severely harmed when 20th Century Fox assigned him their blockbuster budgetary disaster Cleopatra (1963) but he did manage to make The Honey Pot and Sleuth afterward.

The hallmarks of a Mankiewicz film included adult topics used in a mature, non-sensational way, an intelligent script, witty dialogue and great performances from his actors (twelve actors from his films received Academy Award nominations). A Letter To Three Wives has all of this in spades. Set in a town near a big city among an upper middle class group of friends, it probes troubles within marriage in an honest and straightforward way. When their friend Addie Ross sends the three a letter telling them she is leaving town but taking one of their husbands with her, each woman is forced to confront her own marriage and the possibility of her husband deserting her, which is possible in all three cases. This is beautifully set up by having them stuck on a riverboat going to a charity picnic on an island where they can't contact their spouses. Their longing look a the sole phone booth at the riverside dock reminds us of how different things were in 1949.

Addie Ross is mostly a voiceover by Celeste Holm, but the one glimpse we get of her on the terrace at the country club party(her head obscured by a potted palm) shows us a real knockout in a tight, strapless gown, a woman who could tempt any man. The actors were not considered top flight but they performed so well that most of them had fine careers afterward. Jeannie Crain was a pretty girl next door type who had been i State Fair. Linda Darnell was beautiful in a glamorous way but no one suspected she could act. Ann Sothern was known as a comedian for her Maisie films. This was radio sportscaster Paul Douglas's first film, young Kirk Douglas's seventh and Thelma Ritter, hilarious as Sadie, was so new she got no billing at all. Even a brief appearance from the ever-matronly Florence Bates as Mrs. Manleigh, the radio station owner is memorable 9as was her equally brief appearance in I Remember Mama the year before as an author who loved good food). The underappreciated Connie Gilchrist is wonderfully blunt as Lora Mae's (Linda Darnell) mother from the wrong side of the tracks.

The script sparkles and there's even some broad humor ("Bingo!"). Mankiewicz uses Kirk Douglas's George Phipps as his personal spokesman, delivering withering comments about commercial radio, a medium the director hated. Alfred Newman provides a nice score that works in the opening of the Brahms Piano Concerto No.2 as Ann Sothern's Rita Phipps begins her flashback. It's her husband George's (Kirk Douglas) favorite piece and he gets a rare recording of it (likely Edwin Fischer and Furtwangler) for his birthday. Little touches like this show the attention to detail of the entire production crew. The problems of the three couples are not quite equal and Linda Darnell gets the best comic lines, but overall you'd be hard pressed to find a better film from this era.

The film is also known for its depiction of the time in which it was made. This is the end of the post-war period and it's still very much the Forties, with swing still on the radio, small towns still an important place in America and no televisions in sight. Porter Hollingsway (Paul Douglas) owns the only one in town but there are no stations to pick up. The Fifties were just around the corner: there were six thousand TV sets in America in 1946 but six million by the early Fifties. Change was in the wind.

Fans of classic films should not miss this one.
27 people found this helpful
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C. C. Black
4.0 out of 5 stars A Letter to One Auteur
Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2020
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Dear Mr. Mankiewicz:

Since you died almost 27 years ago, I'm unsure this letter will reach you. But if fan mail is delivered in The Great Beyond, please accept my thanks for "A Letter to Three Wives." Nobody in Hollywood knows what makes a hit, even less a classic. As a director you had your base hits ("Dragonwyck" [1946]; "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" [1948]) and your strike-outs (most expensively, "Cleopatra" [1963]). Nobody, not even The Great DiMaggio, is perfect. But it's when you combined your flair for direction with your uncanny knack for screenwriting that you really hit your stride. In my book, "All About Eve" (1950) was, hands down, your home run. The year previously, "A Letter To Three Wives" was a triple play (no pun intended): a three-paneled serio-comedy about three marriages—all well functioning, none perfect—that won you Academy Awards for best screenplay (with Vera Caspary, best remembered for her novel "Laura" [1944]) and best direction. Darryl Zanuck, your producer at 20th Century Fox, lost the best picture Oscar in 1949 (to "All The King's Men"), but you made it up to him the next year with "All About Eve." You know all this, but some, hearing my best impersonation of Celeste Holm's voice, may not.

In my humble opinion—what do I know about screenwriting and direction?—"All About Eve" will forever be your masterpiece, but "Three Wives" comes close: the triple-play. Despite all the jockeying among Hollywood's actors of 1948 for your roles, you landed the perfect cast. Even the less than stellar performances—I'd never say which—match their less interesting characters. You gave the great Paul Douglas his first starring role. You made it up to the magnificent Thelma Ritter by making sure that "Three Wives" was her last uncredited part. What weakens—not ruins, but weakens—"Three Wives" is that its ambitious blending of three tales of three marriages couldn't be pulled off in 103 minutes. Because our attention is divided among three nuptial who's-dunnits, the movie loses "Eve"'s laser-like focus. But you took a soapy fluff of "Cosmopolitan" fiction and, with your irrepressible wit and style, shook it into something glistening. You made a movie centered on women that's every bit as entertaining for men, because at bottom the movie is about human nature, not gender. You set the template for copycats for decades to follow: everything from "Sex And The City" (with a lot less class) to "The Simpsons" ("Moe Letter Blues": more farcical, but less thought-provoking), and a lot in-between.

Well, it's time for me to close. Well done, Mr. Mankiewicz: you made a classic that not only endures, but is being technologically improved by computer video and audio software. Your sons, especially Tom and Christopher, are carrying on the family business. Your great-nephew Ben presides over rebroadcasts, not only of your movies, but your colleagues' on Turner Classic Movies. (Ironically Zanuck and the other moguls had nothing to fear from television.) And I hope you and your older brother Herman are enjoying wonderful, high-stakes poker games every evening.

Good night. My champagne glass topples over and shatters.
29 people found this helpful
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GLORIA LIM
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Product
Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2024
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Item was perfect, just as I had hoped for.
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Top reviews from other countries

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Starlee Carew
5.0 out of 5 stars Under-rated Masterpiece
Reviewed in Canada on August 3, 2022
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From the opening monologue (& pay attention to it) to the final scene, this is just a pure gem of a movie.
The title refers to a letter an aristocratic femme fatale writes to 3 of her so-called friends informing them that she's left town, but taken one of their husbands as a going away present. The letter arrives in the morning &, as the day progresses, each of the wives, all recalling less that stellar moments in their marriages, wonders if Addie Ross, that's the husband stealer & a women who each wife knows their husband admires - admires enough, they wonder, to just maybe be the man Addie has stolen for her own.
As each women wonders, scenes from each marriage are recalled. There's the young farm girl who marries one of the town's aristocrats & is frightened that, compared to Addie Ross, she has as much sophistication & poise as one of the cows on the farm she came from. Then, there's the wife who has a job in radio, the TV of the time, & makes more than her high-school teacher husband, played by the always spot on Kirk Douglas in one of his earliest roles. Given the social mores of the times, a women who made more than her man effectively emasculates him since, according to the America of Ozzie & Harriet, Father Knows Best, et al, it was the man who brought home the bacon & the women who cooked it, primarily raised the kids, kept the house immaculate & supported her husband, come what may.
For me though , the most interesting of the couples are played by Linda Darnell & Paul Douglas. Darnell's crafty shop girl from the very wrong side of the tracks who ensnares up & coming appliance store magnate Douglas in her romantic spiderweb are a pure joy to watch. Their banter is acid laced, fuelled by a sexual tension neither of them wants to acknowledge, or quite knows how to deal with. Both Darnell & Douglas were, in my estimation, highly under-rated. In this movie, they get to stretch a bit & show what that they were far more capable than most of what Hollywood offered either.
Obviously, this flick is highly recommended, so enjoy!
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D J Jackson: Passionate about Film.
5.0 out of 5 stars WONDERFUL DIALOGUE, DELICIOUSLY WITTY AND FUNNY.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 12, 2018
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This is a review of the Masters of Cinema Dual Format; we watched the Blu-ray. Technically, this was excellent, with superb sound & picture quality.

This is a super film. It is hugely entertaining, based around the letter of the title, and then 3 roughly half-hour flash-back sequences which give context to the relationship that each of the three wives has with her husband. Each is individually fascinating, and touching. The performances are a delight, and it becomes a very entertaining guessing game, trying to decide which woman is the true target (?victim) of the letter-writer. And why has she involved all three wives in her correspondence?

The dialogue is wonderfully written, deliciously funny and witty, and pokes some very contemporary barbs at topics as diverse as advertising, trashy mass-market entertainment and the dis-respecting and undervaluing of education and culture. Kirk Douglas has some very heartfelt lines on these topics. There are also some glorious visual gags largely involving living too close to the (wrong side of) the railroad tracks. The incomparable Thelma Ritter as the domestic help, Sadie, is utterly wonderful, and is at the heart of the best comedic moments in the film.

We loved this film, it is a total delight.
9 people found this helpful
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P. Cook
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Blu-ray
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 3, 2014
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This blu-ray provides a beautiful print of this film. I am no expert on picture / sound quality but I know what I like. The extras are the same as the dvd. The bonus is that this American import can be played in the United Kingdom so must be region free.
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s_watanabe
5.0 out of 5 stars 北米盤『三人の妻への手紙』が日本語字幕収録で登場！
Reviewed in Japan on September 22, 2013
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*【以下結末に触れています】

邦題『三人の妻への手紙』

ニューヨーク郊外にある、どこにでもある小さな町の穏やかな5月の土曜日。友達同士のデボラ(ジーン・クレイン)、ローラメイ(リンダ・ダーネル)、リタ(アン・サザーン)の3人は、町のチャリティー・ピクニックに向う。いざ乗船という時に、彼女たちの親友、アディ・ロス(声・セレステ・ホルム)から一通の手紙が届く。そこには、アディが、3人のうちの誰かの夫と駈落ちをすると書かれていた。3人は、アディの悪い冗談だと言うが、それぞれ思い当たる節もあり、心中穏やかではいられなくなり…。

「コスモポリタン」誌に掲載されたジョン・クレンプナーの小説"A Letter to Five Wives"の映画化作品。原作では、5人の妻が主人公だったが、映画化に際して、4人(4人目は、アン・バクスターが演じる予定だった)に変更され、さらに最終的には、現在の形の3人に落ち着いた。リンダ・ダーネルが、アディの写真を見て嘲りの表情をする場面で、マンキウィッツ監督は、ダーネルをしごいたオットー・プレミンジャー監督の写真を使って演出したという逸話もある。アカデミー賞最優秀監督賞、最優秀脚本賞を受賞。

極上のサスペンスというのは、何も殺人ミステリーやスパイ劇だけにあるのではない。日常生活の中にもある。本作は、ドラマやラブ・ロマンスのジャンルに分類されることもあるものの、それ以上に、日常の結婚生活の破綻の危機を、女性たちの揺れ動く心理を追いつつサスペンスたっぷりに描いた秀作だ。フィクションの常套句「実在の人物や実際の事件とは一切関係ありません」を逆手に取り、誰にでも起こりうる設定にすることで、より共感を寄せ易い日常に潜むサスペンスを提供しているあたりは、(原作があるにせよ)脚本家出身のマンキウィッツ監督らしい目のつけどころと言えるだろう。

とにかく、構成の巧さと緻密さ(3人のフラッシュ・バックで全体を編みあげる)に加え、ウィットに富んだセリフの応酬で話を進めて行くのは、映画脚本のお手本といった感じで、ラストのグラスが倒れる含みと謎を残すショットに至るまで、精密機械の設計図のようにキチっとしていて、全くだれるということがない。『 ユージュアル・サスペクツ 』の「カイザー・ソゼ」よろしく、「アディ・ロス」を登場人物たちの会話の端々に出し、姿を見せないながらも(ナレーションを担当し、すべてを高みから観察しているような狂言回しの役割)、作品の中心的な存在とするアクセントの付け方も、練達の脚本家ならではのもの。その隅々にまで精通した脚本を、マンキウィッツ監督自身が、あくまできめ細やかで流麗(長廻しが多め)、品の良いタッチで演出している。結婚喜劇にありがちな皮肉の効いた風刺的な視点は強くなく、どちらかというと、主人公たちの動揺や弱さに同情的で、温かい目を向けているのが、マンキウィッツ監督の節度であり、やさしさだ。

主人公3人を演じるクレイン、ダーネル、サザーンが、三者三様、それぞれの持ち味を生かし、年齢も性格も育った環境も違う女性を妙演していて実に素晴らしい。表向きは、自分の夫がアディと駈落ちすることなど絶対にないと強がっていても、内心、心が揺らぎ、不安、嫉妬、怒り…と言った負の感情に振り回される女性の姿を繊細で抑性の効いた演技で表現している。そういった変に演技合戦に陥っていない冷静さもまた、本作の口当たりの良さにつながっているのだろう。そして、もちろん、ジェフリー・リン、ポール・ダグラス、カーク・ダグラスといった実力派男優陣が脇(と言うにはあまりに贅沢な布陣だが)を固めることで、彼女たちをより一層引き立て、輝かせている点も忘れてはいけない。

最も脂が乗り切った時期のマンキウィッツ監督の絶対的な自信と勢いが感じられ、映画の語りの醍醐味を味わえる1本だ。

本Blu-rayは、製作65周年を記念し発売されたもの。4Kフィルム・スキャンを経てカラコレ、レストアされたHDマスターを使用しているようだ。すでに、本作の35mmオリジナル・ネガは残存せず(1970年代に廃棄)、数世代後の35mmデュープ・ネガが最上の素材ということは有名だが、Blu-ray化に当たって、35mm素材のクリーニングとデジタルによる徹底的なレストアが施されたようで、キズがきれいに取り除かれ、明るく、白黒の諧調、ディテール表現が自然で良好な画質になっている。2005年発売の北米盤DVDと比べても、画質がかなり向上していることは一目瞭然。モノラルDTS-HD マスター・オーディオの音声は、セリフが明瞭な一方、アルフレッド・ニューマンの音楽が少しばかり拡がりがなく平板な気もする。

本Blu-rayは、北米盤ながら(そして、パッケージ裏には記載がないながら)、日本語字幕収録(月橋凌子氏の翻訳)。初期言語設定が、日本語のBlu-rayプレーヤー(つまり、コード・フリー化などされていない通常の日本製R-Aプレーヤー)で再生すると、自動的に日本盤として認識され、問題なく視聴が出来る。その際、特典として、予告編(2分43秒、SD、日本語字幕なし)が収録されている。

また、初期言語設定が英語のR-Aプレーヤーかリージョン・フリーのプレーヤーで再生すると、以下の特典が視聴可能。こちらには日本語字幕は収録されていないが、どれも興味深い特典なので、映画ファンならば心底楽しめるはずだ。

・マンキウィッツ監督の伝記作家ケネス・ゲスト、シェリル・ロワー、息子のクリストファー・マンキウィッツによるコメンタリー
・リンダ・ダーネルに関するドキュメンタリー"Biography: Linda Darnell - Hollywood's Fallen Angel" (44分03秒、SD)
・第22回アカデミー賞授賞式での本作出演者の姿を捉えたニュース映像"Fox Movietone News 'Oscars Presented for Achievements in Motion Pictures"(1分15秒、SD)

ケースには、穴のあいたエコ・ケースを採用。2013年10月25日発売予定の日本盤(『 三人の妻への手紙 』)も、本盤をそのままローカライズしただけのものになるはずなので、特にこだわりのない方は、本盤でいいと思う。

何にせよ、1990年に、正規版VHS、1991年に、正規版レーザーディスクが発売されて以降、なぜか日本では非正規の劣悪なパブリック・ドメイン(著作権切れ)DVDしか流通していなかったので、本作のファンは、20年越しで、やっと素晴らしい質の正規盤を手に入れられることになる。
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Beverley Paget
5.0 out of 5 stars Great movie
Reviewed in Canada on August 9, 2019
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Love it great movie really enjoyed it
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