Pollyanna (Vault Disney Collection) dvd movie.|
Pollyanna (Vault Disney Collection) buy bestselling dvd movies, videos find reviews, ratings, prices |
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List Price: $22.99 Our Price: $15.49 You Save: $7.5 Features • Anamorphic • Closed-captioned • Color • DVD-Video • Widescreen • NTSC In Theaters : 19 May, 1960 DVD Release : 07 May, 2002 |
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Pollyanna (Vault Disney Collection) description Optimism shines in this classic 1960 Disney film starring Hayley Mills. When the newly orphaned Pollyanna comes to live with her wealthy aunt in Harrington Town, life looks promising. Despite her aunt's insistence on propriety and modesty, Pollyanna's cheerful, optimistic ways spread throughout the town--converting even a cantankerous recluse and a whining hypochondriac. Only Aunt Polly has trouble welcoming her young niece into her heart. In a clash between the townspeople and Aunt Polly over local politics, it's Pollyanna's influence that helps individual townspeople find the inner strength to stand up for their own beliefs. When Pollyanna is involved in a serious accident, Aunt Polly finally realizes how much she loves her niece. Can Aunt Polly and the entire town somehow restore Polly's optimism and ensure a full recovery? Pollyanna is wholesome entertainment that will leave the entire family eager to play the "glad game." --Tami Horiuchi |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | Go Ahead, Be A Pollyanna! |
| It's always a little intimidating to re-watch favorite movies from your childhood. You fear being disappointed by what you found captivating as a child. Oft-times the films seem just a little less "well made" or carefully plotted than films devoted to a supposedly more discerning adult audience. I had fond memories of POLLYANNA, a film my older sister took me to see when I was eight (in fact, I had my first movie star crush on Hayley Milles), but doubted that I'd find it as engaging as a grown-up. After all, the very term "Pollyanna" has certain negative associations, synonymous as it is with "Goody Two-Shoes" or just old "goodie goodie." Naive optimism may be charming in a (fictional turn of the LAST century child), but does it speak to us jaded, post-modern viewers of the 21st century?
Well, the answer is that it CAN, certainly. It's all up to you, the viewer. Pollyanna's sunny disposition, from an adult perspective, is actually an act of sheer willpower. She's an orphan, after all, sent to live with strangers (her reserved Aunt Polly, whose welcome is tentative at best). Her "glad game," which was taught to her my her missionary father, is actually a conscious effort to put the best possible spin on otherwise dismaying events. Positive thinking isn't all that easy in the face of adversity, especially if you're a 10 year old child. POLLYANNA also addresses, in its own innocent way, some theological or, at least, doctrinal issues. Her gradual influence on the town's minister leads him to gradually disavow the grim fire-and-brimstone preaching that Pollyanna's influential Aunt Polly, who practically owns the town, seems to prefer in favor of a more optimistic--and dare we say, more New Testament--kind of teaching. These were points that went over my head as an eight year old. What didn't go over my head at the time was the plight of nearly all the children in the film, since nearly all of them were presented as orphans. The secret fear of nearly every small child, of course, is losing his or her parents. I don't think I realized that by 1960, life expectancy had improved for nearly everyone on the N. American continent. It probably didn't help that my hometown had a "children's home," and I assumed (probably incorrectly) that the residents there were all children whose parents had died. That was such a haunting issue to me then me that to this very day, when I read a story about an orphan to a child, I always mention that nowadays things are different and only very few children experience the tragedy of losing both parents. But the strength of a tale like POLLYANNA is that it shows how even a child can overcome extreme adversity and retain a sense of wonder and optimism. Hayley Mills received a Special Academy Award for her performance in this film, and she is indeed charming--and quite polished. Her British accent seems to be explained away by the fact that her father is described as having been a "missionary in the British West Indies." (Of course, most of her subsequent Disney roles had her playing American girls, and her accent was always simply ignored). Her speech coaches did take pains, apparently, to coach her on the more-or-less standard pronunciation of "aunt" as "ant," which might have been the one Britishism in her speech pattern they COULD have overlooked. After all, if I am not mistaken, the story takes place in Vermont, and in New England (as in Olde England) most speakers would pronounce that word as "ahnt." In fact, the speech coaches probably should have probably coached all the AMERICAN actors on a proper New England accent. That's a quibble, however, POLLYANNA is a charmer and well worth seeing after 47 years. And it provides food for thought, for young and old to boot. What's not to like--or to be glad about? |
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