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Blu-ray and DVD Review Round-Up: Films by Jean Renoir, Věra Chytilová, Eric Rohmer & more!

The world of cinema owes an outstanding debt to the artistic brilliance of Jean Renoir, Věra Chytilová, and Eric Rohmer. Their visionary contributions to the industry have left an indelible mark, inspiring generations of filmmakers and movie lovers alike.

The French film director and son of the legendary painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jean Renoir, is celebrated for his groundbreaking contributions to the Golden Age of French cinema in the 1930s.

His films, such as “La Grande Illusion” and “The Rules of the Game,” showcase a masterful blend of social commentary and human drama.

Věra Chytilová, a pioneering Czech filmmaker, rose to prominence in the 1960s as a leading figure of the Czechoslovak New Wave.

Her avant-garde and rebellious approach to filmmaking is exemplified in the iconic film “Daisies,” which challenged traditional narrative structures and societal norms.

Eric Rohmer, a key figure in the French New Wave, distinguished himself with a more intellectual and philosophical approach to storytelling.

His films, including the series of moral tales such as “My Night at Maud’s” and “Claire’s Knee,” are characterized by their intricate dialogue and exploration of human relationships.

Renoir, Chytilová, and Rohmer have left an enduring legacy, influencing generations of filmmakers and enriching the cinematic landscape with their distinct contributions.

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DVD Review Round-Up: The Southerner Kino Lorber

In The Southerner (1945), a film from Jean Renoir’s Hollywood period, the intertwining of promise and peril forms a central theme.

Adapted from George Sessions Perry’s novel Hold Autumn in Your Hand, with uncredited dialogue assistance from William Faulkner, the story follows Sam Tucker (Zachary Scott) accompanied by his wife Nona (Betty Field), granny (Beulah Bondi), and two children.

Despite the fertile land’s potential, Sam faces the harsh reality of a dilapidated farmhouse and a caved-in well.

The Film’s literary roots are evident in its episodic narrative, blending tragedy and comedy with characters like an unsympathetic neighbor and a giant catfish in a nearby lake.

The story’s emotional weight is conveyed through sensitive performances by Scott and Field.

Renoir visually captures the struggle, portraying the juxtaposition of excitement and fear as the family settles into the farmhouse.

The Southerner navigates a nuanced space between critiquing and embracing the American Dream, offering an empathetic yet unsentimental portrayal of rural life.

The Southerner
The Southerner

Kino rescues The Southerner from public domain status with a 1080p, 1.33:1 transfer from 35mm elements preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Despite imperfections like dropped frames and gashes, the transfer is visually appealing, displaying fine detail and clarity, particularly in close-ups.

The 2.0 lossless audio carries a persistent low-level hiss but maintains clear and audible dialogue.

Bonus material includes two short films: Renoir and Garson Kanin’s wartime propaganda piece A Salute to France (1944), featuring Burgess Meredith, and Pare Lorentz’s The River (1938), an environmental portrait that influenced The Southerner’s visual style.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Kino Lorber’s The Southerner Blu-ray rates:
The Film (out of ****): ***1/2
Film Elements Sourced: **
Video Transfer: ***
Audio: **
New Extra Features: **1/2
Extra Features Overall: **1/2

Two films by Věra Chytilová: Something Different and A Bagful of Fleas Second Run DVD

In the latest release from Second Run, two early works by Věra Chytilová, a master of the Czech New Wave renowned for Daisies (1966), are presented together.

The short Film A Bagful of Fleas (Pytel blech, 1962) showcases Chytilová’s anarchic style in its nascent yet confident form, offering a vérité-inflected portrayal of young girls working and residing in a textile factory dormitory.

Rebelling against the expectations imposed by male foremen and female supervisors, the girls engage in rule-breaking activities.

Such as sneaking out to meet boys and smoking in the dorm, although their behavior remains generally harmless.

Chytilová employs a formal gambit, focusing on a new girl, Eva, and presenting much of the Film from her perspective, creating a tangible directness.

Despite its plotless and playful nature, the Film reveals Chytilová’s quick discovery of her artistic voice through its freewheeling style and jagged editing.

Chytilová’s feature debut, Something Different (O něčem jiném, 1963), explicitly combines fictional and documentary styles by interweaving two stories.

A fictional portrait of a dissatisfied housewife (Věra Uzelacová) and a glimpse into the training process of Olympic gold-medal-winning gymnast Eva Bosáková.

Both segments focus on the physical aspects of the women’s lives, whether it’s Věra performing household chores or Eva excelling in gymnastics.

Although there’s no explicit link between the two stories, Chytilová’s inventive and surprising editing creates rhythms of complementary physical activity as it cuts between them.

The result is dual but aligned portraits of denied female agency and fulfillment. Věra, neglected and exhausted, embarks on an affair, yet there’s little indication of lasting satisfaction.

Meanwhile, Eva achieves professional success but at the cost of subjecting herself to a demanding regimen, pressured by her husband and trainers.

While the message may not be convincing, the formal approach remains thrilling—a propulsive blend of the true and the imagined.

Two films by Věra Chytilová Something Different and A Bagful of Fleas
Two films by Věra Chytilová Something Different and A Bagful of Fleas

The high-definition digital transfer of Something Different is detailed but marred by scratches and splotches.

Conversely, A Bagful of Fleas, sourced from a new 2K restoration, looks fantastic—clean, sharp, and film-like.

The mono soundtracks effectively handle the dialogue and jazz scatting in Something Different.

The sole extra is a booklet containing an extensive essay on the films and Chytilová’s career by film programmer Peter Hames.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Second Run’s Something Different/A Bagful of Fleas DVD rates:
The Films (out of ****): ***
Film Elements Sourced: ***
Video Transfer: ***1/2
Audio: ***
New Extra Features: *
Extra Features Overall: *

Pauline at the Beach Kino Lorber

Summer is dissipating in Eric Rohmer’s Pauline at the Beach (1983) as the lovelorn looks to soak up the last of the sun on Brittany’s beaches.

As one might expect, Pauline is one of Rohmer’s typically witty and incisive pictures of the foibles of modern romance.

Everyone adopts a carefree attitude — it’s the Beach, after all! — but Rohmer teases out their gnawing pits of insecurity.

The exception is Pauline (Amanda Langlet), a 15-year-old on vacation with older cousin Marion (Arielle Dombasle).

Recently separated from her husband, Marion draws attention from all over the Beach.

Including onetime lover Pierre (Pascal Greggory), who would be whining about the friend zone if this movie were made today, and the middle-aged Henri (Féodor Atkine), whose sophisticated manner may or may not be a façade.

Marion condescends to Pauline about falling in love, but Pauline is wise enough to stay disentangled from the sexual intrigue that roils Marion’s associations with Henri and Pierre.

Instead, Pauline opts for a relationship with Sylvain (Simon de La Brosse), which she values for its forthrightness.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t last, as even he gets caught up in the carousel of deception.

Pauline at the Beach
Pauline at the Beach

Rohmer’s conception of Pauline sidesteps tired ideas about her losing her innocence. It positions her as a uniquely wise voice and a woman aware of her sexual agency despite her lack of experience.

Langlet’s phenomenally nuanced performance — hesitant but resolute — affirms it.

Rightly revered for his conversational, penetrating dialogue, Rohmer also demonstrates his considerable visual chops here, aided by Néstor Almendros’s gorgeous, primary-color heavy cinematography, which looks outstanding on Kino’s Blu-ray release.

Presented in 1080p with a 1.66:1 aspect ratio, the transfer is vibrant, detailed, and film-like, with stable grain levels throughout.

The elements aren’t in perfect shape, evidenced by some persistent speckling. Still, Kino’s disc is an excellent option for those who don’t want to take the plunge on the massive Potemkine box set of Rohmer’s complete filmography.

It also features a 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio track that’s clean and precise — perfect for the dialogue-heavy Film.

Extras include an excerpt from a 1996 episode of Cinema de Notre Temps in which Rohmer discusses the making of the film, a trailer, and a booklet with an essay by critic Michelle Orange.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Kino’s Pauline at the Beach Blu-ray rates:
The Film (out of ****): ***1/2
Film Elements Sourced: ***
Video Transfer: ***1/2
Audio: ***
New Extra Features: *1/2
Extra Features Overall: *1/2

Bitter Rice The Criterion Collection

Neorealism is the apparent backbone of Giuseppe De Santis’s Bitter Rice, which sets its story among the laboring class in the rice fields of Northern Italy.

But this Film boldly flaunts its genre fluidity, moving from labor-focused naturalism to lurid melodrama, sprinkled with stylistic flourishes one might expect in film noir or a musical.

Silvana (Silvana Mangano, in a star-making role) is on her way to work as a planter in the rice fields, a strictly female-dominated job.

The couple has just stolen an expensive necklace. Still, hot pursuit from the authorities forces them to split up, with Walter disappearing and Francesca attempting to blend in with the planters.

Silvana alternately suspects and welcomes Francesca, her motives not entirely clear, even as she helps convince the bosses that Francesca and other non-permitted workers should get a spot in the fields.

While De Santis’s naturalistic portrayal of the communal nature of the laborers’ lives is textbook neorealism, the tangled relationships between Walter, Silvana, Francesca, and soldier Marco (Raf Vallone) build to a pulpy, hothouse frenzy.

Mangano’s alluring performance is introduced by the first of several scenes where she dances to her portable phonograph surrounded by onlookers, daring anyone not to be attracted to her.

She rebuffs Marco but finds herself drawn to Walter when he arrives on the scene, scheming to steal all the rice the workers have collected over the previous weeks.

The ultimate confrontation between the four central characters is blunt and tasteless: a pulpy crime finale plopped down amid a pro-labor drama and a portrait of a character haunted by regret.

Here, De Santis makes incongruity one of his Film’s greatest strengths.

Bitter Rice
Bitter Rice

Criterion’s Bitter Rice Blu-ray offers a solid if unspectacular, transfer sourced from the 35mm original camera negative.

The 1080p, 1.33:1 image tends to the softer side of things, with a few scenes appearing downright blurry.

There’s some black crush in darker scenes, but grayscale separation is primarily good. Otherwise, fine detail is decent, and images are sharp and clean when the source allows it.

The uncompressed mono audio is quite crisp and clean.

This is one of Criterion’s increasingly rare lower-price-point titles, so even though there are only a couple of extras, it’s a fairly substantial package by that standard.

Screenwriter Carlo Lizzanni’s 2008 documentary on De Santis is nearly an hour long. It presents an excellent overview of the director’s career, while a brief archival interview with Lizzanni details his involvement with Bitter Rice.

A trailer and an insert with an essay by critic Pasquale Iannone are also included.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Criterion’s Bitter Rice Blu-ray rates:
The Film (out of ****): ***1/2
Film Elements Sourced: **1/2
Video Transfer: ***
Audio: ***1/2
New Extra Features: **
Extra Features Overall: **

Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas Kino Lorber

Whether you approach them as artifacts of a developing art form, prototypes of suspense classics, or self-contained, gleefully entertaining crime yarns, Louis Feuillade’s five Fantômas (1913-1914) films are more than worthwhile.

Extremely prolific, Feuillade was also the master of the espionage serial in the early silent film era, following up Fantômas with Les Vampires and Judex.

Based on the novellas by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, Feuillade’s films chronicle the exploits of the titular assassin (René Navarre).

In all but one of the five feature-length segments, Feuillade introduces him the same way.

An ordinary enough medium shot of Navarre that takes on menacing undertones as the image dissolves, showcasing the variety of disguises he’ll don in that episode.

That sudden, unexplainable menace is part of what makes the Fantômas films so consistently engaging.

For the most part, these are not formally adventurous films, the camera sitting back observing in master-shot mode for minutes on end, action developing slowly or not at all.

But things tend to take an abrupt turn to the surreal, whether it’s the revelation that crimes have been committed by a man wearing gloves made of skin or the macabre discovery of a corpse after a wall begins bleeding.

Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas
Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas

These visual surprises are opposed by narratives that are sturdily, resolutely familiar, as each near capture by Juve and Fandor is thwarted by one last (ludicrous, improbably entertaining) trick up Fantômas’s sleeve.

The first four films, in which Fantômas frames an actor for his crimes, orchestrates a train heist, poses as a dead man, and pretends to be an American detective, among numerous other schemes.

Suddenly, there is editing within scenes, cutting on the action and a stunt-heavy sequence in a bell tower that’s more dynamic than anything that’s come before.

There’s an inherent interest in this pulpy material, but Feuillade’s evolving style makes Fantômas so fascinating.

Kino’s two-disc set presents the five films in 1080p, 1.33:1 transfers that must be believed.

Based on 4K restorations by Gaumont and Le Centre National du Cinema, each transfer is stunningly detailed, sharp, and remarkably free of damage.

Grain is rendered beautifully, and images are consistently film-like throughout.

I don’t think I’ve seen a more impressive home video transfer of a film more than 100 years old. Audio is, unfortunately, a lossy 2.0 track, but there aren’t any apparent issues.

Extras are ported over from Kino’s 2010 DVD release and include commentary tracks on the first two films from David Kalat, a short doc on Feuillade’s career, an image gallery, and two Feuillade shorts, The Nativity (1910) and The Dwarf (1912).

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Kino Lorber’s Fantômas Blu-ray rates:
The Film (out of ****): **1/2
Film Elements Sourced: ***1/2
Video Transfer: ****
Audio: **1/2
New Extra Features: N/A
Extra Features Overall: ***

Victoria Adopt Films

The one-take Film has become somewhat of a formal cliché, whether it’s an imitation of the technique seen in Birdman (2014) or a film that contains no edits.

This exercise often draws more attention to its difficulty than enhancing the actual content or form of the Film.

The most recent example, but likely not the last, is Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria (2015), possibly the most impressive single-shot Film in terms of difficulty.

Cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen’s camera navigates various Berlin neighborhoods, capturing numerous location changes in a logistical feat.

While the Film is commendable for its technical achievement, the lack of cutting diminishes its sense of urgency, making it feel like 60 percent transitional scenes of characters moving from place to place.

Despite a lively performance by Laia Costa as Victoria, the Film suffers from an uninteresting premise and characters.

Victoria, a young Spanish woman, becomes involved with a group of Berliners after a night out at a club, leading to an improbable decision to act as their getaway driver during a bank robbery.

Victoria
Victoria

The Film’s early scenes have a shaggy appeal, but the action setpieces are chaotic without moments of clarity.

The Blu-ray from Adopt Films provides a decently detailed 1080p, 2.40:1 image, limited by the mostly low-light shooting environments.

The lossy 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack is punchy in club scenes but muddled during dialogue exchanges.

Unfortunately, the barebones Blu-ray disc lacks information on the production background of this single-take Film.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Adopt Films’ Victoria Blu-ray rates:
The Film (out of ****): *1/2
Film Elements Sourced: **
Video Transfer: **1/2
Audio: **
New Extra Features: N/A
Extra Features Overall: N/A

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Ashish Dahal
Ashish Dahal
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