Gone with the Wind is a sprawling mosaic of a picture, one of the best-loved and most successful in movie history, but also one of the most frustrating. Wonderfully epic in scope, the decline and fall of the antebellum South as seen through the eyes of feisty, independent and wilful heroine Scarlett O'Hara makes the first half of the picture an absolutely riveting spectacle. From the aristocratic old world of Tara to the horrors of Atlanta under siege, Gone with the Wind features any number of indelible scenes and images: the genteel girls taking an enforced siesta during the Twelve Oaks barbecue, a horrified Scarlett walking through the wounded, the flight from burning Atlanta, and Scarlett's moving pledge against a burnished sunset set to Max Steiner's glorious music score. But the second half shifts gear, the melodramatic quotient is upped yet further as tragedy piles upon tragedy, and despite its unwieldy length everything feels rushed. Add to that the central problem that the audience never really understands, why Scarlett could ever fall for weak-chinned Ashley in the first place, and the picture begins to unravel unsatisfactorily. Behind the scenes problems doubtless contributed, with directors coming and going, Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable apparently barely able to stand the sight of each other, and producer David O Selznick's endless rewrites and interference. Nonetheless, this 1939 box-office smash remains one of Hollywood's finest achievements, an irresistible spectacle chock-full of the finest stars in the filmic firmament striking sparks off one another. They really don't make 'em like this anymore. On the DVD: No extra features on this DVD, which is a pity given the amount of material that must be available, but it has to be admitted this disc is worth the asking price simply to drink in the astonishing quality of the picture, sumptuously presented in its original 1. 33:1 "Academy" ratio. [+]

Alvarez Kelly (1966) doesn't really justify the description of "Western Classic" which Columbia Tristar attach to it, but it's a pleasant enough Western directed by Edward Dmytryk. The rather convoluted plot (adventurer plays one side off against the other on a cattle drive from Mexico during the Civil War) relies heavily on the charm of the two stars, William Holden and Richard Widmark, but the two prove as reliable as ever. There are some so-so action scenes, but it's the battle of wits between the two principals that supplies all the fireworks. By contrast Janice Rule is just adequate as the love interest. On the DVD: It's a good-looking DVD transfer, with a 1:2. 35 aspect ratio and Dolby Digital sound. Subtitles are available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch and Polish with dubbing into French, German, Italian and Spanish. For extras there are trailers and some filmographies, so partial as to be not much use. -Ed Buscombe.

Just maybe the most shamelessly enjoyable of Cecil B. DeMille's pseudo-historical epics, this rumbustious frontier saga offers a three-for-one Western legends combo-Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Calamity Jane, all cutting up in the 1870s, with George Armstrong Custer and Abraham Lincoln thrown in for good measure. (Wait a minute, Lincoln was assassinated in 1865-oh, never mind. ) Truth to tell, Buffalo Bill doesn't really pull his weight, since (1) he is hopelessly distracted by virtue of having recently married and (2) he's played by James Ellison, an eternal juvenile normally relegated to second-banana duty in Paramount's Hopalong Cassidy series. However, Gary Cooper's Wild Bill and Jean Arthur's Calamity supply enough star power to light up the Dakotas and parts of Missouri. Every once in a while, DeMille and his small army of writers stumble upon an actual historical fact. Bill Cody did fight to the death with an Indian chief named Yellow Hand. George Custer and James Butler Hickok did both buy the farm in the summer of 1876. (Custer's Last Stand is handled imaginatively, if cheaply, as a vision narrated by a wandering Cheyenne warrior-none other than C. B. [+]

High on the list of best POW movies, King Rat bears some comparison to that compound over by the River Kwai. but this is an entirely more cynical exercise. In a Japanese prison camp, a brash American corporal (George Segal) runs a variety of money-making operations, much to the amazement of a young British officer (James Fox). Director Bryan Forbes, who adapted James Clavell's novel, follows different POWs through various strands of plot, each episode seemingly designed to highlight the dog-eat-dog nature of men held in close confinement. (In one pointedly black-comic sequence, it becomes man-eat-dog. ) This was one of Segal's breakthrough roles, and his modern style fits the movie's anti-heroic, '60s approach. It was Oscar®-nominated for art direction and cinematography, which may sound odd for such a bleakly confined location, but the lucid starkness of the camp justifies the nods. The John Barry score, while apt, is similarly stark. [+]

Despite its manipulative grandiosity, this film is completely irresistible, for several reasons: it recounts the greatest air battle in history, creating the greatest aerial battle scenes in film history; it has a terrific cast (Harry Andrews, Michael Caine, Trevor Howard, Curt Jurgens, Laurence Olivier, Nigel Patrick, Christopher Plummer, Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, Robert Shaw, Patrick Wymark and Edward Fox); and it's technically very well made, thanks to the Bond team of producer Harry Saltzman and director Guy Hamilton and the great cinematographer Freddie Young. -Bill Desowitz.

Historically dubious but vigorously entertaining, Dark Command is the best of John Wayne's many movies for Republic (not counting Wayne's lovely producing debut Angel and the Badman and those two John Ford films). Set in "Bleeding Kansas" just before and during the Civil War, it highlights the romantic triangle of amiable but unschooled Texan Wayne, banker's daughter Claire Trevor, and schoolmaster Walter Pidgeon-just long enough for the earnest pedagogue to become embittered, turn into bushwhacker William Quantrill (here Cantrell), and start wreaking havoc in the Border States. This was Republic's first star vehicle for Wayne, following his breakthrough in Stagecoach (away from Republic), and it's an uncharacteristically impressive production: good writers working from a W. R. Burnett novel, Raoul Walsh brought in to direct, music by Victor Young, and strong costars and supporting cast (Marjorie Main, Porter Hall, Raymond Walburn-and Roy Rogers and Gabby Hayes!). Wayne himself is delightful. -Richard T. Jameson.