1040 Toni

[domino harvey]

In 1934, Jean Renoir stepped off the soundstage and headed to the South of France, where he captured vivid human drama amid the bucolic splendor and everyday social rituals of the countryside. Based on a true story and set in a community of immigrants living, working, and loving on the margins of French society, Toni follows the eponymous Italian migrant (Charles Blavette), whose tempestuous affairs with two women—the faithful Marie (Jenny Hélia) and the flirtatious Josefa (Celia Montalván)—unleash a wave of tragedy. Making use of nonprofessional actors, on-location shooting, and the resources of the great Marcel Pagnol’s Provence studio, Renoir crafts a marvel of poetic feeling that became a precursor to Italian neorealism and a favorite of the directors of the French New Wave.

SPECIAL FEATURES
New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Audio commentary from 2006 featuring critics Kent Jones and Phillip Lopate
Introduction by director Jean Renoir from 1961
Episode of Cinéastes de notre temps from 1967 on Renoir, directed by Jacques Rivette and featuring a conversation with actor Charles Blavette about the film
New video essay about the making of Toni by film scholar Christopher Faulkner
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: An essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau
New cover by Katherine Lam

[domino harvey]

Interesting that this ports over the commentary from the long out of print MOC DVD

[TMDaines]

Hope we get this in the UK.

[Grisbi]

A really beautiful film, one of Renoir's very best imo.

Oddly enough, while I generally don't care much for commentaries and probably haven't listened to 99% of the ones in my collection, I distinctly remember listening to and enjoying greatly the Jones/Lopate track from the old MoC dvd. If I'm correct, they also teamed up for the commentaries on the Naruse box.

[domino harvey]

Glad we’re getting the full Cinéastes de notre temps program previously excerpted on Boudu

[Rayon Vert]

Great news

[Michael Kerpan]

I never understood why MoC's DVD release of this wasn't a smashing (sales) success....

[Finch]

Fantastic month between this film and the Varda set. Never expected to see it on Blu-Ray and so happy to be proven wrong.

[L.A.]

Beaver.

[Drucker]

Looks incredible, just hoping the audio isn't too bad.

[tenia]

The Gaumont's track is noticeably better than the Eureka DVD, but is low-pass filtered at 8 kHz. Hopefully, Criterion didn't tinker too much with it. Still, subs proved quite useful for me (twice, actually, since I saw the movie last Oct in theater and more recently on BD).

[hearthesilence]

What a beautiful looking film, especially the shot of the boat on the water where the sky seems to merge seamlessly with the river, but I didn't realize they spliced together two different sources for this restoration. I think that's what I was noticing when certain shots suddenly became heavily de-grained. It was usually in spots where there was a dissolve transition (one particular establishing shot even showed a strange halo of unnaturally pixelated grain around chimneys with the rest of the sky looking as if it was wiped clean), but check out the early scene where Toni first meets Marie. The first straight-on set up looks unnaturally clean, wiped of texture, but they cut away, then cut back, and suddenly a shot from the same camera set-up looks beautiful, rich in subtle grain.

[FrauBlucher]

Where do folks put this in Renoir’s canon? And this was a favorite amongst the French new wave, yes?

[Michael Kerpan]

Where do folks put this in Renoir’s canon?

My personal favorite.

[hearthesilence]

I liked it a lot. It's one of his masterpieces.

[MichaelB]

It's one of Aki Kaurismäki's favourite films, and an acknowledged influence on Le Havre (2011). And, I suspect, on The Other Side of Hope (2018).