Laserdisc Title: "DRIVING MISS DAISY"
Edition: Widescreen Edition (Single Disc)
Directed By: Bruce Beresford
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Jessica Tandy, Dan Aykroyd, Patti Lupone, Esther Rolle
Award: ---Winner of 4 Academy Awards 1989 - Best Pictures, Best Actress---
Production / Year: 1989 Warner Bros. Inc.
Running Time: 99 Minutes / Color
Audio Format: Digitally Processes, Dolby Surround, Stereo, CX Encoded
Video Format: LTBX, NTSC, CLV (Extended Play)
Miscellaneous Features: Rated PG, Closed Captioned
Distributed By: Warner Home Video
Catalog / Spine Number: 11931

IMPORTANT: This is a 12-inch Diameter Laserdisc, which is NOT the same as DVD and cannot be played on a DVD player!

Disc Condition: Appear to be in excellent condition with hardly noticeable to very minor hairline surface swirls or very light fingerprint marks, if any
Jacket Condition: Appear to be in very good + condition with normal shelf wear, scuffs, few creases, slightly worn-out corners or edges but no signs of spines splitting

Synopsis:

Take an intense and flawless performance by Jessica Tandy (80-years-old when the movie was released in 1989) and a charming and slyly witty performance by Morgan Freeman (closing in on his fifties)--she a rich Jewish lady of the South, high-toned, spoiled, stubborn to a fault, he a black illiterate chauffeur, wise, patient and in need of a job--and we have the basis for a profound character study. What we are studying is both the character of the leads and the character of a way of life passing languidly before our eyes.

Adapted for the screen from his Pulitzer Prize winning stage play by Alfred Uhry and directed by Bruce Beresford, who previously gave us the remarkable Aussie classic, Breaker Morant (1980), Driving Miss Daisy is one of those films that is a work of art as well as a sociological discovery. Using beautifully constructed scenes carefully observed, Beresford allows us to recall a way of life and a culture that characterized the South during the middle of the last century. Freeman's Hoke Colburn is black; and, as he mumbles, "not all that much has changed" since the days of slavery. He still has to "yes'em" and shuffle his feet and show deference to white folk just to get by. Miss Daisy Werthan herself is rich and very tight with her money. She is also as racially prejudiced as a Dixie sheriff, but blind to her prejudices as she rages against the infirmaries of age.

The movie begins as she loses control of her car and drives it off the road and into a drainage ditch. She is shaken but unharmed. However her driving days are over. Her son Boolie Werthan, played with a fine touch and surprising restraint by comedian Dan Aykroyd, decides to get her a chauffeur. But she will not hear of it. She feels her independence is being threatened, and she doesn't need her son to tell her what to do. She can take care of herself. When Boolie arrives with Hoke, who is clearly black, Miss Daisy declares she will not have that man in her house.

One feels very strongly at this point how compromised the infirm are when they must rely on help from others. Let a stranger into your house and there is no telling where it might end. More that this though, is the underlying idea that dependence on people from a lower social-economic class will in fact have a leveling effect on class distinctions, and this is again something that Miss Daisy (in her ignorance of herself) will not abide.

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