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Muriel, ou le Temps d'un retour



If cinema has its equivalents to the master modernists of music, painting, or literature, then one of the tradition’s foremost practitioners is undoubtedly Alain Resnais — and Muriel, ou le Temps d’un retour (Muriel, or: The Time of a Return) represents one of his earliest, and greatest, triumphs. In Resnais’ two preceding features (the legendary Hiroshima mon amour and Last Year in Marienbad), the master filmmaker pioneered new ways of representing inner reality and emotion; but with Muriel, he merged the vicissitudes of his characters’ personal pasts, and married them to the traumas of the political present — namely, the French war in Algeria.

Resnais’ film is the story of the middle-aged Hélène (portrayed by Delphine Seyrig, of Last Year in Marienbad, Truffaut’s Stolen Kisses, and Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman), an antique dealer located in the provinicial port-town of Boulogne-sur-Mer, who resides amid her wares inside the same flat that serves as her business showroom. An old lover of Hélène’s comes to visit — and soon takes up a more permanent residence within her life, despite the presence of a suspicious, tortured, and sexualised stepson who is haunted by a woman, a name, from his own past in Algiers: “Muriel”.

Scripted by Jean Cayrol, the co-writer of Resnais’ landmark early short film Night and Fog, Muriel is one of the great “family films”, and stands like a cinema landmark as one of the most complex and rewarding films of the 1960s. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Alain Resnais’ great work for the first time on DVD in the UK.

Special Features:

- New telecine of the film supervised by Alain Resnais. Anamorphic.
- New English subtitles in an exclusive translation.
- The original French theatrical trailer for the film, newly subtitled.
- 44-page booklet containing a new essay by writer B. Kite; another new essay about the film by writer Anna Thorngate; a short piece on the film by Henri Langlois; and a critical “scrapbook” on the film containing excerpts by François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, and more.

Is this is a surprise? Anticipated or not I'm really happy to see this getting the MoC treatment. I love this film!

arsonfilms wrote:Features include:

- New anamorphic transfer of the film in its original 1.66:1 aspect ratio
- English subtitles in a new and exclusive translation
- The original trailer for the film, newly subtitled
- 36-page booklet containing a new essay about the film from writer B. Kite; another new essay about the film from writer Anna Thorngate; writing by Henri Langlois; and excerpts from the famous 1963 Cahiers du cinema roundtable discussion about the film

Picking up on the ' features include' - any chance that some of the extras from the arte version might find their way over, particularly the shorts?

• L'entretien avec Francois Thomas, redacteur en chef la revue Positif
• L'interview d'Alain Resnais par Michel Polac
• La bande-annonce originale
• Le livret de 24 pages avec des photos, textes et documents indits
• Les courts-metrages d'Alain Resnais
• Paul Gauguin, d'apres un texte de Gaston Diehl
• Van Gogh, d'apres un texte de Gaston Diehl et Robert Hessens
• Le chant du Styrne, d'apres un texte de Raymond Queneau

Afraid the short films would have cost more to licence than the feature itself. So we had to do the right thing in this instance, and not licence them. LE CHANT DU STYRENE was only available in a non-anamorphic 'Scope form, so that wouldn't have been acceptable for us anyway. A missed, but unavoidable, opportunity.

david hare wrote:Nick have you been able to iron out the image pinch problem?

Yes David. The squeezed, unnatural aspect ratio of the US and French discs has been 'corrected'.

Mr Resnais approved the restoration of the material, and we have not been able to discover why the master is like this. Regardless, human beings will look like human beings on the MoC disc.

Dag, and here I was thinking this could be an MOC I could skip since I already had the R1. Darn you and your label's quality! [-(

Yeah. Nick and the gang may as well just set up a direct withdrawal from my bank account.

Along with (I'm sure) everyone else, I'd have loved to see this with more supplements, but it's one of those rare discs that I'll be picking up simply because I trust that the people putting it together are giving me everything that they can.

I can't wait for this one. I'm really glad I put off buying the region 1.

arsonfilms wrote:Yeah. Nick and the gang may as well just set up a direct withdrawal from my bank account.

Off-topic, but have you thought about offering an annual subscription, Nick? Might be hard to gauge the cost, with release schedules being subject to change, but I'm sure you'd get many takers.

Matt wrote:

arsonfilms wrote:Yeah. Nick and the gang may as well just set up a direct withdrawal from my bank account.

Off-topic, but have you thought about offering an annual subscription, Nick? Might be hard to gauge the cost, with release schedules being subject to change, but I'm sure you'd get many takers.

If the website were to be updated and could handle membership a subscription could work like a membership scheme - a monthly standing order could build credit in an account and the customer can select what they want, view their balance and so on. In return the customer could receive pre release information, a catalogue sent to them every now and again and so on. If a customer wishes to manage their money better on their Eureka DVDs, be privvy to pre-release information (as we are here) and make a little bit of a saving as well it's more guaranteed cash for Eureka and a happy customer. It's certainly something I would go for.

Sounds ace, but we haven't got the resources to efficiently manage something like that really. Best bet, at the moment -- and in this economic environment -- is to just keep doing what we're doing... putting all our effort into the DVD/Blu-ray production... and trying to pop out 2 gudduns a month...

We're looking closely at VOD, and we're stepping up the Blu-ray production...

Excellent news about the AR. Now all MOC needs to do is invent a machine that will allow me to go back and un-watch the Wellspring DVD.

(Insert Je t'aime, je t'aime joke here.)

Specs updated.

dadaistnun wrote:Beaver

I never realized how many closeups of faces this film has (like Danton, apparently).

I love the menu screen:

Looking forward to this, I guess I'm one of the rare people who doesn't care about features and only hopes for a nicely produced DVD with a nice booklet and very good picture quality.

I rarely watch special features unless its shorts or something from the same director or a director I like.

Received this today--great booklet, great presentation. I especially appreciated the essay by B. Kite, which helps to make sense of a difficult film. I expect that I'll be watching this several more times. =D>

Originally held off on picking this up (having previously acquired the so-so Koch Lorber version), now awaiting the heralded dual format edition, which I will definitely go for - just wondering when it will emerge?...

April at the earliest.

Is this still coming on Blu?

knives wrote:

peerpee wrote:April at the earliest.

I saw that, but it's not in the Q2 announcement.
In another thread I seem to remember Nick saying he'd have more info on it.

Bürgermeister wrote:Is this still coming on Blu?

on Feb 29, 2012 [url=http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=379690#p379690]peerpee[/url] wrote:We're pushing for MURIEL this year, and will know more in a few days. If the lab hasn't gone under.

Any update on the blu?