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List Price: $19.95Amazon.com's Price: $8.99 You Save: $10.96 (55%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780780029170
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0780029178
Label: Merchant Ivory
Manufacturer: Merchant Ivory
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Merchant Ivory
Region Code: 1
Release Date: January 18, 2005
Running Time: 101 minutes
Sales Rank: 78308
Studio: Merchant Ivory
Theatrical Release Date: 1991-06
Editorial Review:
Description:
Three Academy Award® winners—Vanessa Red grave, Keith Carradine, and Rod Steiger—are the stars of this extraordinary 1991 film, directed by British actor Simon Callow. The Ballad of the Sad Café, based on the Carson McCullers novella and Edward Albee play, is both a grotesque black comedy and a prime slice of 'Southern Gothic,' set in a poverty-stricken rural community dominated by the curious, androgynous character of Miss Amelia. A forceful personality with a mysterious past, she runs the town's only café and controls the locals through distribution of her own secretly brewed 'hooch.' But Miss Amelia's eccentric existence is threatened with the arrival of a hunchbacked dwarf, who claims kinship with her, and reappearance of the husband she rejected on their wedding night.
Amazon.com:
As Southern Gothic goes, Simon Callow's The Ballad of the Sad Café is about as eerie as a Great Depression-era tragedy can be, rife with subconscious rage, unholy alliances, androgyny, and grotesque spectacle. Based on a Carson McCullers novella but adapted from a stage version written by Edward Albee, Ballad stars Vanessa Redgrave as Miss Amelia, a singular force in her dusty, rural town worthy of a Walker Percy photo spread. Owner of the only general store in sight, medicine woman, and manufacturer of moonshine strong enough to numb the day laborers who collapse on her porch, Miss Amelia controls the pulse of her community. Things change with the arrival of a strange, hunchbacked dwarf (Cork Hubbert) who claims to be her cousin, but who ultimately sides with Amelia's ex-husband (Keith Carradine) in a campaign to make her life a living hell. British character actor Callow's ambition behind the camera proves a little overwrought, but he delivers a powerfully atmospheric, even nightmarish, drama. --Tom Keogh
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Ford should change its logo to - "Built Redgrave Tough"
A review for "The Ballad of the Sad Café" once opened with the formidable question of who would ever consider casting Vanessa Redgrave as Miss Amelia, a Depression-era love-starved local recluse. As this critic seemed to point out, the only really two options were either Shelley Duvall or Sissy Spacek, two women who have continually redefined that particular role time and time again. For me, Redgrave was phenomenal in a role unfamiliar to her typical typecast. She was strong, leathery rough, ... Read More
Rating:  - Best scene ever
Cousin Lymon takes a flying leap in the fight scene. It's the most hilarious scene in the entire movie. My AP English class replayed it over and over again.
Rating:  - Do not waste your time and money!
Don't even think about it. This DVD is going directly into the trash!
Rating:  - Vanessa Redgrave is great, but the story is grotesque
This 1991 Merchant-Ivory production is based on the novel by Carson McCullers and the play by Edward Albee. It's set in the South during the depression and there's a deep melancholy mood throughout. Vanessa Redgrave is cast as Miss Amelia, a strong and mannish middle aged woman who doctors to the population, makes corn whisky, and even though she runs a small cotton plantation, seems as impoverished as the everyone else. One day, a hunchbacked dwarf, claiming to be a distant cousin, played by Cork ... Read More
Rating: - "Sad"s the right word
Sad but good. Vanessa Redgrave is effective as a Southern loner living in a backwoods town. When a local man (Carradine) courts her and marries her, she refuses to let him sleep in the same house with her, let alone the same bed. Anyway, after brooding and complaining, You can imagine how embarrassed he'd be, it's a small town and everyone knows....events ensue and he ends up in prison.
Miss Amelia (Redgrave) opens a small cafe at the insistance of her cousin "Lyman" a hunchback . When, Marvin ... Read More
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