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Many thanks for the responses. De Sica's mute sparring with Boyer in Madame De... is one of my favorite performances, so I was pretty sold on reading the enthusiasm about his work here. But the rest really helped me press the Complete Order button.

Always good to be reminded what a great resource you all are.

so what did you think ez? I picked this up in the fall B&N sale (for $9!) and just finished it....outstanding and actually surprised me - i was expecting to be underwhelmed, but De Sica blew me away...he's just fantastic here.

But more than that, i've recently been pondering the enormity of what nations like Germany and Italy had to deal with psychically in the wake of WWII, and this is an interesting piece of that puzzle given its timing. As Gallagher notes in the cool video essay, it was only in the late 50s that such a film could even begin to be considered, any earlier would have been "too soon." Of course there's a touch of nationalist fantasy in the ending, but I can't help but wonder in a terribly sympathetic sense what it must be like to have such a burden in your national history...Americans have made WWII into a patriotic circle-jerk of self-congratulation for our "sacrifice" - but while many certainly sacrificed and endured much pain in losing loved ones, we don't know the half of it when it comes to actually LIVING war. This film is a fascinating glimpse into the process of reconciling that past for a people who really lived it. Good stuff.

Coming out on Blu in France oO...

If anyone can find any more details on this release then please share!

WOW! A shame it seems there'll be no english subs

Hopefully I can ask this here...

I'm looking for the Italian two-disc release from Minerva which came out in 2006 and with a book. While Google searching there are two different covers for it. Is there some difference perhaps, or was there just one DVD release then?

This is the Minerva 2 disc limited edition curated by Adriano Apra...



There is also is apparently a single disc Italian edition (also with Eng subs) from Raro Video (which is a sister company of Minerva)...

Find the 2 disc Minerva SE here on their website!

^ Thanks for your help!

This might be going out of print. considering that Raro US have announced a DVD and Blu-ray of it on their FB for autumn.

I'm not sure about that, considering titles like Life of Brian and Do the Right Thing were released on DVD and Blu-Ray by other companies, and the original Criterions didn't go out-of-print.

Hence the "might".

The Narrator Returns wrote:I'm not sure about that, considering titles like Life of Brian and Do the Right Thing were released on DVD and Blu-Ray by other companies, and the original Criterions didn't go out-of-print.

Those were released by their owners - Sony and Universal. In this case we have a triangle: Raro, Criterion, and whoever owns the film.

Minerva owns it.

Criterion's site lists Il Generale Della Rovere as OOP.

Is this a StudioCanal title? And didn't somebody recently release a blu of this? If so, then I'm guessing this is going the way of Breathless and we'll see a new dual format in a few months time. Though as somebody who tries to grab OOP titles before they reach exorbitant prices, this "will they upgrade it?" guessing game is rather frustrating.

jindianajonz wrote:Is this a StudioCanal title? And didn't somebody recently release a blu of this?

No. Yes.

Looks like I was right then on this going OOP. Hopefully Raro will do a good job on this one; they're really hit and miss. It's currently a very cheap pre-order on ImportCDs.

Blu-ray.com on the Raro bluray

You can see the rounded corners and windowboxing in the screenshots.

Pretty sure the very good Italian Minerva Classics DVD was the same, but the picture inside was good. I'm sure many people can resolve this if they're bothered by using manual overscan or cropping settings on their Blu-ray player or software. It certainly doesn't seem to deserve the review that Harris gave it.

If you have to fix the crop settings to make the film watchable, then they've failed.

Many players and TVs that I've had experience don't allow for any aspect ratio change or cropping on HDMI inputs anyhow.

You don't have to change anything to make it watchable.

I can't believe some people are so terrified of a film frame.

Moe Dickstein wrote:Many players and TVs that I've had experience don't allow for any aspect ratio change or cropping on HDMI inputs anyhow.

Anyone who really cares about such things should have bought equipment with some kind of adjustable zoom or overscan, which is far from uncommon. Many displays also cause overscan that cannot be eliminated. So the only way to avoid losing part of the image in such cases is to windowbox the transfer or to show the full frame, with overscan then cropping off the edges. I have my projector set so there is no overscan, and if seeing the entire frame ever bothered me, I could easily change that setting. There's absolutely no way to make everyone happy with something like this, especially if someone who wants zoom/overscan has somehow failed to purchase the equipment that will allow them to adjust this to taste.

Gregory wrote:There's absolutely no way to make everyone happy with something like this

How about presenting the film the same way the vast majority of other films on Blu-ray are framed? i.e. correctly? You're acting like this sort of thing is common. Everyone would be satisfied with a film presented with framing for whatever the SMPTE standard is for the selected aspect ratio.

And acquiring a TV or BD player that allows 1x1 pixel mapping is far easier than one that can do all sorts of different levels of zooming. Even a $1000 Oppo player cannot get around Criterion's prevention of zooming their discs. And that's before we get into the fact you're giving up resolution for performing cropping you shouldn't have to be doing.