105 The Reckless Moment

[MichaelB]

THE RECKLESS MOMENT
(Max Ophuls, 1949)
Release date: 22 April 2019
Limited Blu-ray Edition (World Blu-ray premiere)

Pre-order here.

The legendary Max Ophuls (Letter from an Unknown Woman, La Ronde) directs this tense and stylish 1949 film noir melodrama. Joan Bennett (Scarlet Street, Suspiria) stars as a suburban housewife who covers up a murder to protect her teenage daughter, only to find herself blackmailed by an immoral small-time crook, played by James Mason (North by Northwest, The Deadly Affair).


INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES:

• High Definition remaster
• Original mono audio
• Making an American Movie (2010, 42 mins): an analysis by Lutz Bacher, artist and author of Max Ophuls in the Hollywood Studios, on The Reckless Moment
• Maternal Overdrive – Todd Haynes on 'The Reckless Moment' (2006, 22 mins): the award-winning writer-director discusses one of his favourite films
• Focus on James Mason (2018): Sarah Thomas and Adrian Garvey explore the distinguished actor’s long career
• Image gallery: on-set and promotional photography
• New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
• Limited edition exclusive booklet with a new essay by Samm Deighan, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and film credits
• World premiere on Blu-ray
• Limited Edition of 3,000 copies
• All extras subject to change

#PHILTD105
BBFC cert: 12
REGION FREE
EAN: 5037899071595

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Great stuff! Already bought and paid for. Hopefully the other Mason-Ophuls collaboration 'Caught' will follow. Looking forward to the Lutz Bacher piece on 'Moment' and would love to see his take on Caught and the debris of Ophuls' American debut 'Vendetta' which informs Robert Ryan's character of the ego-centric control freak millionaire. Seemingly based on Howard Hughes whose hire and fire policies on Vendetta makes Trump seem like Saint Francis of Assisi.

[MichaelB]

We don't have a definitive running time for the James Mason piece yet, but on the basis of the rough cut it may well end up being longer than the main feature - and a hefty chunk of the running time (nearly half) covers The Reckless Moment.

It's basically a video version of this event - and, as you'd expect from their credentials (which in Sarah Thomas's case includes a book on Mason), both presenters really know their stuff.

[Glowingwabbit]

Not gonna lie I haven't been interested in any titles since Night of the Demon, but I'm really stoked for this edition of The Reckless Moment. Great film and those special features look fantastic. I actually really love the whole month as a whole (I like that it's rather thematic) and might need to do my first bundle pre-order.

[domino harvey]

Nice that the equivalent Bacher extra from the Carlotta edition could be included, but worth holding onto the Second Sight DVD for his MIA commentary

[HinkyDinkyTruesmith]

After hyping this up for quite a long time (much due to its enthusiastic followers on this board), I made the mistake of reading the book before watching it. I thought the book was incredible, and after watching the film, I felt that the changes made damaged the effectiveness of the narrative and character relationships (which is rarely something I care about). I also felt that it moved too quickly, although I could never really bring myself to consider that necessarily a flaw, just a problem for my state of mind at the time. I'm willing to give it another chance especially given the Indicator treatment, although I hope that the adaptation process is given some attention, because it's quite telling how things are reworked.

[Godot]

Nice that the equivalent Bacher extra from the Carlotta edition could be included, but worth holding onto the Second Sight DVD for his MIA commentary

Thanks for the tip! I don't feel so regretful now for buying the Second Sight edition on ebay before Christmas. Plus, the Indicator release will have English subtitles, which are important in my household. And including the Carlotta visual analysis, as well as the long piece on Mason, is wonderful.

[Calvin]

An excellent announcement, I'm always up for more Ophüls on Blu-Ray and I hope that one of the labels gets around to releasing the recent Gaumont restorations with English subtitles.

Considering Indicator's excellent track record with audio extras (though in English), I hope that they consider Max Ophüls' recorded lecture / radio feature 'Thoughts on Film'.

[Marwood]

Nice that the equivalent Bacher extra from the Carlotta edition could be included, but worth holding onto the Second Sight DVD for his MIA commentary

Funny you should mention this, as I just so happen to be listening to the Lutz Bacher commentary on the Second Run DVD when I discovered the post about this being re-released by Indicator.

As one would expect for an Ophüls film, he covers the visual aspects like the set ups and shooting specifics in great detail and I find it immensely educational and edifying, as do I think will most people who like the director’s work. Bacher is knowledgeable about his subject and this is very much a scholarly commentary, dry, but informative.

He is however in my opinion not a comfortable speaker, mumbling a lot and so often stumbles his words that it hinders comprehension. Not being an American I’m not sure whether he just has a broad dialect or even a foreign accent, but it seems more like he has a slight speech impediment to me. There are also quite a few pauses.

[MichaelB]

It's interesting to see the last two posters using the umlaut on Ophuls, even though he himself rejected it, and of course his son Marcel never used it at all.

In fact, The Reckless Moment presented us with an unusual challenge, because standard practice is to use the spelling of the director's name onscreen as the cue for how it should be treated elsewhere in the package, but of course the film is credited to "Max Opuls", which just looks like a misprint now. So we suspended that particular rule, the follow-up challenge being whether we should include the umlaut or not - but we established pretty early on that Ophuls himself firmly favoured no umlaut after he left Germany, so that's what we've respected.

[tenia]

From a pure German pronunciation point of view, it should have an umlaut.
Once in French, it doesn't matter anymore, since the French Ophuls gives the same vowels pronunciation than the German Ophüls (it would have been different without the umlaut). I suppose it helped him dropped it since there wasn't even an oral difference.

[MichaelB]

Judging the pronunciation, I believe it should have an umlaut.

Surely that's irrelevant when the man himself decided to drop the umlaut?

Not least because I assume you wouldn't go as far as to insist on spelling a famous Polish director's surname "Polański" - but what's the difference?

I'm normally the first person to insist on correct diacritics, as numerous editors of mine over the years will ruefully confirm, but if the former bearer of those diacritics has made a conscious decision to drop them, that's who I'm going to take my own lead from.

(UPDATE: For the record, the entirety of your original post was as I've reproduced it above.)

[Jonathan S]

In fact, The Reckless Moment presented us with an unusual challenge, because standard practice is to use the spelling of the director's name onscreen as the cue for how it should be treated elsewhere in the package, but of course the film is credited to "Max Opuls", which just looks like a misprint now.

I can't recall how the "Opuls" spelling was first determined (probably just the usual Hollywood simplification of European names?), but of course all four of his American films use it in their credits.

[MichaelB]

Indeed, which is why we took the issue seriously enough to discuss it. But we all agreed that featuring "Opuls" throughout, say, the booklet would be barking mad.

[Zot!]

As a foreign character dropping translpant in ‘merica myself, I can confirm that at a certain point convenience outweighs authenticity and I doubt there is much thought behind it. Even Prince eventually gave up.

[MichaelB]

One of the most famous of all dropped umlauts was courtesy of the composer we know as George Frederick Handel, who adopted that spelling himself after settling permanently in Britain - in fact, he didn't just ditch the umlaut on Händel but also fully anglicised his birth names Georg Friedrich.

But I assume it was still pronounced closer to "Hendel".

[tenia]

Judging the pronunciation, I believe it should have an umlaut.

Surely that's irrelevant when the man himself decided to drop the umlaut?

It is, and I understand where the reasoning for the release is, for instance. I was just saying the umlaut makes sense for helping pronouncing properly the name from a German perspective, and thus that I understand why people would still use the umlaut. But you're probably right in saying this has a variable geometry, and I certainly would write Polański. In any case, it was a very theoritical remark.

It makes wonder though : if talking about, say, Liebelei, should Ophuls be referred to with or without umlait, since the movie was made before he dropped it ?

[MichaelB]

Yes, that's a very good question, and I'm glad I don't have to come up with a definitive answer right now!

[TMDaines]

I think with names of people the decision is quite easy. You go with whatever the person prefers. It is their name after all and plenty of people have unusual name spellings for one reason or another.

If you're dropping diacritics elsewhere then you should be mindful of whether you need to make other adjustments. Umlauts in German generally represent the fact that an 'e' would otherwise follow the other vowel and are vital for keeping the meaning of the word. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of minimal pairs in German where the presence of an umlaut or not makes a difference in the meaning of the word, because avoiding the umlaut essentially is the same as cutting out a whole letter. If you omit the umlaut, you should add an 'e' after the 'a', 'o' or 'u'.

[MichaelB]

In this particular case, Ophuls chose to drop the umlaut and NOT add an E.

[TMDaines]

Yep, I understand, and completely agree, as you said, that with names you should respect people's wishes.

I was just addressing the fact that there's a perception that diacritics in languages are essentially nice to have, but have little function and that dropping them doesn't make much difference, whereas it really depends on the language. Dropping them in Italian doesn't make that much difference. There's not too many minimal pairs that differentiate between words either with or without them. They mark either stress or the pronunciation of a vowel, usually whether it is open or closed. German is quite different though where the umlaut essentially carries the same status as an entire letter.

[MichaelB]

Same with eastern European names, but it's not standard practice to compensate for the loss of diacritics unless the person decides to change the spelling upfront.

[whaleallright]

This is truly an opul-ent dilemma.

[Ovader]

For a lark Indicator should consider a Limited Speciäl Editiön providing all text with appropriate umlauts for those discerning viewers/readers

[whaleallright]

Or at least a reversible slëëve.