650 A Man Escaped

[knives]

I can see how that could come about. Next time I'll try to avoid such vague phrasing.

[Mathew2468]

If they've got this they probably have L'Argent and Lancelot as well. All New Yorkers.

[knives]

L'argent is on Hulu.

[domino harvey]

Hope L'Argent retains Kent Jones' wry commentary from the New Yorker disc

[peerpee]

If they've got this they probably have L'Argent and Lancelot as well. All New Yorkers.

Pretty sure LANCELOT DU LAC and (one of my very favourites) A DEVIL, PROBABLY went to Olive Films, unfortunately. Has this been confirmed? – Would love to have seen all the Bresson on Blu-ray in the Criterion Collection.

[knives]

Olive has already released the later, but I am not sure if there is any word on the former.

[peerpee]

Olive has already released the later, but I am not sure if there is any word on the former.

Ah, DVD only though. What a waste. If Criterion had snagged A DEVIL, PROBABLY we'd be looking at a Blu-ray obviously. All eyes on Artificial Eye....

[Mathew2468]

Not sure about Lancelot. Would look great. Need his color films in Blu!

[Jeff]

I can't figure out why Olive went DVD only on The Devil, Probably. They toured a very nice 35mm print.

[domino harvey]

I can't figure out why Olive went DVD only on The Devil, Probably. They toured a very nice 35mm print.

It lacked the crucial Alan Alda factor

[aox]

blu-ray.com

[Drucker]

Here's a comparison of two screen shots. There is a noticeable color difference between the two. The Criterion certainly is grainier, and while that doesn't necessarily mean more right, it sure looks better to me.

Criterion

Gaumont

[triodelover]

Here's a comparison of two screen shots. There is a noticeable color difference between the two. The Criterion certainly is grainier, and while that doesn't necessarily mean more right, it sure looks better to me.

Criterion

Gaumont

You need to log in and look at those two in full resolution. The Criterion is dark, so much so that considerable detail is lost when compared to the Gaumont, particularly in François Leterrier's face and hair. The Gaumont isn't without it's problems as Svet pointed out in his review, but if you aren't distracted by the occasional chroma noise in the first half, the Gaumont looks quite good in motion with some stunning detail and image depth. The darkness of the Criterion as represented in the caps is, well, off-putting to say the least. Of course, that's comparing the Gaumont in motion to a few caps. The Crit in motion may be - should be - a different beast.

[swo17]

To me, the Gaumont almost seems to verge on that pastel gray DNRd look that plagued Children of Paradise (though I've seen the Gaumont in motion and it honestly doesn't look that bad). At least between these two stills, the Criterion looks much, much better to my eyes.

[triodelover]

I dunno. I line up the caps for both side-by-side at full resolution and I wouldn't necessarily pick the Crit. It would depend on the cap. But I find over the last several years I'm getting more and more sensitive (in a negative way) to Criterion's propensity to contrast boost and darken their B&W offerings. I am finding that characteristic more troubling than a little DNR or brief, intermittent events like the chroma noise. But that's me.

[mckeldinb]

I own the Gaumont... and for me it's only viewable with my color saturation turned down to 0. That said, once you get rid of the chroma, it's a very pleasing picture... if not particularly sharp. Do we know for a fact that the consistent "blackness" of Criterion's b&w releases are due to contrast boosting? Well, whether it's from too much... not enough... or the wrong kind of digital manipulation, I agree that many of the Criterion b&w features suffer from "crushed" blacks.

[triodelover]

I own the Gaumont... and for me it's only viewable with my color saturation turned down to 0. That said, once you get rid of the chroma, it's a very pleasing picture... if not particularly sharp. Do we know for a fact that the consistent "blackness" of Criterion's b&w releases are due to contrast boosting? Well, whether it's from too much... not enough... or the wrong kind of digital manipulation, I agree that many of the Criterion b&w features suffer from "crushed" blacks.

No, I can't say for certain on a given release that the look we see is due to contrast boosting, although Crit has had that reputation in the past. I do know when a CC is compared to an MoC, which has probably the strongest reputation among the premium labels for a minimalist approach,the Criterion blacks appear saturated and fine detail is missing (see the close-up of Tanaka Kinuyo in Beaver's Sansho dayu, for example). I vastly prefer MoC's approach even if there is more prominently visible damage.

As far as color saturation goes, I've set the Viera at 50 and find that much less leaves a washed out look and, as you say, a not particularly sharp image. I've been watching old films for so long - I was 8 when the Bresson was released - in so many formats and I'm so in awe most of the time in what we have today that brief flashes of things like the chroma noise barely register. In the case of the Gaumont I had read Svet's review and was looking out for it. Otherwise I would have probably thought, "Well, it's an old film. What do you expect?" briefly, taken another sip of my martini and rolled with the flow, so to speak. I'm afraid I'd grumble about how damn dark the Crit is all the way through, but of course all I've seen are the caps and not seen it in motion, so I'm probably doing a bit of an apples vs oranges thing here.

[JonasEB]

Looks like the heavy banding problem (which is far worse than the few instances of chroma) is gone on the Criterion. That's what I was most interested in. Might double dip on this one after all.

And this bodes well for other problematic Gaumont discs like Band of Outsiders.

[Mathew2468]

Beaver

I didn't know it also had The Road to Bresson. \:D/

[Jeff]

Beaver

I didn't know it also had The Road to Bresson. \:D/

It wasn't listed among the initial supplements, and I don't think any of us noticed it had been added. That's a pretty great "More!". I'm guessing L'Argent must be a long way off or they would have held it for that release.

The Criterion release now includes all the supplements found on various editions of the film around the world and a whole hell of a lot more. This disc would be essential if it were bare bones, but the video supplements total over three hours.

[EddieLarkin]

Looking at the Beaver caps, is it just me or are Criterion's subtitles becoming larger and softer? They used to be about the same as MoC's subtitles, a bit smaller and sharper.

[ptatler]

I feebly tried to articulate my ecstatic experience with A MAN ESCAPED over at my blog today.

[Jack Phillips]

I feebly tried to articulate my ecstatic experience with A MAN ESCAPED over at my blog today.

Thanks, I enjoyed reading what you wrote. I had to find another translation of the John 3 material, though; I had not idea what "listeth" meant.

[Mr Sausage]

I mentioned in an earlier post that after going 1-2 with Bresson this was probably going to be my last chance with him. Looks like I'll be coming back to him, as I enjoyed the film quite a bit. I was fascinated with how such a placid, uneventful movie could be so gripping. A lot of the movie is about routines, both submitting to the ones imposed and defying them by setting one's own private routines. Interesting how it's actually the quotidian that prevents one's spirit from being crushed: banal details and repetitive motions (stripping, scratching, cutting, scraping) obliterate more crushing concerns and offer a sense of momentum even when one's going nowhere. I'm sure there is a spiritual allegory to be spun from this, and that Bresson was doing exactly that, but like the rest of his films I failed to actually feel this sense of transcendence that everyone talks about. Not that I'm offering it as a criticism--I loved Balthazar and failed to get any transcendent effects from that one either--but this area of Bresson seems closed to me. Maybe this is a product of my mood, but Tarkovsky and Dreyer haven't yet failed to produce a kind of hypnotized, elevated, over-sensitive state in me, so, who knows. Maybe I couldn't give a fuck about spiritual concepts like transcendence, grace, forgiveness, ect. any more. Hard to say.

It makes no difference on my opinion of the film, tho', as it's a formal masterpiece, one that's open to endless analysis. The use of sound was particularly striking, as was the film's refusal to suggest open spaces (courtyards are never wholly photographed by the camera, and even the moment in the beginning where our hero makes a break for it, the camera never follows him out into the open, remaining entirely within the confines of the car). Also, the guards remain literally faceless, no doubt to lend the prison/story a more abstract quality.

[zedz]

The great thing about A Man Escaped is that, even without the 'Bressonian baggage', it's a phenomenal suspense film. I've seen it with non-cinephiles who never even suspected there was anything at all unusual about the staging, shooting and sound, and certainly never found it slow or artsy, simply because they were completely enthralled by the action. One of them said it was the most exciting film he'd ever seen. It really is an exemplary 'action film', because everything is distilled down to specific physical actions, and every one of those actions counts.