443-445 La ronde, Le plaisir, The Earrings of Madame de...

[shaky]

Very nice caps. I'm convinced; pre-ordering now.

[jsteffe]

Flicking between the two restorations really does bring to mind, more immediately than anything else I can think of, the bottemlessly deep potential of human stupidity.

^^^This.

Seriously--I'm grateful that Gaumont addressed it, and I'm looking forward to getting the Blu-ray soon.

[Roger Ryan]

I would definitely buy a revised Criterion edition if the image quality looked as good as the new French Blu-ray (hint, hint).

[shaky]

LE PLAISIR screengrabs:

http://www.dvdclassik.com/forum/viewtop ... 32&t=35326" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[shaky]

After taking a good look at those LE PLAISIR screengrabs, I'm still unsure how I feel about them. There is certainly less grain and less detail than in MADAME DE but this is more than likely just the source. Ah, I just don't know. I suppose it's time to just stop talking about this and wait for reviews to start trickling in.

[manicsounds]

blu-ray.com on the French edition of Madame de
Apparently looks better than the Criterion, but says it could have been better...

[shaky]

Looking at the suggested screencaps, I actually cannot spot any of the light chroma noise of which Dr. Svet is speaking. I don't doubt that it's there though.

[hearthesilence]

They showed all three yesterday at MoMA, projected in 35mm prints, so I wound up spending the whole day watching all three, though I probably dozed off for 15 or 20 minutes during La ronde and The Earrings of Madame de…. Nothing to do with the films themselves, I was already physically tired by the time I got to the theater for La ronde.

La ronde is marvelously entertaining, but having seen it several times already, it feels rather light and frothy compared to the next two. The "middle story" of Le plaisir is still the main attraction for me (and I think it takes up most of the film too), and it seems to get better with repeated viewing. I honestly think it's one of the best things Ophüls has done, there's always more to discover in it. Incredibly entertaining and funny, but also incredibly moving - the church sequence especially and the relationship between Gabin and Darrieux for how much is left unsaid. On its own, it's a stone-cold masterpiece.

Both films do build to The Earrings of Madame de… in a lot of ways. La ronde felt like a dry run for Earrings' plot structure, but this time we're not tracking love's movement but the movement of the earrings from one person's possession to the next, and it's even more rich and devastating to see how their meaning evolves over time, entwined with the changes in Madame de…'s own life.

What stuck out this time though was how compressed things feel. The waltz that dissolves across weeks is a good example, and even the lead up to the duel seems fast. Not rushed, but incredibly fast - I kind of got the sensation of a story hurtling towards a pre-destined doom, moreso given the references to fate and the characters' own surprise at the sometimes frustrating, sometimes miraculous return of the earrings to the jeweler and Madame de… time and time again.

All three were projected in excellent prints, though La ronde didn't have subtitles, so they had to project a set underneath the screen. And for some odd reason, I feel like the subtitling for one of my favorite lines was botched in Le plaisir - when Gabin mentions that all children need religion so they can choose whether to leave it behind when they get older. It seemed like the last bit of that line wasn't subtitled at all. Regardless, if they play them again, definitely catch them.

[bottled spider]

... The "middle story" of Le plaisir is still the main attraction for me (and I think it takes up most of the film too), and it seems to get better with repeated viewing. I honestly think it's one of the best things Ophüls has done, there's always more to discover in it...

Agreed. For example, when the troupe of young women departs, Gabin apologizes to one of them for having behaved coarsely, and she replies merci so softly one mightn't catch it on first viewing. Her stunned reaction to a mere apology speaks volumes about her life.

[EddieLarkin]

Svet notes in his review about the blacks on the Gaumont disc being weak, particular in comparison to the Criterion. I finished the film earlier today and can confirm it can be added to the long list of films with incorrectly presented black levels. There are no true blacks on the disc as is, even the fades are a milky grey. A change in levels on your Blu-ray player will present the transfer as it was meant to be seen, and hide the compression noise Svet also pointed out (most visible here).

[nitin]

yeah it looks pretty good when the black levels are changed.

Le Plaisir has been encoded fine though.

[bad future]

Hello — hope it’s OK to resurrect this thread after several years. I was just wondering if anyone can confirm which transfer of Madame De is on FilmStruck, be it the much maligned blu ray version, or the DVD version in a higher definition? I don’t have firsthand experience with either release; just wondering if the Criterion blu would actually be a downgrade from FilmStruck, and trying to decide if it’s worth seeking out the Gaumont release.

Related: anyone think Criterion might eventually update their release with a better transfer — any precedent for something like that? Maybe the Tati box having an update on Playtime, which was already on blu?

[fdm]

Don't have any answers, but recall that there is also a bfi release of Madame de... from about a year ago.

[tenia]

Playtime remains an exception ans was part of a multi-movie deal. Otherwise, the only other BD-to-BD upgraded title is Monterey Pop, making these upgrades extremely rare.
The BFI disc is otherwise a competent release.

[bad future]

I had sort of put the BFI release out of my mind as I don't have a region free player, but it sounds like that might be the best bet for the foreseeable future. That said, I don't hate whatever's on FilmStruck, and would still be curious if anyone knows its provenance; it's just that if there's a transfer out there that does significantly better by the great cinematography, it's definitely a movie that deserves it!.. Thanks a lot for the input!

[Werewolf by Night]

Somewhere upthread someone mentioned that the transfer available on iTunes is better than the Criterion BD release (but still not perfect). It might be the same transfer on FilmStruck.

I have the 2014 French Gaumont BD, which is not bad (but also still not perfect).

[tenia]

My understanding is the following :
Criterion licenced for their BD the original Gaumont 2K 2014 restoration, which is absolutely awful.
iTunes uses what looks like an upscale of the older Criterion master, which is better looking. Then Gaumont new re-done restoration beats this. And finally, the BFI managed to get an even better version of the Gaumont new re-done restoration because redoing it from scratch wasn't a big enough incentive for Gaumont to just release it untouched.

Criterion BD < iTunes < Gaumont BD < BFI BD
My guess would be that FilmStruck uses the equivalent of the iTunes copy.

[DeprongMori]

FWIW, Amazon UK just dropped the price of the BFI of “Madame de...” to £9.99

Madame de...

[bottled spider]

Revisiting Madame de ..., I realized that the main musical theme (taken, I read, from Gluck's Orfeo) is the same tune as "It's a a Great Big World" from The Harvey Girls. I was amused by the audacity of having the Comtesse singing and humming along to the musical score -- she keeps a full orchestra in her boudoir?

A related joke, which I didn't pickup on at the time, but was pointed out in the commentary, is Louise and Donati waltzing to a piece of string music while the musicians we see ostensibly performing it are an all brass band.

The commentary in general is of mixed quality. It spends a little too much time doing what commentaries shouldn't: redundantly narrating what's happening right in front of you. But then it also does exactly what I value in commentaries: observing details that might not have registered. One being the way the fogged up mirrors in the ballroom make the reflections resemble the many paintings we see in the background. (I only listened to a short portion of the commentary this time round).

A magnificent film with superb extras -- the Anderson intro, the Gallagher visual essay, the interview with the author of the novel...

[bugsy_pal]

Your revisit is timely... I watched the BFI disc a couple of nights ago. It's the first time I've seen the film, and I can see why it was Andrew Sarris's favourite film for a while. The camera movement throughout is astonishing. Great performances too. I will be watching it again soon.

[domino harvey]

Le plaisir is currently unavailable, has it been like this for long?

[dwk]

I don't know the answer to how long it has been unavailable, but it doesn't say OOP and is still on the channel, so I assume they are changing the packaging from a digipak to a Scanovo case.

[FrauBlucher]

Unless it's getting upgraded, a la Blast of Silence

[Matt]

It would be great for them to do a triple upgrade of this, La Ronde, and Madame de…in one package like the three Buñuel films, but I don’t know if the licensing would allow for that.

[Blip Martindale]

An upgrade of this set would make a fine companion with a simultaneous release of the rumoured Eyes Wide Shut (Schnitzler connection)