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Epicurus.com - Blossoms in the Dust
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List Price: $14.98
Our Price: $21.99
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: MGM (Warner)
Starring: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Felix Bressart, Marsha Hunt, Fay Holden
Directed By: Mervyn LeRoy
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786301967563
Format: Black & White
ISBN: 6301967569
Label: MGM (Warner)
Manufacturer: MGM (Warner)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Warner)
Release Date: 1993-12-23
Running Time: 114
Studio: MGM (Warner)
Theatrical Release Date: 1941-07-25
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: How about releasing this on DVD????
Comment: Or better yet, having a Greer Garson DVD set with this, Mrs. Parkington, Valley of Decision, Julia Misbehaves and The Miniver Story.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Blossoms in need of Dusting
Comment: I become a pretty big fan of Greer Garson over the last few years. I expected to be impressed with her role in "Blossoms in the Dust" as well as with the movie itself. I hate to admit it but I thought that this was a mediocre movie and I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt by giving it a rating of "3 stars". The problem with the movie is that everything is designed to make the most impact in the least amount of time. I don't believe I ever saw a movie where each and every scene was designed to either educate, shock, enrage, or endear. I realize that motion pictures are about taking a 400 page book and turning it into a 110 minute film. In order to be so concise, every scene needs to be, by necessity, elemental to the overall film. However, great movies lure us into the emotions it wants to create in us. Great movies give us the sense that we have been swayed by our own abilities to see through the surface to the hidden meaning within. Great movies don't create a cast made up of saints and demons with few falling in between. Great movies don't shove us from scene to scene. This is not a great movie.
There are some fairly decent aspects to its' credit. I still like the acting of Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon. The color and cinematography are excellent. It's just too much of an emotional roller coaster; not for me but for the cast. There's a sister who handles sudden dispair in an extreme manner in less than a minute. There's our heroine who one minute can't stand kids and the next (alright, that's a bit of an exaggeration on my part) can't stand to be without them. There are loving parents to be and an occassional coniving parent that was. There are all kinds of different kids including some who are illegitimate; a term that is never really dealt with. I sympasize with the cause of deleting illegitimacy from birth records. This was, perhaps, the biggest issue that our heroine, Edna Kahly Gladney, took on. I saw a birth certificate the other day from that era. There was no father's name on it and the recorder made sure to put a "Miss" in front of the mother's name. Other birth records of the same version in that era just showed names without titles. I'm glad she took it on the cause of eliminating such designations as "illegitimate" on children's birth certificates. I'm just sorry that the picture only managed about 5 minutes in which to fit the issue into the movie.
"Blossoms in the Dust" ought to be a real tear-jerker and a quick review of some other reviews shows that it was for many viewers. However, there was never enough time spent establishing an emotional attachment to give real feelings to a subsequent detachment. A scene towards the end gives us an Edna that is ready to flee everything in the middle of the night, sacrificing all she's built from the ground up. The reason was clear but not clearly convincing. Two minutes later all is well. I had learned long before that scene not to invest my emotions in any particular part of this movie. After all, it was obvious that neither the writer nor director had done so either.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Woman's Film
Comment: Blossoms in the Dust is a true story about a woman who helps to rid the world of the shame of being an illegitimate child. Through her own tragedies such as the suicide of her adopted sister who had no last name and the death of her own baby, she triumphed to help many children in need. She made it so that women who worked and could not care for their children during the day could keep them instead of giving them up for adoption. She also ran a successful orphanage.
Greer Garson stars in this film, a plain, standard version of a good woman. There is nothing outstanding about her personality.
There are several points in this film that the acting seems forced such as during long periods of laughter and during times of play. These artificial scenes hinder the film.
This film was written by Anita Loos, a notorious scandalous film writer of the 1920s. It is surprising to see that she also did family dramas.
The big disappointment about this film is that nothing really seems to happen. If you read the back of the box, you know what is going to happen and you watch it simply come to life. However, the story is not exciting enough to really make much of an impact. This is old news. Perhaps for audiences that well knew the conditions of life for illegitimate children before this woman took a stand, it would be more powerful today.
Customer Rating:
Summary: First and In Some Ways The Best--
Comment: --of Greer Garson's many films with Walter Pidgeon. Greer Garson was an odd sort of movie star. For one thing she always seemed to be about 10 years older than the parts she was cast in, making me wonder if maybe she lied about her age when Louis B. Mayer first found her in the UK. (Mayer had made one last scouting trip to Europe right before war broke out, and sailed back home not only with Greer Garson but with Hedy Lamarr in another stateroom! Not a bad haul!) She had to be lit carefully otherwise her long face took on the aspect of a friendly horse. And once she was established in Hollywood, she displaced Norma Shearer as the "queen of the MGM lot," effectively kicking Norma upstairs and into retirement, but basically because Mayer was tired of catering towards Shearer and he saw Garson as the ideal replacement.
In BLOSSOMS IN THE DUST we see something of the way she might really have looked, for she was born to act in Technicolor, and the compositions of the furnishings, costumes and even the interior decoration are all astonishinly lovely. For its day, BLOSSOMS was sort of a scandalous picture. I suppose MGM felt it could get away with a pinch of "naughtiness" if they had Garson to give that naughtiness the "ladylike" touch she was famous for. Another of her Pidgeon pictures was actually titled, "SCANDAL AT SCOURIE." In real life, she was responsible for two scandals, she married her own "son" (the actor who had played her son in MRS MINIVER), and also going on and on and on for the world's longest acceptance speech when she picked up the Oscar for the same film. Her speech in BLOSSOMS to the Texas legislature is long, but watching it you can see why Americans loved her. She represented a fantasy of England, a fantasy so broadly based that she could play a Texan (Edna Gladney), preposterous as it seems, and get away with it, just as she later got away with playing Madame Curie (!!)
The story is sentimental but we don't watch Greer Garson movies for slapstick value nor for biting social commentary, we watch them to provoke tears which she always does, simply and certainly as cutting up an onion. She's great and this is one of her very best pictures.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Poignant film !
Comment: This is a real gem movie . The supreme magnetism of this immortal actress Greer Carson (one of the top ten Northamerican actress ever) makes a must for all the cinema lovers .
She founds an orphanage in Texas since she loses her pwn child. The blame and the redemption will open for her a new gate with unssupected possibilities .
The film os so overwhelmong acted that you miss even the plot is dated . When you watch in screen both acting giants as Pigdeon and Mrs. Carson, try to find an answer : Would you be able to find a couple actually which could match with that one?
A haunting film directed with broad gusto by Melvin Leroy who would give us years later The bad seed .
Fundamental film of the forties . A must in your collection.
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