Chris & Don. A Love Story
by Guido Santi, Tina Mascara
List Price:
Our Price: $14.40
You Save: $15.59 (52%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $11.99 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD details
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD details
Actor: Christopher Isherwood, Don Bachardy, Leslie Caron, Liza Minnelli, Michael YorkDirector: Guido Santi, Tina Mascara
Brand: Zeitgeist Films
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 90 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-02-24
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Zeitgeist Films
DVD Reviews of Chris & Don. A Love Story
DVD Review: Chris and Don: A Love Story -- Nay, not Humbert Humbert at all
Summary: 5 Stars
On February 14, 1953, Don Bachardy (18) meets his brother's lover Christopher Isherwood (48) on a beach in California and, unbeknownst to both parties, is locked in for life--a life that would enlarge into creative soars for a portrait artist yet to know his calling and an established author awaiting his eternal subject. Yet "Chris and Don: A Love Story" is not simply about the ungovernable urge to create the life of art that only an artist can know where often the object is art itself; it is more humbly about two lovers' bonedeep adamancy to preserve as much of life as one can in a durable yet aesthetic medium. Here, the intended substance is neither the piece drawn nor the word written but the protraction of human essence by embalming it in text, in sketch. The documentary, much like its own subjects, is the act of reinforcing memory with creative proofs-- the body of evidence, which, in the process of its production, inspires more memories than any paper or celluloid can hold. A sketch of a gnarled Chris, haggard in cancerous boniness, opens the smell of the author, the smell of the ink-then in the charcoal-now, and the taste of that morning on this morning that you as audience has just been made privy to. It is a story of an artist drawing an author while the author writes his muse into immortality pari passu.
Amid this Edenic coalescence breathes the quiet defiance of a ritual-weary, mid-aged Chris Isherwood against societal prescriptions for public, ageist heteronormativity. What could have been (and was) perceived as Isherwood's Humbert Humbertish captivity of the sun-sinewed boy-Lolita is now cited as one of the primary prompters in the gay liberation canon. Yet Humbert Humbertish it all was in many ways as brutally young Don, calling himself "an unconscious impersonator," willingly and star-struckly serves as Chris' substrate, replicating his accent, his Cheshire mannerism, and sparse diction. Eclipsed by Chris' deserved superluminous stature and commensurate clout, Don confesses, "I wanted people to like me for who I really was but I wasn't sure myself who I was. The only thing I knew that I was good at was drawing people..." And draw he did, and with it came the urge to break free from the only lover he had known. Chris' enabling of Don's art pushes the latter to gauge the cost of unequal sexual experience with a seasoned, three-decade-distant partner; in short, to go out and plumb the sea. All Chris wants is for Don to come home at the end of the day after his shenanigans. Which he does in the late 60's. (Sometimes.)
Like Paulie Bleeker for Juno MacGuff, Chris Isherwood is the cheese to Don Bachardy's macaroni. Don comes back for good and draws Chris and Chris only in the last few days of his life, chronicling the coming of his death piecemeal in a preemptively elegiac set of sketches. Chris Isherwood bares his all, his full, bleak nakedness in sacred singularity with his scribe. For Don's furious fingers, each tender stroke is a prayer for bonus time. Chris dies; Don spends the day drawing his corpse lest memory alone betray. There is everything lyrical about these last soul-jolting images of depleted youth, the embarrassed shriveling of the body, the kind of lovely grotesqueness that only death can boast. Guido Santi and Tina Mascara cleverly juxtapose them against a lithe yet withered Don's feverish workouts at the gym, and close the story with the artist in his solitary atelier where all that is left are drawers of pictures and shelves of books in poetic arrest, all the company a man has shored for a night to allay "the foul rag and boneshop of the heart."
Sabrina Sadique
Reviewed on July 20, 2008
Description of Chris & Don. A Love Story
Chris & Don: A Love Story is the true-life story of the passionate three-decade relationship between British writer Christopher Isherwood (whose Berlin Stories was the basis for the beloved Cabaret) and American portrait painter Don Bachardy, thirty years his junior. From Isherwood's Kit-Kat-Club years in Weimar-era Germany to the couple's first meeting on the sun-kissed beaches of 1950s Malibu, their against-all-odds saga is brought to dazzling life through beautiful, rare home movies and reminiscences from Don and many of their friends, including Leslie Caron and Liza Minnelli. With Isherwood's exemplary status as an out-and-proud gay hero, and Bachardy's eventual artistic triumph away from the considerable shadow of his life partner, Chris & Don: A Love Story is above all a joyful celebration of a most extraordinary couple.SPECIAL FEATURES:
- 16:9 anamorphic transfer, formatted for widescreen televisions
- More of Chris and Don's home movies, including footage from the sets of The Rose Tattoo (1955) and King Vidor's War and Peace (1956)
- Deleted sequences with Don Bachardy, including an interview on gay marriage
- Deleted interviews with actress Gloria Stuart (Titanic), filmmaker John Boorman (Point Blank), and actress Leslie Caron (Gigi)
- "Don on Chris": An 8-page printed monograph of Bachardy's paintings of Isherwood
- U.S. theatrical trailer
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
- Stereo and Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks
Chris & Don is a documentary that takes the viewer on a nostalgic journey through artist Don Bachardy?s past, as he recounts his 35-year romance with author Christopher Isherwood. Ample interview footage starring Bachardy, now in his 70s, recalls his trials with Isherwood?s older, more famous friends, and his struggle to discover his own identity through portrait painting. Descriptions of how the couple endured ridicule to maintain not only a homosexual relationship but also a bond despite their 30-year age difference during the 1950s, '60s, and '70s in Hollywood, is what makes this documentary more than a wistful romp through the past. Directors Guido Santi and Tina Mascara (Mandala) tastefully edited in vintage footage of the couple on beaches and on film sets in what will seem to most like a charmed lifestyle. For those seeking straight biography about Isherwood?s career, however, Chris & Don is not the film. Though there are book excerpts read by Michael York (who starred in Cabaret based on Isherwood?s ?Berlin Stories?) to reflect Isherwood?s feelings about the relationship, the focus of this film is on Bachardy and his memories of his father figure. It is uncanny how Isherwood?s influence on his lover becomes apparent, as Bachardy has the same British accent and mannerisms as Isherwood. Conversely, Chris & Don does not feel preachy in the activist sense. It merely portrays, like Bachardy?s colorful paintings, sincere visions of an author and man, who nurtured Bachardy in what was obviously an extraordinary relationship. --Trinie Dalton
Bestsellers in DVD
![The Story of Jeremiah [VHS] Image](/images/noimg.gif)
The Story of Jeremiah [VHS]Vision Video; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Wresting With God [VHS]by Vision Video
Vision Video; Published: 1990-10-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
Study Bible Video with Workbook [VHS]Spring Arbor Distributors; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $7.95
Price in other shops:
Tempo:Childrens TV Favourites Video [VHS]HarperCollins Audio; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $9.17
Price in other shops:
Tempo.Herbs:Parseley'Sb/ Party Video [VHS]HarperCollins Audio; VHS Tape; VHS Video
![Strike the Original Match [VHS] Image](/images/Strike-the-Original-Match-VHS-0001374079-X.jpg)
Strike the Original Match [VHS]New Liberty Films; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
![Medjugorje The Miracles and the Message [VHS] Image](/images/Medjugorje-The-Miracles-and-the-Message-VHS-0001373293-X.jpg)
Medjugorje The Miracles and the Message [VHS]JPN Film Production; Release date: 1995-12-15; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $29.99
Mayo Clinic Echocardiography Review Course for Boards and Recertification DVD 2008by Mayo
DVD
Price in other shops:
Pediatric Diagnostic Imaging DVD: Single Userby Oakstone
DVD
Price in other shops:
Cost Accounting [VHS]by Charles T. Horngren, George Foster, Srikant M. Datar, Howard Teall
Pearson Canada, Toronto; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Similar DVDs, VHS Video, Audio CDs
HarvestRelease date: 2011-11-15; DVD
Best price: $10.44
Price in other shops:
Queer As Folk: The Complete U.K. CollectionAcorn; Release date: 2011-09-27; DVD
Best price: $31.34
Price in other shops:
You Should Meet My Son!Published: 2011-06-04; DVD
Best price: $19.95
Price in other shops:
The Berlin Storiesby Christopher Isherwood
New Directions; Published: 2008-09-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.78
Price in other shops:
The StringTLA Releasing; Release date: 2010-10-19; DVD
Best price: $11.15
Price in other shops:
From Beginning to EndDVD
Best price: $31.53
A Single ManSony; Release date: 2010-07-06; DVD
Best price: $6.93
Price in other shops:
Is It Just Me?TLA RELEASING; Release date: 2010-11-16; DVD
Best price: $11.16
Price in other shops:
Christopher And His Kindby Christopher Isherwood
Univ Of Minnesota Press; Published: 2001-09-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.67
Price in other shops:
Christopher and His KindRelease date: 2011-06-28; DVD
Best price: $14.78
Price in other shops: