Product Description

Louisa May Alcott's famous novel of the March family, brought to the screen.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1667 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2003-08-26
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Cantonese, English, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Taiwanese Chinese
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 121 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
This sumptuous 1949 film adaptation of the beloved Louisa May Alcott novel isn't as good as the 1933 Katharine Hepburn version, or even the 1994 remake starring an Oscar-nominated Winona Ryder, but it does offer its own pleasures, especially in seeing an all-star cast put through its paces. Erstwhile tomboy June Allyson stars as Alcott's famed heroine Jo, the budding writer in Civil War New England who pines for adventure, independence, and her own career. With Father off to war, it's up to Jo, practical older sister Meg (Janet Leigh), frail sister Beth (Margaret O'Brien), and vain sister Amy (Elizabeth Taylor) to help Marmee (a saintly Mary Astor) keep the home fires warm while dealing with the rigors of adolescence. It's all poured on with a generous amount of syrup, including lavish sets, hoop skirts, and petticoats, but anyone who's ever read Alcott's book will take comfort in its familiar story line. The dialogue is clunky but earnest, but you'd have to have a heart of stone not to get caught up in Jo's plight. And rarely do you get to see such stars go at it with such gusto: Allyson and Peter Lawford (as neighbor and rich boy Laurie) are a match made in B-movie heaven, Taylor is spunky and hilarious in an early comic performance, and Leigh does the matronly thing with aplomb. And nobody, but nobody, cries and suffers like Margaret O'Brien! Watch it in the wintertime, with a fire roaring. --Mark Englehart

Customer Reviews

Version Closest to Book
This version of Louisa May Alcott's classic book, "Little Women," starring June Allyson, Janet Leigh, Liz Taylor and Margaret O'Brien, was the first remake of the film (which originally starred Kathryn Hepburn) and the version that is truest to the book.

The Wynona Ryder film, the third and latest version, was seriously flawed, especially by the inclusion of "politically correct" and contemporary social views like the scene in which Ryder, playing Jo, expresses feminist sympathies to young men in a bar. I've read the book: there's nothing like that in it. In fact, the book is practically a morality play and in the earlier film versions the girls' struggle to improve their characters is portrayed, if somewhat lightly. These struggles, which are necessary to the accurate portrayal of each character and the time in which they lived, was totally deleted from the most recent version.

Both the Hepburn version and the Allyson version use quite a bit of Alcott's original text in the screenplay and characters in both films follow the book almost to the proverbial "T." The Ryder film, on the other hand, is a blatant and successful attempt to "modernize" Louisa Alcott, resulting in a totally inferior production.

A 10 star winner.....
As someone named after Beth from Little Women and having sisters and my family roots on our Mothers side being in Maine, I was a lover of this film from the first time I ever saw it. Thankfully we now have it on DVD and can watch it any time we wish. It is very true to the book authored by a favorite author of mine, Louisa May Alcott.

As a woman I like the book and the movie because of the strength of the March women in an era when most women were expected to live a certain role. I also like how each of the daughters Jo, Beth, Amy and Meg along with the mother who is a widow are all spirited females and not at all wimpy or whiny. Remembering at all times that the story was/is set in Civil War times.

The movie never lags but blends smoothly from one scene to the next. The cinematography has held up well over the decades and the movie doesn't show its age visually. Each of the actors went on to be major successes with some being major stars when the movie was made. Its a movie that is timeless and is a favorite especially during the winter months in out home.

My Favorite Version Even Though They Made Beth Younger Than Amy!
This is my favorite version of Little Women despite that fact that they made Beth younger than Amy when it was the other way around in the book. Amy was actually younger than Beth in the book but even with that it is still my favorite movie version and as much as I liked the 1933 Katharine Hepburn version I liked this 1949 version better and I found June Allyson to be a more convincing Jo.