443-445 La ronde, Le plaisir, The Earrings of Madame de...

[somnambulating]

Regardless of how informative it actually is, PTA's interviews etc tend to be entertaining, at the very least. If only this was up online elsewhere to see what he has to say. I already have Madame De and I don't think I'll be picking-up this version.

[mfunk9786]

Regardless of how informative it actually is, PTA's interviews etc tend to be entertaining, at the very least. If only this was up online elsewhere to see what he has to say. I already have Madame De and I don't think I'll be picking-up this version.

He has very, very little to say. He seems quite nervous to be doing a commentary for someone else's film, and very unprepared to boot. Nothing against PTA, who is my favorite director working today - but I think he was just in over his head the day he came in to record. His Hard Eight and Boogie Nights commentaries are lightyears away from this "introduction".

[swo17]

I think part of the problem is that Criterion billed it as an introduction to the film. Structurally, it bears more resemblance to the beginnings of a commentary track. True, PTA doesn't say much of substance in it, but the bizarreness of the extra comes just as much from its failure to serve as an introduction to the film in any sense of the word. If they would have lowered it down the list of supplements and called it "An Appreciation by PTA" or better yet, made it an Easter egg, I don't think it would have inspired nearly as much vitriol.

[zedz]

If they would have lowered it down the list of supplements and called it "An Appreciation by PTA" or better yet, made it an Easter egg, I don't think it would have inspired nearly as much vitriol.

Maybe they should have billed it as a "PTA WTF EPK"

[somnambulating]

Yeah, I've heard as much... pretty much exclusively. And if you'll notice, that seems to be the case with pretty much all of his interviews, what have you these days. For reasons that are not yet known to me, I'd still like to take a gander at it, though.

[jbeall]

I think part of the problem is that Criterion billed it as an introduction to the film. Structurally, it bears more resemblance to the beginnings of a commentary track. True, PTA doesn't say much of substance in it, but the bizarreness of the extra comes just as much from its failure to serve as an introduction to the film in any sense of the word. If they would have lowered it down the list of supplements and called it "An Appreciation by PTA" or better yet, made it an Easter egg, I don't think it would have inspired nearly as much vitriol.

Agreed. FWIW, it's no better or worse than Spike Lee's "video afterword" on Ace in the Hole.

[John Edmond]

I should note here that the Australian release of La Ronde has a fantastic extra - a 35 minute video essay called Full Circle which compares and contrasts all of the differences between the two versions using excerpts taken from a commercial VHS release of the original 110 minute version.

Since I'm boring I'll note some of the changes. A few of the alterations are relatively minor: the Actress in the original speaks in her own heavily accented Italian voice (and speaks Italian at one point) as opposed to a French dub, and there are some nips and tucks to some takes. However, most of the changes are thematically precise and work to turn La Ronde into a (slightly) happier film with the amount of material cut from each story increasing as the original film progressively turned darker (the last two stories are easily the most heavily edited). What's been removed are sequences that reveal the suffering of the people left behind as the round dance continues (for instance, one of the more substantial cuts follows the pining of the Little Miss as she is left behind by the Poet) or sequences which outline the dismal lifestyles of certain characters (another substantial cut removes a lengthy conversation between the Count and the Whore/Tart as her career is discussed and money paid).

[Stefan Andersson]

The La Ronde screenplay was published, in French, in 1963, in the magazine l´Avant-Scène du Cinema. Does anybody know if it contains the dialogue from the cut scenes?

It may also be published in a book called Masterworks of French Cinema (1974).

John Edmond: thanks for the info re: the Madman La Ronde. Very interesting!

[swo17]

Madame de... getting a Blu-ray upgrade August 6th.

[captveg]

For personal tastes I would have preferred either of the other two first, but I'll gladly pick it up.

[domino harvey]

Yeah, La ronde for sure but this is nice, especially since I never upgraded from my Second Sight edition

[Moe Dickstein]

Of course I just bought the DVD of Madame 2 weeks ago.

I guess this is going to come in a digipak, since the info page doesn't list the large booklet as "DVD only"

[andyli]

Beaver.

I'm not sure I like the new transfer (presumably from Gaumont's new restoration which will see its domestic blu-ray release in two months). It seems that fake grain/noise is added to over-scrubbed image. The screenshots sometimes feel like oil painting (look at the trees in #5 and Donati's face in the last one)...

[Gregory]

Yeah, some of those caps from the blu-ray look all right but others look like something with Photoshop painting effects applied to it—messing around with blending modes and dry brushing.

[Oedipax]

Yikes, I was just coming here to say the same thing... I hope it looks better in motion, the caps on DVDBeaver don't look good to me at all. The last one especially, there's so much detail that feels like it's missing from the faces. And the hair - quelle horreur!

[Rupert Pupkin]

"Madame de..." has been recently restored by studio Eclair and will be released by Gaumont in a few months. Jerome Soulet from Gaumont seems to be very proud of this transfer and he wrote on french forum dvdclassik several messages saying that it will put down the old DVD from Criterion.

So I would be really surprised from someone who is so proud and so sure about the stunning picture quality of this upcoming blu-ray Gaumont release that the Criterion Blu-Ray would come from the same Gaumont master.
so for the moment, until there's no info about a link between this blu-ray and Gaumont, and until the French Blu-Ray Gaumont isn't out I have to stay "prudent".

On Criterion web site, there is no info about a link between Gaumont. Perhaps Gary Tooze from dvdbeaver could give us some info about the booklet with the Criterion if they give some infos about the transfer :-k

[dfzp]

Yeah, the review says the image is "film-like", but, unless in motion looks different, I don't see it.
Is it really a different master for Band Of Outsiders, though? I don't have that disc, but Criterion's A Man Escaped looks "off" to me, almost as if the same master from the Gaumont blu with "artificial grain" on top: there's more "texture" to the image, but not more detail.

[Rupert Pupkin]

Yeah, the review says the image is "film-like", but, unless in motion looks different, I don't see it.
Is it really a different master for Band Of Outsiders, though? I don't have that disc, but Criterion's A Man Escaped looks "off" to me, almost as if the same master from the Gaumont blu with "artificial grain" on top: there's more "texture" to the image, but not more detail.

Band Of Outsiders is from the Gaumont HD master (but without the very-last "Gaumont touch"; that explains why there is less DNR and more grain on the Criterion Blu-Ray than on the French version). There is also a few more details on the Criterion version. That comes certainly from the fact that excessive DNR on the Gaumont release has erased some details (faces details (look at the different captures from the "Madison" scene on blu-ray.com (which has captures from the Gaumont and the Criterion release; and also there's more "clothing texture details").
The excessive DNR was also very annoying on the close-ups of this movie. On the Criterion this looks more "natural" and film-like with a few more skin details on the close-ups. So we are far of an artificial grain which would have been applied to a waxy-look "DNRized" transfer like some shameless studios can do. There are obviously more details; fortunately Criterion was allowed to get this HD master pre "post-Gaumont treatment"

look for instance here, in this "deep" review about what changed between the Gaumont and Criterion release :
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Band-of-O ... ray/66268/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


regarding "A Man Escaped"; I agree. No miracle here. But the "banding" problem during the night scene is less problematic on the Criterion blu-ray now.

[dfzp]

Thank you for the quick response. I'll probably end up getting the Criterion Band of Ousiders, though there's still something weird about the screencaps to me.
I seem to recall reading that Gaumont does two masters (with and without grain), but I don't know how much truth there is to that, not to mention that if they had their act together there wouldn't be any need for an extra master.
Now we should just wait for more impressions on Madame De..., but the Beaver caps don't look too enticing.

[bugsy_pal]

I am rather dismayed at the look of the Beaver screencaps of Madame de... I know that I'll have to see it in motion, and all that. But I think it's fairly clear that (assuming the caps have been taken properly - and Mr Tooze knows how to take a reasonable screencap) the bluray transfer appears to have very heavy-handed noise reduction, resulting in the waxies. Some of those shots make the faces look like the cyborg Kryton on the British TV series 'Red Dwarf'.

I will still probably buy this one if it's generally deemed to be better than the DVD, as it's such a significant film. But it's a shame that it looks like it's been poorly done.

[cdnchris]

The transfer's a wash. The opening alone shows a number of problems. Her fur jackets lack textures and look like a bit of a blobby mess, for example. And, the most irritating issue is her reflection in the mirror when she puts the veil down over her face: the veil has fine details that are actually clearly present on the DVD but completely disappear from certain angles in the Blu-ray. The DVD's presentation of those same fur coats I mentioned first presents a texture that actually looks like fur. The only advantage the Blu-ray has is it lacks the expected compression on the DVD.

On the other hand the sound is noticeably better.

[Matt]

I'm not going to bother to upgrade. I'd rather watch a compromised, standard-def version that's still somewhat film-like than an over-processed digital smudge.

[zedz]

So I guess we stick this in Criterion's small, embarrassing 'BluRay downgrade' pile.

[andyli]

But what went wrong here?

Éclair group could be the culprit. They handled the 4K restoration of Les Enfants du paradis, too. As for the 720p HD transfer, that could well be sourced from the older HD master Criterion's DVD was based on.

[bugsy_pal]

I am just a bit surprised that Criterion sees fit to release this, given that as cndchris says, the DVD is probably a better viewing experience. Better to leave it alone than put out a BD that is in some respects worse than the DVD.

I wish they could go back to the print used for the DVD and rescan it themselves.