Not since Steel Magnolias more than twenty years ago has there been a film in which the women are all strong and the men, for the most part, all weak as in The Help. Maybe it’s a Southern thing as both films are set in the Deep South.

Granted, the main thrust of the new film is supposed be about the dignity of the back maids in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963 at the start of the modern civil rights movement, but the white women who employ them, ostensibly the villains, are with one exception not bad people, just a little foolish. The white men on the other hand, again with one exception, are total wimps. The black men are either absent or, yet again with one exception, a wife beater.

It has been said that The Help is not a man’s picture and not a critic’s picture, that it is a chick flick, i.e. a film that appeals mostly to women. Granted the book the film is based on was written by a woman and film written and directed by her best friend, a man she grew up with, but why does it have to be so biased against men?

The best thing about the film, newly released on DVD and Blu-ray, is that it provides strong roles for at least three of its actresses, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer as the principal black maids and Jessica Chastain as the white outsider who hires Spencer. Davis, who has a long list of dignified performances to her credit and Spencer, who is a close friend of director Tate Taylor not only live up to the hype, but surpass it. The revelation for me, however, is Chastain whose guileless innocence is a joy to behold. It’s a star making performance by an actress most of us had never heard of a year ago, but who seems to be everywhere this year. One place I hope she is come Oscar night is sitting in the auditorium as a nominee along with Davis and Spencer whose nominations are all but guaranteed.

The genesis of the book is that the author, Kathryn Stockett, feeling guilty after the death of her own black maid whose life she knew nothing about, decided to write something in which the lives of the maids who serve the white families of the New South are given voice. The film concentrates on two of them, the strong, mostly silent Viola Davis and the outspoken Octavia Spencer whose character is eerily like the one played by Oprah Winfrey in The Color Purple. Cicely Tyson, in a lovely cameo, plays the elderly maid whose death inspires Emma Stone in the film to write her book. Allison Janney, another Taylor friend, plays Stone’s mother; Bryce Dallas Howard plays Stone’s nemesis and Sissy Spacek in a marvelous cameo plays Howard’s mother. The rest of the cast is barely sketched out therefore largely forgettable.

Blu-ray extras include deleted scenes and interviews with the author and the director as well as the principal cast members.

Jessica Chastain is back in The Debt, also newly released on DVD and Blu-ray. The Hollywood remake of an Israeli film, this one centers on the celebrated capture of a former Nazi doctor in the 1960s whose long ago death spurs new interest when Chastain’s character’s daughter writes a book. Chastain’s character is now played by Helen Mirren although we get much more of Chastain in flashback than we do Mirren in the present.

Chastain, Sam Worthington and Marton Csokas are Mossad operatives in the 1960s whose job it is to find and bring back Nazi butcher Jasper Christensen from East Berlin to stand trial for atrocities committed during the war. It’s revealed in the early scenes of the film that the monster breaks free from his shackles and attempts to escape after mercilessly cutting and beating Chastain. She recovers in time to shoot him in the back as he is fleeing. What about that event so haunts the three protagonists, now played by Mirren, Ciaran Hinds and Tom Wilkinson, that results in the tragic death of one of them? All is reveled in the sad but inevitable conclusion.

It’s all very exciting, if a bit monotonous, as it goes along, but only someone who hasn’t read a lot of books or seen a lot of movies or even TV shows would fail to figure out the film’s main conceit long before the filmmakers explain it to you.

The Criterion Collection continues to balance its new release program with new releases as well as previously released material being upgraded to Blu-ray. This week the former is represented by Design for Living while the latter is represented by The Lady Vanishes.

Ernst Lubitsch’s 1933 film of Noel Coward’s Design for Living was previously available only as part of Universal’s Gary Cooper Collection. The Criterion Edition, version is also available on standard DVD.

Snobbish critics of the day put the film down because Ben Hecht’s script deviated from Noel Coward’s play, but in reality the film is superior to the play in every way. It takes Coward’s exploration of a ménage-a-trois relationship, jettisons the way too talky dialogue and replaces it with the snappy dialogue Hecht was famous for as well as the brilliant mis-en-scene Lubitsch was famous for.

Whereas the play opens with the artist (played on screen by Gary Cooper) and playwright (played by Fredric March) already successful, the film has a glorious, mostly silent opening sequence in which neither is yet successful. The film also provides the leading female character, played by Miriam Hopkins, with more of a presence than the character did on stage. For comparison, Criterion provides a 1964 BBC production of the play with Daniel Massey, John wood and Jill Bennett introduced by Coward.

Cooper, not known for his sophistication, and March, not known for his comedic touch, surprise and delight at every turn, and Hopkins, a shrill presence in later films is still charming and beguiling at this point in her career. Edward Everett Horton is a treasure in the film’s main supporting role.

The film was released just under the wire before the restrictive Hollywood Production Code took over. Attempts to re-issue the film as early as 1934 met with refusal from the Hays Office.

Extras include Lubitsch’s contribution to 1932’s epidsodic If I Had a Million with Charles Laughton. Also included is a video essay by film scholar and screenwriter Joseph McBride on Lubitsch and Hecht’s contribution.

The next-to-last film directed by Alfred Hitchcock during his British period, 1938’s The Lady Vanishes remains fresh with only 1935’s The 39 Steps from this period perhaps more beloved.

Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas, Dame May Whitty and scene stealers Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford disprove Hitch’s theory that actors are cattle or should be treated as cattle. Extras include the 1941 Crook’s Tour with Nautnon and Wayne and other transfers from the standard DVD release of four years ago.

This week’s new DVD releases include Rise of the Planet of the Apes and the Blu-ray upgrade of Meet Me in St. Louis.