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The Dutch Filmmuseum is releasing this classic 1927 French film on DVD, as far as I know the only version available.

Sadly, like so many Dutch releases, this release will only have Dutch intertitles..

Dutch pressrelease here..

Thank you for this information: I've certainly been waiting for releases of Duvivier's silent films.

I propose to post an english traduction of a résumé I have from a french book on Duvivier for those interested.

This is supposed to be an action/adventure film from Julien Duvivier, so dialogue shouldn't be that important.

Edit: Actually, the imdb commentary is quite sufficient

Two very welcome DVD releases:

La Charrette fantôme (1940) 17/10/2007

David Golder (1930) 24/8/2007

Could life be any better?

From october 2006-october 2007 we will have witnessed a real explosion in Duvivier releases. Some of these have only been announced on the Screen captures thread. Maybe The Imposter (highly praised by Duvivier connaisseur writer's reign on the imdb recently) will also see the day soon.

Oh Yeah!: Les Cinq gentlemen maudits (1931)

Very excited by this news! I don't think this title was ever released on video even.

The only talkie by Duvivier that seems impossible to find is Le petit roi (1933) with Robert Lynen who played Poil de carotte the year before. A copy must exist since I have read a review in a book on Duvivier. But then I have absolutely no idea where my rotten copy of Cinq gentlemen comes from: a tv recording from 1978? A vhs found in an attic somewhere?

I attended a couple of years ago at the National Film Theatre in London a screening of a new print of Duvivier's "Poil de Carotte", a film at the time that I was unfamiliar with but fell in love with it. I managed afterwards to seek out a US NTSC video via an Ebay seller, which was an original VHS but very old and says "Timeless Video Inc" on the box, the print is incredibly poor as are the subtitles.

Is there any news of the new print that I saw being given an outing on DVD, with english subtitles?

Marianne de ma jeunesse was broadcast on french television in may. This is not from a forthcoming dvd, just scout boy eyecandy for our australian friend.

The third capture is a great image!

The Impostor (1943), one of Duvivier's US films, a sort of English-language Bandera, is out on DVD in France as part of a Jean Gabin partwork series. It can currently be bought online at journaux.fr. There are two versions on the disc, one with original English audio (optional subs) and another, slightly shorter version with a French dub. The captures below are from the English version (the French version looks a bit rougher).

Impeccable!

Instead of nothing we got more than we needed - two versions of The Imposter! This film is usually despised by the french critics, but so are La Charrete fantôme and Les Cinq gentlemen, films I hugely enjoy.

The other titles we announced a while ago seem to have been postponed.

HI

These marvelous pictures made me feel like watching Marianne de ma jeunesse again for the third time. I was puzzled by Lise's fate. Is it possible no one, not even her uncle, shed a tear for her? When Vincent leaves Heiligenstadt, nobody hints at it, they act as if nothing happened! YOUR thoughts????

DIDIER DUMONTEIL A DUVIVIER FAN

One scene makes me think of a Yoko Ono song (slightly modified lyrics)

I KNEW A BOY WHO TRIED TO SWIM ACROSS THE LAKE
THEY SAY THAT THE LAKE IS AS BIG AS THE OCEAN
I WONDER IF HE KNEW ABOUT IT

Les Cinq gentlemen maudits is a little treat, something very entertaining, maybe a bit tongue-in-cheek, the perfect antidote to a Rohmer work!

Some kind of Tintin and the 7 Crystal Balls. I love TINTIN!

Apropos of The Impostor, try to see Walsh's Uncertain Glory, starring Errol Flynn, and compare the beginnings of the two movies. Amazing isn't it?

Good to have you participating on this thread, my friend.

This is where you belong.

Didier is a prominent writer on the Imdb and his comments are certainly among the reasons why I have gotten so involved in old french cinema and in Duvivier in particular. Several long afternoons during my first stay in Paris were spent running between the video screens and the computers of the Forum des Images searching for more suggestions from this stranger who was to become a fidèle copain.

As for Lise, I too was puzzled by the total lack of attention drawn to her fate. Maybe her death takes place the same day as Vincent leaves Heiligenstadt and is still unknown? I wouldn't mind seeing the film one more time to see if this is possible. You are right in stating that this is not Duvivier's best film (half a dozen of his films would be on my top 25 list of french cinema), but the amazing quality of the tvrip makes it a more than pleasant experience.

Watching La Charrette fantôme again, I find myself agreeing with Didier's IMDb observation about the supernatural and the realist not sitting comfortably together in this film. Scandinavian folktale elements jostle with Dostoevskian themes and characters in what appears to be a modern-day setting complete with automobiles and vacuum cleaners.

The central romance between alcoholic wife-beater David Holm (Pierre Fresnay) and saintly Soeur Edith (Micheline Francey) must be the most hopeless, doomed love in all of Duvivier (and that's saying something!). It's odd to read that Gabin and Michèle Morgan were originally considered for those roles.

What I do like about the film are Francey's luminous wide-eyed performance (hers is the only character we really root for), the pessimist dialogue (humanity compared to fleas in a mattress), and some finely constructed set pieces like the tavern scene where Jouvet is stabbed, Fresnay's drunken binge, the operatic Salvation Army assembly meeting, and the various appearances of the "charrette", usually in sound only.

The new French DVD is excellent, by the way (but unsubbed).

Duvivier's last silent Au bonheur des dames (1930) will be out in march.

Fnacis taking some euros more.

Woo-hoo!

Do you think this might be the silent (1925) version of Poil de carotte?

They give the cast for the 1932 talkie, but that's already out on René Chateau. And FNAC are calling it a "film muet".

Oh my.

I doubt Arte would put the 1932 version in the cinéma muet series!

Ah, yes. I just had a poke about on Arte's site. There are three silent titles due out in March:

# - Collection Cinema Muet
# Le Fantôme de L'Opéra (Rupert Julian. 1925 – 73 min)
# Poil De Carotte (Julien Duvivier. 1925 – 109 min)
# Au Bonheur Des Dames (Julien Duvivier. 1930 – 85 min)

Those Duviviers are totally unexpected. I wasn't even aware they'd been shown on Arte TV.

Aren't they coming out the same week as L'Herbier's L'Argent?

I have just received the 2 new Duvivier silents from Lobster/Arte. Both look very good (from a quick inspection) and both come with optional (yellow) English and German subtitles on the French intertitles.

Poil de carotte (1924):


Au bonheur des dames (1930):

At long last a reply from fnac:- Les Cinq gentlemen maudits is definitely unavailable. I think this was discussed on another thread also but here it is and there you are.

How is Deadlier than the Male? They're playing it at the cinematheque here and I'm wondering whether I should try to see it.

PimpPanda wrote:How is Deadlier than the Male? They're playing it at the cinematheque here and I'm wondering whether I should try to see it.

=Voici le temps des assassins. Yes, absolutely, do go and see it. It's a great film noir, laced with Duvivian pessimism, with Gabin on superb form.

The french title is taken from a poem by Arthur Rimbaud, by the way.

...and the English title from a poem by Kipling

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern – shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.