criterionforum.org

justeleblanc wrote:Though the one exception was the Cassavetes box

And the Varda, and the Robeson, and the Dreyer. I find the Teshigahara a little tenuous as well by that criteria, others probably don't.

starmanof51 wrote:I find the Teshigahara a little tenuous as well by that criteria, others probably don't.

I agree... I really wish that The Ruined Map could have been included (and it is an Abe/Teshigahara collaboration)

I've posted this on the Second Sight thread, but they have Lola Montes as to be confirmed on their coming soon list.

So very possibly coming from Criterion soon, as well.

tojoed wrote:So very possibly coming from Criterion soon, as well.

Not sure if this has been mentioned elsewhere on the forum, but LOLA was picked up by Rialto. A Criterion release is all but assured.

WHICH Lola was picked up by Rialto?

Then we STILL must await the complete Lola Montes.

Just returned from a screening of the restored French version of LOLA
MONTES at BFI Southbank. There were three moments here that I haven't
seen before:

1- More dialogue near the beginning of the first scene with Liszt, who
now remarks that "Dancers usually dance to my tune, rather than I to
theirs".

2- After Lola leaves the ship's dining room, we now see here return to
the dormitory, where a young girl says to her "Going to bed already?
Were you naughty?".

3- The final scene with Lola in the cage is now a single uninterrupted
shot.

I watched the new Second Sight disc yesterday. Apart from the burned-in subs, this was a wonderful experience, all in all. The spotlessness of the print and the restored colours are simply breathtaking; it looks even better in motion than in the caps that are at the Beaver. From time to time,especially with some long shots, I wished it to look a little more detailed, though it doesn't look 'soft' in the strict sense of the word. I'm pretty sure that a higher bitrate would have solved this, and one really wished Second Sight would have made this a double-disc, with the long documentary not taking away from the available resolution.

As to the film and resto itself: re-reading this thread and the discussion about the German vs French resto, I must say that I felt somewhat irritated that only meagre bits remain in this French version of the German and English language parts (though some of them are still in it), it simply doesn't make a lot of sense if those native speakers talk to each other in French when Lola is not involved. I cannot imagine that this was really Ophuls' idea, despite of what his son says - why make a multi-language film when you're not going to be consistent about it?. But this never stopped my feeling of being absolutely captivated by the film. I cannot really understand why Ophuls objected against Martine Carroll at first; I think she plays Lola quite convincingly, with a lot of detachment (especially in the circus scenes) which seemed to quite fit her troubled and eventually torn character. And then there's the main 'character' of the film: the colours. Absolutely incredible. Watching the circus scenes in this resto borders on a psychedelic experience in a way that comes close to "The Red Shoes" (and not much else, unless you want to throw in "Black Narcissus" and "Hoffmann" as well, as you may well do), a film I was more than once reminded of when watching "Lola".

Another thing that caught my attention: in the excellent 70-minute documentary it is mentioned that Ophuls wasn't the first choice for directing the film, and there they say that the film was originally planned to be shot by Christian-Jaque (which I'd rather not want to think about, given how bad "Fanfan la Tulipe" is). However, Susan White in her audiocommentary (of which I only sampled the first 30 minutes or so) tells a different story: the producers first approached Jacques Tourneur and then...well, Michael Powell. Now this is complete news to me: a quick look at the index of Powell's autobiography seems to indicate that Powell doesn't even mention that he had been approached to direct "Lola". So, does anyone know whether this story is really true? And if so, why did Powell turn it down only to produce the rather mediocre "Rosalinda" in the same year?
Of course, no need to be sad, because Ophuls obviously was every way his equal, but given the thematic similarity to some of Powell's key movies (again, especially "Red Shoes") one cannot help but wonder how a Powell version might have looked; just imagine Moira Shearer as Lola...

Paramount, France are releasing a DVD box set in October. Lola Montes, La Ronde, Le Plaisir, Madame de.. No word on subtitles as yet.

Does anybody know if there really was a 140-min. pre-release cut of LOLA?

Some say this length info is due to a long-ago handwritten typo. But for instance the Technicolor people who did the Marcel resto still talk publicly about 30 missing minutes etc.

Yes, it's true, at least according to Susan White's fine book on Ophuls.

Coming on Blu in France at the end of the month. No specs yet.

Apparently it was made in three languages. I presume this means three separate dubs and not portions of the one dub performed in three languages.

Either way, please please please let there be english subs/dub... Some way in for me to understand it!

david hare wrote:That's not accurate. ... In any case Max originally intended to make Lola as a trilingual film but the producer kyboshed that...

Thanks for clearing that up, David. Also, it appears that something dreadful has gone wrong with the FR Blu Ray release of Lola. Its release day came around on Amazon.fr, and then its gotten pulled or (hopefully) delayed...

Also, it was confirmed as not having English subs by Amazon.fr's customer support, but they've advised me wrongly before (see: "sure, that'll be the cover art for Gremlins BD... Not!") Their web site still lists different cover art to that being delivered to customers.

That's disappointing, but I'm glad you told me. I'm going to officially stop looking forward to this, and then wait for reviews once it comes out. I don't mind buying SD-DVDs while I'm waiting, so I might get that French set of four Ophuls; but there's nothing worse than a disappointing HD release.

Bad news...
After I asked on Facebook whether we would be receiving the Marcel restro or the German, I got this reply:

Criterion wrote:Ours will be the recent restoration of the French version, not the German version, which is what it seems you are referring to.

Looks like there's no hope for seeing Max's preferred version now.

Without reading up on the different versions, I'll be seeing it for the first time, so as long as its a good BD I'll be happy.

Ah thank you David for the clarification, I held off getting the Second Sight release after reading the French version had several cuts and the ending tracking shot was much shorter, is this the case?

david hare wrote: I firmly disgaree with Marcel's posiition on that one, although I cant argue with the bloody French legal system.

I have both sorrow AND pity over this.

While the commentary seems to be the same, the other extras are much different from the Second Sight. Given that the CC also has removable subs, I feel the urge to double-dip. I even feel a greater urge to buy a Blu player....argh....

With all the confused hubaballoh about this film, and the other three Ophuls, I'm a bit wary. From what I understand concerning Lola is that the trouble is with different cuts in different languages, does this mean the criterion version will be a butchered cut or will it be fine enough for me to plunge to.
Also is the problem with the other three solely in the quality of the transfers or is it something more severe?

The problems with Criterion's previous Ophuls discs are painstakingly cataloged in the thread for those releases, so there's no reason to repeat it all here.

I don't think you should let the issue of the variant versions of the film distract you from the fact that this is a great film. If you like the other Ophuls films you've seen, then you will like this one. As far as quality goes, I did not see the theatrical re-release, but if Criterion feels confident enough in the quality of the image to release it on Blu-ray, I think it will look very good.

Speaking for the three already released, I don't know what complaints you might be referring to (A drunk-sounding PTA "introducing" Madame de? The packaging being in digipaks despite each only having one disc? The fact that they weren't boxed together?) but there's certainly not anything wrong enough with them to prevent you from enjoying these wonderful films.

As for Lola, this is the best way you're going to be able to see it for some time, and as david hare has said earlier in this thread (and he seems to know what he's talking about here), it's probably the closest of any version to the ideal cut.

Not watching this because of the version controversy would be like holding off on watching Greed until they find those pesky missing five hours of footage.

Thanks Swo and Matt for clarifying the situation. The flaws I had heard about was that Le Plaisar was the worst transfer they had done since The Scarlet Emprss and that La Ronde was a butchered cut.