A Touch of Class

Starring:George Segal, Glenda Jackson, Paul Sorvino, K Callan, Cec Linder, Michael Elwyn, Mary Barclay, Nadim Sawalha, Ian Thompson, Ãˆve Karpf, David de Keyser, Gaye Brown, Carl Oatley, Rebecca De Los Reyes, Felipe Solano (II), Antonio Merchan, Hildegarde Neil, Michael McVey, Nigel Kingsley, Stuart Damon
Director: Melvin Frank
Studio: Turner Home Ent
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com essential video

It's tame in hindsight, but A Touch of Class brought much-needed prestige to the romantic-comedy trend of the early and mid 1970s. Glenda Jackson won an Oscar® for her performance as a savvy London divorcée who falls in love with married insurance agent George Segal, and the film surprised critics by earning a Best Picture nomination as well. Chemistry's the key, with Jackson and Segal equally adept at bickering and making up (and she even has a gay male friend, long before that became a genre cliché). What begins as a routine affair--complicated by a wide spectrum of lightly comedic pitfalls--ends with mutual love and the dilemma it creates. Writer-director Melvin Frank keeps the dialogue briskly intelligent, and while he can't match Neil Simon word for word, Touch mines the same romantic territory that was perfected in Simon's later hit The Goodbye Girl. Consider them a fine double bill, with A Touch of Class ranking a respectable second. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews:

Still Holds Up.......2007-05-07

George Seagal and Glenda Jackson are wonderful in this comedy about extramarital affairs. You also get to see a very young Paul Sorvino.

where is the class? .......2006-11-02

one of the most pretentious and exaggerating movies ever seen. the dialogue, the acting...whatever, all suck big time. everything in this movie looked unrealistic, not funny but pathetically pretentious and exaggerating to the extreme. that kinda performance would have won an oscar, yeah, right, maybe just because there were only worse pictures nominated in that year. what a hype.

Should've Been on the AFI's list of "Top 100 Romantic Films".......2002-11-11

I saw this movie when it first came out in the 70's and have seen it many times on and off for years.

The movie is funny, but what makes it work is the two stars. George Segal (who never looked better) is in fine comedic form, and he and Glenda Jackson complement each other perfectly. She was especially singled out for critical acclaim -- some people compared her to Katharine Hepburn in Hepburn's comedic roles.

The movie also affords a look at London in the early 70's.

Because the actors work so well together, I would've liked a different (happier) ending for the movie. Still, after thirty years, "A Touch of Class" remains very watchable and poignant -- largely because of the two stars.

creepy and disturbing.......2002-07-15

I did not like this movie. I know that times have changed and it would be revisionist to hold this movie to millennium standards of sexual conduct and infidelity. Nonetheless, I found it very disturbing: his lack of concern for his wife and children, how the wife was unsympathetic and one dimensional, and how absolutely de rigueur it was in the sixties for married men to have "a bit on the side." And what about her kids? apart from the first scene we never see them again; she instead seems to spend all her time cooking and keeping house for a married man. I'm not a prude, really, but this film left a bad taste in my mouth.

One of the funniest, sexiest, smartest movies I've ever seen.......2002-04-30

...and I'm not easy to please. It's strange when you realize just how sexy George Segal was. But the movie is wonderfully written, sharp, smart and incredibly funny. I saw another reviewer liked The Goodbye Girl better. I prefered this...Sharper, more biting, less sentimental. That doesn't mean it's heartless or even cynical, just that it's lacking in syrup. George Segal and Glenda Jackson have the all the chemistry and the comedic chops (and then some) needed to make this movie work. This movie made me laugh a lot, was sexy enough to warm any cold night and smart enough to make me feel like the people who made it figured I had at least a high school education. How come comedic movies this smart don't get made by the major studios anymore?

Fawlty Towers, Vol. 1 - A Touch of Class/Builders/Wedding

Average customer rating:

Faulty towers
A Much Needed Laugh
grab a branch and beat your car
just a minor quibble
I'ts Python on steroids!

Fawlty Towers, Vol. 1 - A Touch of Class/Builders/Wedding
Starring: Fawlty Towers
Manufacturer: BBC Warner
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Fawlty Towers, Vol. 2 - Gourmet Night/Germans/Communication
Fawlty Towers, Vol. 3 - Waldorf Salad/Kipper and the Corpse/Anniversary/Basil the Rat
Black Adder I
Are You Being Served 1: Classic Years
Father Ted - Complete Series 1

ASIN: B00005LC1E
Release Date: 2001-10-16

Amazon.com

John Cleese has always maintained that Fawlty Towers was inspired by a real hotel that was run by a proprietor who treated guests as an inconvenience to running a business. No one in the world, however, can possibly match the sheer insolence and incompetence of Basil Fawlty, perhaps the most brazenly rude character in the history of customer disservice. "A Touch of Class," the series pilot, finds Basil bemoaning the riff-raff he's forced to deal with when he signs in a Lord Melbury. Immediately melting into an embarrassingly obsequious toady, Basil is blinded by nobility and becomes the perfect patsy for the old con man. In "The Builders," Cleese proves there are no limits to what lengths Basil Fawlty will go to save a few quid. Enlisting a resistant Polly in his plot, he quietly fires the respectable carpenters hired by his wife, Sybil, and brings in a cheap crew with a history of disaster. Sure enough, they wind up walling up the entrance to the dining room, sending an insanely outraged Basil into a frenzy as he tries to correct the blunder before Sybil returns. Davis Kelly (Waking Ned Devine) costars as the genial but incompetent O'Reilly. Basil smells hanky-panky in the air in "The Wedding Party," when he signs in an unmarried couple and soon sees foreplay in every innocent kiss and embrace. Meanwhile, a sexy French antique dealer sends Basil into red-faced vexations with her flirtations and Manuel's birthday results in a drunken binge and a morning-after hangover that only adds to the bellhop's usual incompetence at the morning breakfast service. When Sybil overhears that "The Hotel Inspectors" are in the area, Basil makes an about-face in his brusque treatment of a demanding guest, falling all over himself to cater to the guest's every whim while he boorishly insults every other customer. When he discovers his mistake he makes up for lost insolence in a campaign of comic terror. --Sean Axmaker

Description

Check in to the most popular BBC comedy of all time, where merriment and madness are on the house. Newly remastered for better-than-ever viewing, this set contains four classic episodes, as well as interviews, behind-the-scenes and cast bios. John Cleese stars as Basil Fawlty, the sharp-tongued, short-tempered owner of Fawlty Towers, a hotel plagued by crisis, chaos and bizarre characters.A Touch of Class: Once Basil decides it?s time the hotel had a better class of clientele he?ll do anything to keep Lord Melbury there-including cashing his sizeable check. Hotel Inspectors: Thinking a guest he has thoroughly offended may be a hotel inspector, Basil fawns all over him to make amends-but has he got the right man? The Wedding Party: Flabbergasted by an outbreak of seemingly loose morals at Fawlty Towers, Basil leaps to wrong conclusions and gets caught in a compromising position. The Builders: Basil goes with the lowest bidder when the lobby needs repairs. He soon discovers firsthand why this crew comes so cheap.

Customer Reviews:

Faulty towers.......2007-02-05

John Cleese's "Fawlty Towers" is one of those universally funny TV shows, all about the undignified exploits of a perpetually hostile, repressed and tetchy hotel manager, and the more competant staff who try to keep thngs sane. This DVD contains the first three episodes, which starts off a little wobbly but quckly gains its comic footing.

In "A Touch of Class," Basil Fawlty (Cleese) puts out a snotty ad to attract a "better class of customer," which attracts a pleasant aristocrat. Basil fawns revoltingly over the man, neglecting the other guests. But savvy waittress Polly (Connie Booth) discovers that another guest is a cop -- and that Basil is in danger of handing his coins over to a con man.

"The Builders" are called in for Fawlty Towers, while Basil's wife Sybil (Prunella Scales) is away. But Basil has hired a cut-rate builder, and Manuel (Andrew Sachs) and his broken English are in command at the time. So when Basil arrives, he finds a disaster zone -- and he has only a matter of hours to repair it.

Finally, Basil's prudish sensibilities are offended when a couple stays at the hotel -- and they're not married. Even worse, an older couple shows up and seems to be engaging in hanky-panky with the younger ones -- and even Polly is in on the action. Now Basil is determined to keep it all clean and chaste -- as he dodges an amorous Frenchwoman.

The first few episodes are not quite up to the standards of later ones like "The Germans" and "The Kipper and the Corpse," with some comic timing that just feels a little off. But the first volume of "Fawlty Towers" is still very entertaining, and has lots of legendary comic moments like Basil throttling the gnome. (And no, that is not a wink-wink-nudge-nudge euphemism)

What is really noticeable about this series is that there is always a feeling of barely-restrained chaos, as if peace'n'quiet is an abnormality. The crazy humor tends towards naughtiness (a drunken Manuel embracing Basil in the hallway) and slapstic, while the dialogue is loaded down with witticisms ("She can kill a man at ten paces with one blow of her tongue!").

Basil is a prudish, eccentric, classist manager based on a nightmare hotelier that Cleese met during his "Monty Python" days, and Cleese is brilliant here. Scales is great as his acid-tongued, beehived wife, while Booth and Sachs are great as (respectively) the intelligent waittress and the hapless Spanish waiter who doesn't understand half of what people say, because "he's from Barcelona."

"Fawlty Towers" lacked total brilliance at the start, but by the third episode the series had evened out nicely. A great trio of episodes.

A Much Needed Laugh.......2003-03-12

Faulty Towers brings laughter and a great deal of relief from a barrage of news which offers nothing but gloom and doom. John Cleese and the entire company can cheer anybody with their farce and comedy. Highly recommend this series to anyone who wants to get a good laugh.

grab a branch and beat your car.......2003-02-10

john cleese may be the funniest man in the world, fine example of verbal and physical comedy

just a minor quibble.......2001-11-12

yes, these shows are excellent. i can't recommend them enough - so i won't. my quibble has to do with the director's commentary. the director's voice comes across as a phlegmy, watery sound effect. then there's the puntuating of long silences with the sluuurping of whatever he's drinking. i have to admit it was funny for 5 minutes, but i then became nauseous and had to turn it off. the shows are worth the price of admission without the director's commentary.

I'ts Python on steroids!.......2001-06-23

If you like Monty Python's loud and exaggerated style, throw in a Spanish speaking waiter, an insulting wife and dimwitted guests and you're in for the laugh of your life! The characters are realistic (we've all met someone like these people) and John Cleese just brings it all together in his own panic-ridden style. A definate must-have for any collector!

Average customer rating:

A too short sample of a master at work!

A Touch of Class: TV Documentary
Starring: Jan Akkerman
Manufacturer: Voiceprint UK
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Rock | Styles | Music

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Similar Items:

Live
Ultimate Collection
Masters from the Vaults
Live at Montreux/The Definitive Collection

ASIN: B000CNESZ8
Release Date: 2006-01-31

Description

Rare footage from a television documentary in the UK during the early 80's features concert and interview footage, footage from the Old Grey Whistle Test, and includes some material with his original band Focus.

Customer Reviews:

A too short sample of a master at work!.......2006-05-27

Five stars for the musicianship; three for its brevity. For the price, I would have expected a longer treat than this teaser, but unfortunately, footage of Jan doing his thing is as scarce as hen's teeth, so we have to be thankful for small mercies.
It features Jan and his band live in London in late 1983, during the (fortunately short) popular period of the Roland Synth guitars, covering mostly tracks from the album "Can't stand the noise".
A couple of short lute tracks are also included, plus excerpts from rehearsals of SYLVIA and HOCUS POCUS ( from "The Old Grey Whistle Test" series), both of which are fully covered on the MASTERS OF THE VAULT DVD.
However, as on Jan's incomparable and far more recent "LIVE" DVD, a couple of the tracks are repeated, and all of this (along with interview footage) is squeezed into 62 minutes!
The playing, however, is sublime as would be expected.
I did have to laugh at a comment made in the accompanying booklet suggesting that his playing on the superb PASSION CD was rather indifferent. I'm just wondering whether the writer was listening to the same album that I (and several others) reviewed as a 5 star release? Jan and his Lowden acoustic were phenomenal together on that album. A few fret buzzes and other small glitches go a long way toward proving that he is human after all. All I can say is, "Vive la indifference!"
Getting back to this DVD, buy it if you're a true Akkerman afficionado because there's not much chance of anything else by the master ever reaching us. There probably will never be another guitarist quite as versatile and original as Jan, with perhaps the exception of the outrageously talented Aussie, Tommy Emmanuel.

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