The Good
We get 6 films in this solid box set.
The Bad
Clunky packaging. Paltry extras.The Claudette Colbert Collection features 6 films from the illustrious career of this groundbreaking female star. They are:
- Three Cornered Moon
- Maid of Salem
- I Met Him In Paris
- Bluebeard's Eighth Wife
- No Time For Love
- The Egg and I
This set features a rich mix of screwball comedy, epic filmmaking and drama. The standouts for this writer are The Egg and I which looks at what happens when a loving wife follows her husband to the country to raise chickens. I Met Him In Paris gives us a woman who is being wooed by three suitors and this successful designer may not have time for any of them. Lastly, Bluebeard's Eighth Wife focuses on a woman who wants to teach her husband a lesson for not telling her that he's been married before.
Features
Claudette Colbert: Queen of the Silver Screen
As this featurette suggests it gives us a nice look at the behind-the-scenes life of Claudette Colbert. However, a lot of it does focus on what this woman did in the front of the camera and how she broke ground as a female artist. At a time when women were most certainly relegated to certain roles, Claudette Colbert showed there was no role that was too big or too small.
Video
All of the films in this collection are in black and white and in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Universal has done a very credible job in both preserving the assets that make up these movies, and making them look good for today's discerning DVD watching audience. I didn't notice any point where the images got fuzzy or seemed to bend on the screen, and considering how old these movies are that is something to be commended for.
Audio
English Dolby Digital 2.0. Mono. Subtitled in English, Spanish and French. The audio on these films was good but I really had to crank up the volume on my TV set. Mind you, I was watching it on a my 13", one speaker TV, but that is beside the point. Once I did this everything played well and I, thankfully, didn't have to continue fixing the volume.
Package
A luminescent image of Claudette Colbert graces the front of this box set. It also features a list of the films in this collection. The back cover gives us 5 images from the films in this set, a description of who Colbert is and a description of the 6 films in this set. This overly large artwork then pulls out featuring more artwork and the 3 discs that make up this collection. Personally, as good as this looks, Universal has given this release too much packaging to make it economical in your collection.
Final Word
All in all I really liked this collection a great deal. While I wonder how much the users of this site are going to care about this sort of release, I love what Universal is doing to preserve the myriad of films in their library.
The Egg and I was released May 1, 1947.