The Best of Everything

"Jean Negulesco's glossy Manhattan soap opera has arrived on DVD with a good letterboxed (2.35-to-1) image, and a clean if unexceptional (and rather low-volume) audio transfer. The movie has been treated well in that regard, with a more-than-sufficient 32 chapter markers across its two hours-and-one-minute running time. The major bonus feature is a commentary track by Sylvia Stoddard and author Rona Jaffe, who wrote the novel from which the movie was adapted. Jaffe's observations are well worth hearing (more than once), especially the way in which the novel and the screenplay evolved -- Stoddard, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have enough to say substantively about the movie and so loves to dwells on matters of decor and architecture, among other extraneous matters, about half of her commentary can be dispensed with. The other major bonus feature is a section of the contemporary Fox-Movietone newsreel covering the New York opening of the movie (which gives us a glimpse of Jaffe as she looked then, not to mention soon-to-be-former actor Robert Evans). We also get an original trailer (whose sound is mastered rather louder than that of the movie itself), and a selection of trailers from other Fox titles coming out on DVD at the time."