Elvis Presley: The Searcher (Limited Collector’s Edition)

Very Good Career Video Biography
“Elvis Presley: The Searcher” is an excellent video biography of Elvis, focusing on his career. It’s told very well by various people – friends of his, including Jerry Schilling and Red West, his wife Priscilla, various producers, and others. None of those speaking are ever shown, but instead film clips and stills illustrating Elvis’s life are run continually. These include numerous interesting film clips I had never seen, including some home movies. The only aspect of Elvis’s career that I believe was not treated quite fairly was his 1960s movies. Yes, it’s true that his overall movie career was a disappointment, but the comments speak of his Sixties movies as though they are a complete disaster. Yet some of them were very good (Flaming Star, Follow That Dream, etc.) and some were fun and funny (Girl Happy, Fun in Acapulco, etc.), which are not disastrous qualities for films. Also, note that “Elvis Presley: The Searcher” runs about 3 hours 20 minutes, and while it always remains interesting, that is lengthy. And it’s all shown in widescreen. A bonus extra on the DVD is a discussion with Jerry Schilling and Priscilla Presley that runs about 40 minutes. If you collect DVDs about Elvis, this one is a must buy.

Must Have For Any Music Lover
Was well done and done with respect and insight. What will surprise many is really how poor Elvis was, back in the day his family would have been looked down upon, his mom picked cotton with Elvis on her back to just to be able to eat. I cannot even image how his world was rocked/changed when he became so famous coming from where he came from. This alone will give you so much insight to his insecurities and the mistakes he made during his path through his life, through his experience and the baggage he carried just trying to figure it all out. He had no road map, he had no one before him to look back on and know what to watch out for, Parker knew how to control him, and that was using fear of being so poor again, so sign right here kid and make another million dollars. Christ who could blame Elvis, he really took care of everyone in his family, friends, hanger-on’s, and the users and abusers. To bad he could never allow himself to ask for help, he lived in a closed in world and he surly paid the price of that.

The Searcher . . . Keep Looking
During his life time, Elvis was searching for many things. This documentary is about one of those searches: his desire to be a creative artist. Before watching the documentary, first watch the interview with Priscilla, Jerry Schilling, and the director, Thom Zimny in the Special Features. This conversation does a lot to explain the motivation and goals of the film. Priscilla specifically discusses the desire to show Elvis as a developing artist who had goals and aspirations, only to have the fire squelched by the Colonel and others around him. As she points out, artistically, Elvis outgrew those around him, but he could not separate himself from all the shortsighted characters surrounding him.This documentary is informative, but sticks primarily to his artistic endeavors. It has a high production value and includes informative and insightful voice overs (there are no talking heads, no cut-aways from Elvis, only voice overs). With that said, I was a little disappointed how the last years of his life, primarily the touring and live shows, were rushed through. Also, his death is not discussed. Even so, I highly recommend this film.Elvis’ life and career have been discussed in many, many forums. Within these discussions we can see how Elvis searched for other answers. For example, his search into spiritual matters and the meaning of life, how to interact with women (think how his life would have been different if his mother had lived longer), and how to find an inner circle that truly had his best interests at heart. All of these searches could make for interesting stand-alone documentaries. With them, we could keep looking into the psyche of Elvis.

Excellent! Would buy again!
I thoroughly enjoyed this DVD of life with and of Elvis. A must have addition if you want to really understand Elvis and all he endured in his frenetically paced and short life on this earth. Shows Elvis in all areas and stages of his life. I found the narration from Priscilla and Jerry Schilling helpful and did not disturb the flow of the story; only enhanced it. Wished I had ordered earlier.

For Elvis fans this was a great documentary

Attention avant d’acheter ce DVD,Le documentaire est en Anglais et il n’y a pas de sous titrage en Français comme indiqué dans le détail du produit.