Thank Kultur and Broadway Theater Archive for making this wonderful TV production of Clifford Odets' play "Paradise Lost" available on DVD. First saw it over 30 years ago and never forgot it. Riveting. [ASIN:B000067IYM Paradise Lost (Broadway Theater Archive)]

Clfford Odets play with a lot of depression and hopeless scenarios. Setting is in 1932 Depression era . No money,no hope & future. Business in the Eli Wallach and Jo Van Fleet family goes under. One Son dying of sleeping sickness. Another Son married to a Tart killed in crime attempt. Bad times get worst day by day finally culminatng in forfeiture of home-sweet-home mortgage and dispossession.One feels Odet's purpose in writing this play was to make his audience reach a level of guild and depression.Undoubtedly a classic work of genius, but if your looking for a cheery or happy moment in this flick, you won't find it here. Not a smile in a carload !

Clifford Odetts dramatized the American depression in a way that transcends time and space. It is of a rare and refined beauty which one must experience and absorb in order to fully appreciate. Depression seems to be the order of the day for the protagonists as they contend with life, memories and ineptitude. Intellectual superfluous men abound and political radicals skirt the staging of a home where its residents cope, carry-on and troop along suffering tragedies and circumstances, unable to accept their fate and forever awaiting a turn in their luck. All the while there remains a confused but ever-present faith in life and the meaning and values it preserves. It is indeed a play that makes you happy to be alive but in a more profound way than may be initially believed. Long after a first viewing it ferments in your thoughts to avidly flesh out a philosophy about truth and reason, life and meaning, the way we live and the effect it has on all. The acting is absolutely perfect. It is a long three act play and deserves repeated viewings. Immensely rich and a broadway masterpece by all standards.

I can't commend this highly enough. I saw it on the local Public Television station here in Chicago when it was first broadcast in the early 1970s, and it made a tremendous impact on me. This play, and the very similar "Awake and Sing," are depression era dramas written by Clifford Odets and originally produced for the stage in the mid 1930s, when they were the cutting edge of contemporary theatre and dealt with contemporary issues. These new DVDs contain television productions done with top-notch casts in the early 1970s. I found them unforgettable, and am delighted to be able to savor them again after 30-plus years. They're just as good as I remember.

They tell their stories from a rather specific perspective, i.e., that of well-educated middle- and upper-middle class Jewish families living in New York, and falling on hard times during the depression. These people have pretensions of gentility and high culture, but quickly-encroaching poverty is grinding at that façade and leaving them without much more than primal survival instincts. The main themes they deal with, as I read it, are familial love (and how it sometimes mutates into betrayal or hate under pressure of poverty), what we owe to our fellow humans and vise versa, grace or the lack of it under extreme pressure, and the wisdom or folly of optimism for the future. I expect there are themes, subtleties, and symbolisms that I overlook, but they're extremely rich brews of ideas that can keep you pondering long after having seen them. What they are most emphatically NOT is light entertainment. Dark and somewhat depressing, they explore how severe economic pressures degrade the quality of life, and poison relationships with our families, friends, co-workers, neighbors, community and government. In this, they are not the least bit dated, and show that while individual issues may vary with time, human nature doesn't.

All of the above may make Odets' plays sound a bit ponderous or academic, but they're really gripping dramas, done here by superb players. Eli Wallach's impassioned, desperately optimistic speech at the end of "Paradise Lost" always gets me a bit teary-eyed.

The only reason I wouldn't give it 5 stars is that the dated video source presents a slightly fuzzy picture with inconsistent color quality, and the sound quality is mediocre at best. This, to me, is of little importance when dealing with such excellent content. The fact that there are no other comments here thus far suggests that people are passing these up. It's really great stuff. Don't miss it. Buy it, to encourage more of the same on DVD.