Eclipse Discussion and Random Speculation

[beamish14]

Bresson’s Four Nights of a Dreamer

the film prior, Une femme douce, might as well be a lost film at this point.

Probably still Paramount in North America, and they did release it on VHS during the 90’s. It had a theatrical re-release in France a few years back, so there should be some 2K master

[Matt]

You're totally right. I think it even showed at The Cinematheque in Vancouver just a couple of months ago, in DCP.

[A Tempted Christ]

A 2K restoration does in fact exist and it just recently debuted on disc in Japan but I have a feeling it might get a new 4K restoration and in that case, I hope they wait until that happens. Not that Criterion has any problem sitting on titles for years.

[rrenault]

Une Femme Douce is available in HD(from the 2K restoration) on the French iTunes/Apple Store if you have a way to access that. So it’s not completely lost.

[brundlefly]

They have a backlog of films from Muratova, Chytilová, Zetterling, Eustache, Rozier, Itami. Maybe even the Bimal Roy restorations. I'd love to see all of these in the new Eclipse line.

Yes, this must be where the Roys are going -- though hopefully there's a breakout title for contextual features. (I'm assuming Do Bigha Zamin, though at least Devdas deserves discussion/comparison as well.)

Very excited for the Eclipse revival, maybe the best announcement this whole year (in a year full of big ones). My biggest wishes will be for the Roziers, the missing Eustaches, the other Youssef Chahine films and the Rene Clair films under Janus to finally be released.

Chahine was my first thought, at least a couple boxes to be had in there.

[JSC]

Having recently worked my way through the Potemkine DVD set, a Jacques Rozier Eclipse release would be marvellous!

[davidhuxley]

Here's a Letterboxd list of streaming-only Janus Films programmed into more than 100 possible Eclipse sets. See the header notes.

https://boxd.it/p6Pcq

[Matt]

A very cool idea, but some of those are real stretches. 'Ere, Guv'na: British Cinema: 1934 – 1955. Hey Dawg, I Heard You Like Japanese Movies: Seven Decades of Japanese Cinema: 1937 – 1998.

[domino harvey]

I thought the problem with Une femme douce is, or was, that whoever held the rights had specific rules for how it could be screened? Those may no longer be in place

[rwiggum]

Kinda disappointed this probably means there won't be the rumored Kiarostami complete box but excited nonetheless!

[Stefan Andersson]

Re: Une femme douce -- there is a 2K DCP shown in the UK in 2019 "c/o Paramount with thanks Park Circus."
https://www.watershed.co.uk/whatson/976 ... emme-douce
Restored by Eclair:
https://2013.festival-lumiere.org/manif ... douce.html

I also remember older rumours that Mylène Bresson wants all Bresson´s films with one rightsholder.

[dwk]

Kinda disappointed this probably means there won't be the rumored Kiarostami complete box but excited nonetheless!

I assume the rape allegations and Ten plagiarism allegations killed any chance of a complete box.

[MichaelB]

I also remember older rumours that Mylène Bresson wants all Bresson´s films with one rightsholder.

"Wants" and "can feasibly have" are not the same thing. I'm sure Criterion would have loved to have been able to include Face to Face in their Bergman box, but...

(Come to think of it, the same North American rightsholder is involved in both cases!)

[dwk]

Of course Face to Face was under license to Olive at the time, if not for that, they might have gotten it in the set (see La dolce vita in the Fellini box.) Now that Olive has shut down, it seems like Face to Face would be of interest to Criterion, but that is for a different thread.

[zedz]

I also remember older rumours that Mylène Bresson wants all Bresson´s films with one rightsholder.

"Wants" and "can feasibly have" are not the same thing. I'm sure Criterion would have loved to have been able to include Face to Face in their Bergman box, but...

(Come to think of it, the same North American rightsholder is involved in both cases!)

I can confirm from personal experience that Mylene Bresson was indeed the sticking point with Une Femme douce. When we organized a Bresson retrospective about twenty years ago all the other films were licensed through regular sales agents and rights holders (itself no mean feat), but Une Femme douce could not be screened without the express permission of Mylene, and a Paris-based friend of mine had to establish a personal relationship with her before she would approve the screening. (I think she might also have been in control of Affaires publiques, but we weren't going to include that in the retrospective.)

My understanding is that she blocked most screenings simply because (apparently) Robert Bresson didn't like the film much!

Things may well have changed in the intervening decades, of course.

[Lowry_Sam]

I can confirm from personal experience that Mylene Bresson was indeed the sticking point with Une Femme douce. When we organized a Bresson retrospective about twenty years ago all the other films were licensed through regular sales agents and rights holders...

My understanding is that she blocked most screenings simply because (apparently) Robert Bresson didn't like the film much!

Was this for the Pacific Film Archive? I saw it about 20 years ago in their retrospective. Despite an intriguing synopsis, it ended up being the film of his I enjoyed least, so I would've concurred with Bresson's assessment.

[Lowry_Sam]

I've been hoping for/expecting a Complete Ozu box set...

I was thinking Ozu or Kurosawa might be Criterion's first mixed UHD/blu-ray box, with the lesser titles or poorer restorations being relegated to blu and the new 4k restorations on UHD.

Several of the Sammo Kam-Bo Hung films for this month start with a crazy C, so I wouldn't be surprised to get an eclipse set for him.

[Calvin]

Does Mylene also control Les Anges du péché? Whilst it isn't Bresson's best work by any metric, I'm surprised that his debut feature has never been released by any US or UK label.

[Calvin]

I also remember older rumours that Mylène Bresson wants all Bresson´s films with one rightsholder.

"Wants" and "can feasibly have" are not the same thing. I'm sure Criterion would have loved to have been able to include Face to Face in their Bergman box, but...

(Come to think of it, the same North American rightsholder is involved in both cases!)

Interestingly with Face to Face, while Paramount control the theatrical version, Cinematograph AB claims to have worldwide all media rights to the TV series. They have it available to rent digitally with English subtitles

[MichaelB]

This is why the Imprint Blu-ray couldn't include the TV version - although I understand enquiries were made.

And when they knew for certain that they couldn't include it, they asked me to make a point of highlighting differences in my commentary, which I was only too happy to do (not least because it was an easy way of filling space with firmly on-topic material!).

[dwk]

I was thinking Ozu or Kurosawa might be Criterion's first mixed UHD/blu-ray box, with the lesser titles or poorer restorations being relegated to blu and the new 4k restorations on UHD.

Several of the Sammo Kam-Bo Hung films for this month start with a crazy C, so I wouldn't be surprised to get an eclipse set for him.

I guess it depends on what you count as a box set, but the Araki trilogy is mixed with only two of the three films on UHD.

I think HK genre stuff is doing well right now, so I imagine those will get Criterion releases.

[Tuppence]

Everyone's already braced for these being crammed 2-3 films per disc, like Zatoichi and Akerman, right?