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La ronde

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Simone Signoret, Anton Walbrook, and Simone Simon lead a roundelay of French stars in Max Ophuls's delightful, acerbic adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's controversial turn-of-the-century play La ronde. Soldiers, chambermaids, poets, and aristocrats, all are on equal footing in this multicharacter merry-go-round of love and infidelity, directed with a sweeping gaiety as knowingly frivolous as it is enchanting, and shot with Ophuls's trademark intricate cinematography.

Special Features

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer
• Audio commentary featuring film scholar Susan White, author of The Cinema of Max Ophuls
• Interview with Max Ophuls's son, Academy Award–winning filmmaker Marcel Ophuls
• Interview with actor Daniel Gélin
• Interview with film scholar Alan Williams
• Correspondence between Sir Laurence Olivier and Heinrich Schnitzler (the playwright's son), illustrating the controversy surrounding the source play
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A new essay by film critic Terrence Rafferty

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Le plaisir

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Roving with his dazzlingly mobile camera around the decadent ballrooms, bucolic countryside retreats, urban bordellos, and painter's studios of late nineteenth-century Parisian society, Max Ophuls brings his astonishing visual dexterity and storytelling bravura to this triptych of tales by Guy de Maupassant about the limits of spiritual and physical pleasure. Featuring a stunning cast of French stars (including Danielle Darrieux, Jean Gabin, and Simone Simon), Le plaisir pinpoints the cruel ironies and happy compromises of life with a charming and sophisticated breeziness.

Special Features

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer
• Introduction by filmmaker Todd Haynes
• English- and German-language versions of the opening narration
• From Script to Screen, a video essay featuring film scholar Jean-Pierre Berthomé discussing the evolution of Ophuls’s screenplay for Le plaisir
• Interviews with actor Daniel Gélin, assistant director Tony Aboyantz, and set decorator Robert Christidès
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A new essay by film critic Robin Wood

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The Earrings of Madame de . . .

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French master Max Ophuls's most cherished work, The Earrings of Madame de . . . is an emotionally profound cinematographically adventurous tale of false opulence and tragic romance. When the aristocratic woman known only as Madame de (the extraordinary Danielle Darrieux) sells her earrings, unbeknownst to her husband (Charles Boyer), in order to pay personal debts, she sets off a chain reaction, the financial and carnal consequences of which can only end in despair. Ophuls adapts Louise de Vilmorin's incisive fin de siècle novella with virtuosic camera work so eloquent and precise it’s been called the equal to that of Orson Welles.

Special Features

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer
• Audio commentary featuring film scholars Susan White and Gaylyn Studlar
• Introduction by filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood)
• Archival audio interview with director Max Ophuls
• Interviews with Ophuls collaborators Alain Jessua, Mar Frédérix, and Annette Wademant
• A visual analysis of The Earrings of Madame de . . . by film scholar Tag Gallagher
• Interview with novelist Louise de Vilmorin on Ophuls's adaptation of her story
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by Molly Haskell, an excerpt from costume designer Georges Annenkov's 1962 book, Max Ophuls, and the source novel, Madame de, by Louise de Vilmorin

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Satyajit's Son wrote:Forgive me if this has been mentioned elsewhere but just in case it hasn't:

Kim Hendrickson wrote:Apologies for the delay in response.
We will be releasing an Ophuls box in late 2007/early 2008. It will contain several films, including The Earring of Madame de... and Le Plaisir.
I hope that helps.
Thanks for your interest in Criterion.

Best regards,
Kim Hendrickson

=D>

wow.

Thank you. This absoutely made my day.

Sounds like a dupe of the second sight 06 box, but in r1. Hopefully they throw something previously unreleased like LEIBELEI in there.

I imagine Madame de... will be fixed. The problem, as I understand it, is that it's an NTSC>PAL conversion, so an Eclipse release should be the original NTSC.

Disappointing news for me, though. I bought everything else except Madame de..., so I shan't be getting this box-set, and it just seriously reduces the chances of a decent, single, release of Madame de... ever appearing.

I'm wondering if Letter From An Unknown Woman will be included on here. Wasn't a major studio (Paramount?) supposed to release this in R1 at one point?

moreysurf8 wrote:I'm wondering if Letter From An Unknown Woman will be included on here. Wasn't a major studio (Paramount?) supposed to release this in R1 at one point?

The rights are owned by Universal, with whom Criterion have a working relationship. I would not expect The Reckless Moment to show up in the set as the rights are with Sony in the US. I expect the box would contain the previously mentioned titles (Le Plaisir and Madame de...) and Letter as well as La Ronde (which they released on laserdisc) and possbily La Signora di Tutti. Lola Montes would be a lovely addition, but I do not expect it to happen.

Matt wrote:Lola Montes would be a lovely addition, but I do not expect it to happen.

Why not? The region 1 rights are owned by Wellspring, which by the way, their Lola Montes edition is one of the worst releases in DVD history. Did their rights elapse?

Gigi M. wrote:

Matt wrote:Lola Montes would be a lovely addition, but I do not expect it to happen.

Why not? The region 1 rights are owned by Wellspring, which by the way, their Lola Montes edition is one of the worst releases in DVD history. Did their rights elapse?

Marcel Ophuls is being a dick about the restoration. Go here and scroll down to the "Lola like you've never seen her! … and aren't allowed to!" part.

I'm praying for Lola Montès and a pristine version of Madame de...

Gigi M. wrote:The region 1 rights are owned by Wellspring, which by the way, their Lola Montes edition is one of the worst releases in DVD history.

You're right about that. I suffered through a viewing of that disc last night.

Since I recently shelled out for the R2 Ophuls DVDs, a Criterion Ophuls set will naturally follow. I only hope it includes a non-wretched version of LOLA MONTES, as well as LA RONDE.

So I suppose I should hold off purchasing La Ronde from this Kino sale.

Lola Montès was a Criterion Laserdisc if I'm not mistaken, so basically there shouldn't be any problems, except Marcel.

You should hold off on the Kino LA RONDE because it's not the Ophuls masterpiece, but rather the crappy Vadim remake.

=D>

Oops. Sorry, I saw Jane Fonda in a Kino catalogue without knowing anything, read the one line description "Jane Fonda as a sex kitten", then saw that Anna Karina was in it and I was sold without any knowledge of the film.

Matt wrote:

moreysurf8 wrote:I'm wondering if Letter From An Unknown Woman will be included on here. Wasn't a major studio (Paramount?) supposed to release this in R1 at one point?

The rights are owned by Universal, with whom Criterion have a working relationship.

Not quite - it's with Lionsgate now, but Criterion are mates with them too.

davidhare wrote:As for Lola Montez, I don't know if the German restoration was even completed beyond the workprint stage. Cetainly until Marcel stops doing his Beatrice Welles routine we're not going to see it in a hurry.

It has been completed, and Drößler and crew would love to show it to the world. Were it not for the bitch that is Marcel.

Would not some of Ophuls's earlier films make a great Eclipse set?

David, it's completed and I saw it at the NFT a few years back. This needs to see DVD, damn the overrated History Channel content maker...

Man, Sarris' list of best films just reeks of "grandad". I saw the new print of "Madame de..." and found the film to be stuffy, airless and unoriginal, like much pre-New Wave French cinema. And I'm not sure why people go gaga over those bumpy, pretentiously portentous tracking shots. They might have been cool in the 50s, but less so now. Pleasant and pretty enough, I guess.

Despite it's total, rampant fucking loveliness, Sarris' statement that LOLA is the greatest film ever made is pretty embarassing.

No it definitely was LOLA.

Heres a quote (grabbed at random from lola-montes/review/104511 TV GUIDE

Andrew Sarris in 1963 dubbed this film the greatest ever made, and although he's noted for his quirky opinions, he's no fool. A masterpiece, LOLA MONTES is certainly director Max Ophuls' greatest achievement. In flashback, we take a fascinating look at the life of the passionate yet oddly passive title character (Carol, more perfect in the part than she could possibly have fathomed). Introduced by a New Orleans circus master (Ustinov), the aging Lola answers (or has answered...

or save yourself the boring read:



I know Kino has the vhs of the German version of Lieb, but this is from 12 yrs ago, so god knows what the home vid situation of this masterpiece is sitting at now.

As to LOLA, wonderful use of camera, fantastic sarcasm and a mise-en scene that wavers between manic overindulgence to fantastic lushness and depth. What a surface the film enjoys-- it's a film and mise en scene spoiled rotten! Yet moments like turning her social climb into a trapeze cimbing act is just sublime.. and it's bolts like that, great sardonic bolts like that that keep this confused film from sinking into lush pillowy brattishness. Is it melodrama? Is it "avant garde French Hollywood"?!? Is it the film that forces you to go back thru the canon with a suspicious eye cautiously investigatin g that the man relied far too much on floating camera drifts?

It is a disembodied film with problems but I think it gets btter upon re-viewing. Very easy to get locked out by it upon first viewing owing to the astounding lack of an entrance to the melodrama during the first 15 or so minutes.

It took some digging, but I did find the article where Sarris declares Madame De the "greatest film of all time":

New York Observer: The Greatest Film of All Time: Ophüls' Madame de … Is Coming Back to Town

Relevant quote:

When people have asked me to name the greatest film of all time—in my humble opinion, of course—my instant answer has been unvarying for the past 30 years or so: Max Ophüls' Madame de … (1953).

So he's changed his mind sometime between 1963-1977, from one Ophuls film to another. So you're both right.

Via_Chicago wrote:It took some digging, but I did find the article where Sarris declares Madame De the "greatest film of all time"

You could have just looked on the previous page of this thread.