All This and Heaven Too

Dynamic Hollywood superstar Bette Davis was one of the most distinctive and intense actresses of her time. She was a movie star who defied the studio system to take charge of her career and her own choice of projects and very often defined those films with her powerhouse performances, as this six-disc box set shows. Davis often overpowered her bland leading men, but in the 1940 melodrama "All This, and Heaven Too" she plays a prim but generous young governess to the three doting children of a French aristocrat (Charles Boyer). He's the very model of quiet strength and controlled passion as the 19th century politician who adores his children and shrinks from his hysterically jealous and coldly self-involved wife (Barbara O'Neil). The growing attraction between Boyer and Davis is palpable even though they barely touch and never even kiss. Scandal is inevitable and duly nation-shaking. The lavish production is one of Warner Bros. studio's most handsome historical dramas, and director Anatole Litvak turns this melodrama into one of the quintessential costume weepies. The DVD features commentary by film historian Daniel Bubbeo, who fills his track with performer bios and production stories, as well as a 1941 "Lux Radio Theater" version of the film featuring Davis and Boyer, and a "Warner Night at the Movies 1940" collection of vintage shorts, cartoons, newsreels and trailers.

Davis meets her match in the lively 1941 melodrama "The Great Lie," but it's not with male lead George Brent. Mary Astor almost steals the film from Davis as a tempestuous concert pianist who has a child by Brent and gives him up to Davis, Brent's wife. The plot is ridiculously contrived, involving improper marriages and a husband who disappears in an exotic plane crash, but Astor is a spitfire, spitting and hissing her way to an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. The set also features "The Old Maid" (1939) with Miriam Hopkins and Brent, "In This Our Life" (1942) directed by John Huston and featuring Olivia de Havilland as Davis' sister, "Watch on the Rhine" (1943) with Paul Lukas, and "Deception" (1946), which reunites Davis with her "Now, Voyager" co-stars Paul Henreid and Claude Rains and director Irving Rapper. Each of the six discs is also available separately and features commentary and a "Warner Night at the Movies" collection of vintage shorts.