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CONVERSATION PIECE, Luchino Visconti’s heartfelt tale of loneliness and intimacy starring Burt Lancaster and an international ensemble cast, is set to be released in a Dual Format edition as part of the Masters of Cinema Series on 15 August 2016 http://amzn.to/1TCb7he" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

Eleven years after The Leopard, the revered Italian maestro Luchino Visconti reteamed with the iconic Burt Lancaster on the lavish Conversation Piece [Gruppo di famiglia in un interno].

A retired American professor (Lancaster) lives a solitary and luxurious life in a house in Rome. His world takes an unexpected turn when he is forced to rent part of his house to a countess and her companions: a lover, a daughter and the daughter’s boyfriend. Forced into interaction with the unruly younger group, the professor’s growing fascination begins to stir the possibilities of a life he had previously kept at arm’s length.

A sumptuous, grandly enjoyable chamber drama with a wry sense of humour, Conversation Piece features an international ensemble cast including Helmut Berger, Silvana Mangano and Stefano Patrizi (with uncredited cameos by Claudia Cardinale and Dominique Sanda). The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Visconti’s penultimate film in a new dual-format edition from a brand new 2K restoration.

SPECIAL DUAL FORMAT FEATURES:
1080p transfer of the film from a brand new 2K restoration | Features both the original English language soundtrack and the Italian dub track that was produced at the same time | Optional English SDH (for the English track) and optional English subtitles for the Italian track | Interview with critic and screenwriter Alessandro Bencivenni | Trailer | Plus: Booklet featuring a new essay by Pasquale Iannone; and vintage writing on the film.

Burt Lancaster in the library with the lead piping.

Glad it specifies new transfer; the previous blu ray release rates as the very worst PQ of any disc I own.

R0lf wrote:Glad it specifies new transfer; the previous blu ray release rates as the very worst PQ of any disc I own.

My guess would be that it actually uses the restoration made by Gaumont for their 2013 release (which indeed is muche better than the US release).

EDIT : actually, I'm wrong. Kevin has answered on blu-ray.com that "It's a newer restoration, not the same one as the Gaumont disc."
It means that it will be the 3rd different presentation of the movie in 4 years (Raro 2012, Gaumont 2013 and now MoC 2016). I'm extremely surprised.
And to say we're still waiting a Blu Ray release of Obsession.

Blu-ray.com review

The multiple releases of Conversation Piece seem to be an unfortunate index of the worst trends in BD "restorations", with a special focus on color timing revisionism.

On the one hand, you have Raro's demonstration of what too much DNR looks like, followed by the "why were the '70's such a jaundiced time?" of the Gaumont, and now we have "no, seriously, any previous video releases with white whites were horribly manipulated; all movies should have dull whites and flattened contrast" of the Eureka rendition.

You'd think a white-on-white room with primary color accents wouldn't be that hard to pin down, visually.

The question I'm always wondering when stumbling on cases like this is : does actually anybody knows how it should look, rather than how these looks are possibly all wrong in various aspects and levels ?
And I'm saying that as a very general and open point, aiming both sides of the debate (restoration teams and forumers). I mean, it's not as if the restoration teams are aiming to be wrong on the purpose so they can be ranted upon, but it's also not as if we knew exactly what the original photo was.

tenia wrote:The question I'm always wondering when stumbling on cases like this is : does actually anybody knows how it should look, rather than how these looks are possibly all wrong in various aspects and levels ?
And I'm saying that as a very general and open point, aiming both sides of the debate (restoration teams and forumers). I mean, it's not as if the restoration teams are aiming to be wrong on the purpose so they can be ranted upon, but it's also not as if we knew exactly what the original photo was.

That is absolutely a valid question to raise, and my sense is that there aren't always clear answers. (I was privy to some of the questions faced on another restoration project.) From what I understand, one of the challenges arises when you start with a scan of the camera negative; it's great for capturing fine detail, but it means that you have to recreate the color timing from scratch. Not only that, but you are using different tools from what were used originally - computer programs rather than an optical printer, filters, etc. That creates an opportunity for inadvertent errors-you might forget to properly filter a day-for-night shot, for instance. Or you could end up introducing bigger changes to the film.

If you have a vintage release print that is not too faded you can use that as a reference, but even that can raise its own set of questions. Maybe the initial release prints of a film were not ideal quality for various reasons.

There is still always some question of taste and creative judgement that ends up creeping into the process, I think. In the case of Conversation Piece, the fact that the screen captures of the Eureka edition are so dominated by grays and lack highlights & shadows is a tip-off that something might be wrong. Svet Atanasov comments in his review that the new transfer lacks vibrancy compared to old transfer, and he is right. The film was shot on studio sets--i.e., careful control over lighting, especially on actors' faces--but the new transfer used in the Eureka edition doesn't seem to reflect that adequately. Many of the images look flat and lack depth; the compositions are not shaped by the lighting in the way that you would expect for a studio film. Especially a studio film directed by Visconti.

I do agree with Svet that the color balance looks better than in the Gaumont Blu-ray, but that becomes a moot point ultimately.

UPDATE: I would like to hear more input from people who have seen both the Gaumont and MoC Blu-rays, when they get the chance to make a comparison. For me, looking at the Gaumont Blu-ray again confirms my initial impression that it does tend towards the greenish and brownish side in some scenes, and the yellowish in others. I think that the perceived color bias is shaped in part by the heavy interiors, and may also be partly a byproduct of the original cinematography. But on the whole the disc is fine and even looks very nice in many shots.

If you look at the whites on the Gaumont Blu-ray, there is in fact a broad range of whites and off-whites in the production design. They are affected in part by the overall lighting scheme and the reflected light of the costumes and settings. To give you an example of the interesting range of whites, look at the white apartment interior that corresponds to the screen capture above. The Gaumont Blu-ray does tend toward the yellowish side in that shot, but it's not extreme and contrast looks fine. The basic design concept of the scene - the subtle play of different whites - is still preserved. So while Gaumont Blu-ray may not have flawless color timing, it may not unduly distort the intended look of the film, either.

I'm curious to hear how the MoC disc plays in motion.

Apparently there's an hour long documentary as an extra. What is it with Masters of Cinema keeping the special features on their discs a secret?

Beaver... The whites slightly less grey in these screen caps, I guess, but not much so...

jsteffe wrote:There is still always some question of taste and creative judgement that ends up creeping into the process, I think.

Isn't it also the case from the viewer's point of view ? I've often seen discussions which seemed more heavily oriented by older visions of precedent releases than the intrinsequial qualities and limitations of the newer release.

For instance, there's someone on Blu-ray.com who keeps saying Arrow has an habit of getting teal pictures on their BD, with Porkys being the sole example. The actual lack of pattern aside (one sole example does not make a pattern), the Arrow disc is indeed much bluer than the FOX one... or is the FOX disc actually yellower ? Depending of your own preference (not a technical fact, but a personal preference), you might see the comparison one way rather than the other, and prefer one transfer over the other, despite not knowing which one is actually the more faithful.

In the case of Conversation Piece, the question would then be : is one of the 3 presentations faithful to the original look of the movie ? If not, which one is the more faithful ? And to assess this, what factual elements are available ?

I’m only 29 but prefer catalog movies, meaning the Blu Ray releases I’m reviewing are likely my first experience of the movie, so I’m often stumbling at the lack of possibility to ensure I’m assessing properly the color-grading. There are many examples where I didn’t have the knowledge myself to do so and had to rely on gut-intuition, external feedback, comparison with other releases and experience taken from other movies, but none of that are intrinsequial factual proofs.

For instance, I still strongly believe Criterion’s Hiroshima mon amour blacks are too elevated but was answered that Henri Alekan was known to use milky blacks as part of his work on photography but again, this isn’t direct confirmation, only comparison with other works.

tenia wrote:

jsteffe wrote:There is still always some question of taste and creative judgement that ends up creeping into the process, I think.

Isn't it also the case from the viewer's point of view ? I've often seen discussions which seemed more heavily oriented by older visions of precedent releases than the intrinsequial qualities and limitations of the newer release.

Of course! Furthermore, memory is a fluid and capricious thing. Judging a transfer by screen captures is also a tricky proposition, since the very process of selecting frames can inadvertently end up emphasizing certain tonalities, as I have learned over time. And our perception of color and tonality within an image is also strongly affected by its surroundings.

L'inganno, a 38-minute making-of from 2013 directed by Ferdinando Cito Filomarino, is available to stream for free this weekend only

This was for the restoration of the film then, supported by Fendi who had designed the costumes, and accompanied by a lavish volume (with two separate editions in Italian & English) published by Rizzoli and including 2 DVDs of the film itself & extra features...

For whatever reason, I see copies of that set (literally stacks of them) at every Half-Price Books I've set foot in over the past couple of years. But they're asking $30 so I'm not surprised they aren't flying off the shelves.

Is it actually worth picking up? My local HPB has also had copies for ages (and any given item at HPB should really be thought of as 20-50% off sticker price, since they have regular coupons), but at a glance it looked like nice, glossy pictures, a DVD I didn't need, and some poorly translated essays...

They're actually mostly transcribed interviews with the likes of Bernardo Bertolucci, Caterina D'Amico, Liliana Cavani & Piero Tosi... I'd seen it before (in both Italian & English incarnations) and only picked it up when heavily discounted, but am not sorry that I did... The catch is although the English edition was published mainly for the US market, the two DVDs remain PAL Region 2 locked...

I was comparing the Eureka and Gaumont BD audio tracks and I was surprised that this film has two separate English track/dubs. Excluding Lancaster, Berger and Jean-Pierre Zola everyone's voices are different. I'm inclined to believe the Gaumont BD is the cast's natural voices (besides the aforementioned three) as the lip-sync seems more accurate (especially for Claudia Marsani compared to the Eureka BD) and tends to be a bit accent-heavy.

Interesting. Is one noticably more American or British?

TMDaines wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:56 am Interesting. Is one noticably more American or British?

The MoC sounds like it has a British/English dubbing cast (besides the three previously mentioned). On the Gaumount, you can hear more noticeable Italian accents/dictation from the Italian cast members (as I said before, I assume that these are their natural voices).

Gruppo di famiglia in un interno/Conversation Piece was filmed in English. French and Italian versions were also recorded. Dubbing was also common custom & practice in Italian film production.

It was dubbed for the Italian release with Massimo Foschi voicing The Professor (Burt Lancaster), Adalberto Maria Merli voicing Konrad Huebel (Helmut Berger), Silvana Mangano dubbing herself as the Marchesa Bianca, Roberta Paladini voicing Lietta (Claudia Marsani), Renato Cortesi dubbing Stefano (Stefano Patrizi) & Livia Giampalmo dubbing the Mother of The Professor (Dominique Sanda)...

It was dubbed for the French release under the direction of Georges Dutter with French actors voicing the parts.

The American dubbed version was edited by Film Novcek. The Italian production company Rusconi gave New Line Cinema free rein to cut the film for US release, provided no footage was added. Novcek cut 30 minutes including all the flashbacks (thus eliminating Cardinale & Sanda - the wife & the mother of The Professor - from the US version).

ellipsis7 wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 3:39 pm Gruppo di famiglia in un interno/Conversation Piece was filmed in English. French and Italian versions were also recorded. Dubbing was also common custom & practice in Italian film production.

I understand it was shot in English. I'm just surprised that there exists two English soundtracks.
Here's some quick comparisons between the two (for both tracks, the Gaumont BD is first followed by the Eureka BD):
https://voca.ro/1a3HYjopy8Qi
https://voca.ro/13nlAF5tOLTL

I personally prefer the Gaumont BD. As I've said before, I'm inclined to believe the track used on the Gaumont BD features the Italian cast members' real voices. I find some of the voices on the Eureka BD grating (especially whoever they got for Claudia Marsani).

They re-released in US the restored film with the Italian dubbing soundtrack, lol
Horrible poster.

https://kinolorber.com/film/conversationpiece

Is going MoC to release the film? I hope so. I don't have a copy, I've the Gaumont one.

The film works better in English language, I know a few aristo people and they are and talk like Mangano's family, Mangano plays a marchioness, but mine they never say bad words and of course they do not curse.

The moment, by W.H Auden

If you see a fair form, chase it
And if possible embrace it,

Be it a girl or boy.

Don't be bashful: be brash, be fresh.

Life is short, so enjoy

Whatever contact your flesh

May at the moment crave:

There's no sex life in the grave.

lzx wrote: Sat May 16, 2020 1:06 am L'inganno, a 38-minute making-of from 2013 directed by Ferdinando Cito Filomarino, is available to stream for free this weekend only

The link works again, and I could download it. Million of thanks, lzx.
Thomas Mann's novella The Black Swan 1954 (L'inganno) is very good.
I highly recommend its reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black ... ort_story)