Jean Renoir

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lubitsch
Joined: Fri Oct 07, 2005 4:20 pm

#26 Post by lubitsch » Sun Aug 06, 2006 9:40 am

davidhare wrote:As for the movie, you obviously need some French to read it, and IMO it's one of the weakest post-war Renoirs. I dont know - you can obviously broadly follow the narrative which seems overly "constructed" but it's a very minor Renoir for me.
Absolutely agree, from all Renoirs I've seen it's easily the worst. Dumb onesided satire, hectical and successless attempts at being funny, a completely reactionary picture of women. I certainly will never see it again.

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ellipsis7
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#27 Post by ellipsis7 » Sun Aug 06, 2006 10:04 am

...Oh and Studio Canal took over UK distributor Optimum a couple of months back, allowing them to port transfers directly across for Uk/Ireland release, just adding English subtitles and modified menus... So this may eventually make it...

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Steven H
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#28 Post by Steven H » Sun Aug 06, 2006 8:38 pm

I'm a fan of Picnic on the Grass, and just wanted to pipe up in the midst of the hatefest! Sure it's silly, but it knows it's silly and doesn't care. It has so many things to love. The film is a lark, that throws sexuality, right wing idiocy (the french sort, that is), and a lot of Renoir's early work into the air and let's it fall where it may. The derelect and mystic charisma of Boudu is played up for camp by the shamanish vagabond, set up against the stiff upper lip of modernity and false pretenses of the picnickers. It's a colorized Day in the Country, and a farcical Midsummer Night's Dream (during a windy day, that is) with some of the Rules of the Game comings and goings. The flimsy plot and superficially transparent characters really can't and won't erase my enjoyment of the lakeside swimming/lovemaking scene, or get rid of the memory of the fantastic shot of Etienne and Nenette on the motorscooter.

As unimportant as it may be regarded in the context of Renoir's films (or even just late films), I would love to see this one get out there with a nice print and worthwhile subtitles. I would hope more would get caught up in it's flight of fancy than scoff, however deserved it might be. As for le Testament du Docteur Cordelier, I'll thank Davidhare for sending me off to watch it again as soon as possible.

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Steven H
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#29 Post by Steven H » Sun Aug 06, 2006 11:42 pm

davidhare wrote:BTW I don't have the Studio Canal Testament, but given they are the best in the biz for B&W transfers it should be great.
I would love to see this restored, and I'm sure it would be especially worth reappraisal if given quality treatment. I haven't seen the Studio Canal either, but Peerpee has spoken highly of it. I'm planning a little order from France more sooner than later, and it would make sense to pick it up (as I don't see it being approached anytime soon in the english speaking world.)

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ellipsis7
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#30 Post by ellipsis7 » Mon Aug 07, 2006 5:18 am

Nice piece, Steven... I think Renoir post-war moved from the foibles and failures of the male ego and imagination (leading to wars etc. - see THE WOMAN ON THE BEACH) to a proto feminist position, which he identified in India (THE RIVER) and also harking back to his father's household and work, dominated by a female presence and sensibility in life and in paintings (LE CAROSSE D'OR, FRENCH CAN CAN, LE DEJEUNER SUR L'HERBE etc.)... While this is not a sophisticated, or particularly politically informed or contemporarily liberated attitude, its very simplicity (some could say naivity) represents in some way the essence of purity and pacifism, a distillation of his outlook at the end of his career...


Image

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Steven H
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#31 Post by Steven H » Wed Mar 07, 2007 8:17 pm

The Jean Renoir Collection April 24th.

Image

DISC 1 - Jean Renoir 2 Early Movies: LA FILLE DE L'EAU, NANA

DISC 2 - Jean Renoir Political period: LA MARSEILLAISE, + 2 short films: SUR UN AIR DE CHARLESTON, LA PETITE MARCHANDE D'ALLUMETTES

DISC 3 - 2 Later Movies: LE TESTAMENT DU DOCTEUR CORDELIER, LE CAPORAL EPINGLE

This certainly goes a long way towards completing Renoir's filmography on DVD (of what's available, at least.) If I hadn't seen this with my own eyes, I might have a hard time believing it.

edit: just found the appropriate thread. still, I suppose something should be noted in this one as well, what a great set!

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Rsdio
Joined: Mon May 29, 2006 11:42 am
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#32 Post by Rsdio » Thu Mar 08, 2007 6:34 am

There's also a 7 disc R2 Optimum set due for June, containing:

La Grande Illusion
Dejeuner Sur Herbe
La Caporal Epingle
La Marseillaise
Elena et Les Hommes
Le Testament Du Docteur Cordelier
La Bete Humaine

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ellipsis7
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#33 Post by ellipsis7 » Thu Mar 08, 2007 9:26 am

These should be good, being presumably direct port ins of the French Studio Canal transfers...

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sevenarts
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#34 Post by sevenarts » Thu Mar 08, 2007 9:40 am

ellipsis7 wrote:These should be good, being presumably direct port ins of the French Studio Canal transfers...
Well, yes, they will be ports of those. The only hope is that they're not improper PAL-NTSC transfers. This presumably wasn't really an issue with their Hitchcock box, so this one will really be the test of how good a job they'll be doing with the Canal catalog they acquired.

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ellipsis7
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#35 Post by ellipsis7 » Thu Mar 08, 2007 9:56 am

Yes, I'm thinking that the Optimum set, although twice as expensive, may actually look better in the end than the Lionsgate set, given that its provenance is more direct... Also it has DEJEUNER SUR L'HERBE...

Greathinker

#36 Post by Greathinker » Sat Jun 23, 2007 11:18 am

Is there any reason why Woman on the Beach isn't widely available? Does warner own it, is there any talk about an upcoming release? Having not seen it I'm reluctant to import.

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ellipsis7
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#37 Post by ellipsis7 » Sat Jun 23, 2007 11:25 am

it's an RKO picture - do Warners own their catalogue now?... I seem to remember something... Janet Bergstrom's fascinating paper ‘Oneiric Cinema: The Woman on the Beach'. Film History, 11(1), 1999, charts Renoir's work on the project, including his rewrites of the script reducing the importance of plot and opening out a closed narrative...

The R2 French Editions Montparnasse disc is far from perfect (looks like it's from a video source) but is essential for Renoir completists!...

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tryavna
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#38 Post by tryavna » Sat Jun 23, 2007 11:37 am

ellipsis7 wrote:it's an RKO picture - do Warners own their catalogue now?
Yes, Warners now owns both of Renoir's RKO pictures (Woman on the Beach and This Land Is Mine). Both films appear on TCM every so often in decent prints. Considering the cast in each film, I imagine it's only a matter of time before Warners releases them in R1.

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ellipsis7
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#39 Post by ellipsis7 » Sat Jun 23, 2007 12:39 pm

tryavna wrote:
ellipsis7 wrote:it's an RKO picture - do Warners own their catalogue now?
Yes, Warners now owns both of Renoir's RKO pictures (Woman on the Beach and This Land Is Mine). Both films appear on TCM every so often in decent prints. Considering the cast in each film, I imagine it's only a matter of time before Warners releases them in R1.
This Land is Mine is also released by Ed Montparnasse in France in their RKO series, while some people called Orbit Media release it on R2 UK DVD on July 2nd...

Dudley Nichols' excellent script is published in Ungar's RKO Classic Screenplays series, and can be picked through the usual used book channels...

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FilmFanSea
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#40 Post by FilmFanSea » Sat Jun 23, 2007 9:46 pm

I keep waiting for a DVD of the rarely screened La Nuit du carrefour (Night at the Crossroads/1932), which has been praised highly by both Godard and Jonathan Rosenbaum. I don't think it's been released in any region.

Likewise, La Chienne is not available on DVD with English subs (it was released in a French boxset by Studio Canal in 2003).

Finally, I await a stand alone release of Le Crime de Monsieur Lange in Region 1. It is included in the Warner UK boxset, but I don't need extra copies of La Grande illusion (from an incomplete print) and La Bête humaine.

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Tommaso
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#41 Post by Tommaso » Sun Jun 24, 2007 4:55 am

Talking of Renoir's American films: I haven't seen any of them except "The River". With which should I start? Is any of them available in a decent dvd edition (i.e. of similar quality to the Studio Canal/Lionsgate releases)? From what I have read, I'm particularly interested in "Diary of a Chambermaid", but that one seems to be only available on a Spanish disc. Does anyone own it and can say something about the transfer?

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ellipsis7
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#42 Post by ellipsis7 » Sun Jun 24, 2007 5:09 am

Diary of a Chambermaid in the Spanish edition is a pretty OK transfer of an unrestored print - thus some dirt and sparkle, but generally good...

BTW that Warner 3 disc box containing Le Crime De M. Lange is a couple of years OOP as rights reverted to Studio Canal some time ago, as they prepared for their purchase of Optimum and roll out of that strategy in UK/Ireland.

Studio Canal also released Renoir's Madame Bovary as part of their French boxset, so that one also awaits an Optimum release I presume....

La Nuit du Carrefour is superb and deserves an official release somewhere - I think Nick @ MoC has been pursuing it, and has been having problems identifying the rights holders...

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ellipsis7
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#43 Post by ellipsis7 » Sun Jun 24, 2007 7:36 am

A case for Inspector Maigret clearly...!

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tryavna
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#44 Post by tryavna » Sun Jun 24, 2007 11:11 am

Tommaso wrote:Talking of Renoir's American films: I haven't seen any of them except "The River". With which should I start?
Tommaso, after The River, my own personal favorite of Renoir's American productions is The Southerner, which due to its PD status is available on a cheap and rather lackluster R1 disc from VCI. It's really not the best way to experience this extremely warm and optimistic film, but it's the best option available at the moment as far as I know. If you've ever seen Tourneur's Stars In My Crown, The Southerner makes a wonderful companion-piece.

In my opinion, the other four American Renoir pictures experience a drop-off in quality, though are still worth catching. The overt propaganda in This Land Is Mine is unwelcome in a Renoir movie, his Diary of a Chambermaid was superseded by Bunuel's (though that may be a matter of opinion), and Woman on the Beach is a bit of a mess because of studio interference during post-production. (The first time I saw Woman on the Beach, I couldn't make heads or tails of it, though I enjoyed it much more my second time around.)

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Tommaso
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#45 Post by Tommaso » Sun Jun 24, 2007 12:01 pm

Thanks for the advice! The existence of the Bunuel version was precisely the reason why I got interested in Renoir's, to make a comparison between the two (and the few excerpts I've seen in one of the documentaries on the CC discs looked promising, anyway). It seems that the Spanish dvd is out of print, though. And looking at the screen caps at the Beaver "The Southerner" doesn't look good indeed. Ah, what a shame that nobody seems to care to put out these films on a broader basis - I thought the name Renoir alone should justify an attempt at a top-notch edition, even if they don't match his earlier work in France.
Well then, perhaps I will wait and see whether any of these will come in a second box from Optimum or from France (after all, the French did put out "Woman on the Beach" and "This land is mine", although it seems these are not the best discs either). But as has been stated in this thread before, more of the lesser known 30s Renoir would probably be much more important (I watched "Toni" the other day and was blown away...)

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ellipsis7
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#46 Post by ellipsis7 » Sun Jun 24, 2007 1:12 pm

20th Cent Fox have released Swamp Water at least in R2 UK/Ireland... Renoir's American movies are interesting, because here he is, an European auteur, working within the Hollywood studio machine, and in a language not his own, with some frustration, and also a filmmaker seeking new modes of expression when his previously held values seemed powerless...

The Southerner was his favourite American movie (I don't place The River as an American movie, it's a whole fascinating and wonderful kettle of fish in itself) but for me there's a progression to that point, and the intriguing and really interesting The Woman on the Beach...

The American period also brings a vast increase in recorded documentation, letters etc. relating to Renoir's work, contrasting with the relatively sparser amounts from the 1930s... This was due to the archiving work of Dido Renoir and the comprehensive studio files.... Thus there's there's some very interesting articles and chapters on Renoir's American films...

These include the key text 'Renoir Americain' by Maurice Scherer (Eric Rohmer) in the seminal January 1952 issue of Cahiers du Cinema devoted mainly to Renoir, and coinciding with the French release of The River.... As La Regle du Jeu was to the 1930s, The River was to Renoir's 1950's period, Andre Bazin later declared...

Renoir was placed at the pinnacle of the pantheon....

Greathinker

#47 Post by Greathinker » Wed Aug 15, 2007 11:44 pm

The Woman on the Beach is certainly an interesting film; I caught it today on TCM. Despite the cuts you can still see Renoir at work, and the whole picture has a strange precarious presence, like its on the verge of revealing itself but never does. The performances though were the standout, especially Charles Bickford-- what an image of him approaching the ship through the window. I'm completely surprised this hasn't made it out into R1 yet; I was expecting an incoherent mess from some responses but it's more than watchable. I only found fault with the overzealous musical cues.

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tryavna
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#48 Post by tryavna » Thu Aug 16, 2007 11:31 am

Greathinker wrote:I was expecting an incoherent mess from some responses but it's more than watchable.
I hope it wasn't I who left you with that impression from my previous post in this thread. I actually think that the first half of the film is marvelous, but it isn't quite as compelling from the mid-point onwards -- basically from Bickford's "accident" to the end. Everything seems much too forced and, especially, rushed towards the end. But I do love how Renoir wraps up the two intersecting love triangles and doesn't leave anyone "out in the cold," so to speak. That inclusiveness is pure Renoir, not pure Hollywood.

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Tommaso
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#49 Post by Tommaso » Wed Nov 28, 2007 9:18 am

I've been lucky enough to see Renoir's "Chambermaid" in the cinema yesterday, and was very pleasantly surprised. Certainly not his greatest film, but as usually marvellously photographed and well directed. It might suffer from the inevitable comparison to the somewhat similar "Rules of the game", of course, with which it cannot compete, but Renoir still manages to retain some of his usual over-the-top joking (the scene where the captain throws stones into the hothouse roof is priceless). A wonderful performance by Goddard as well, and a nice sardonic one by Lederer as Joseph. Only the actor who plays Celestine's lover (can't recall the name at the moment) is somewhat stiff, perhaps intentionally so.

I wish Eclipse would come up with a nice box set of Renoir's American films, as it seems there are no news on a new release of this film or "The Southerner". How bad are the Montparnasse dvds of "This land is mine" and "Woman on the Beach" actually? Are the French subs removable at least? I feel very tempted to check them out at the moment....

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ellipsis7
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#50 Post by ellipsis7 » Wed Nov 28, 2007 9:33 am

The Montparnasse DVDs of THIS LAND IS MINE and THE WOMAN ON THE BEACH have removable french subs, and are probably from a good video source and a little cropped, but are really good enough to be going on with for the present... Certainly I am pleased with my copies...

THIS LAND IS MINE is also available on R2 UK DVD from Blackhorse Entertainment, although I know nothing of the quality here...

DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID is on a decent Spanish DVD (Exitos de Siempre label) with options of the English or a dubbed Spanish soundtrack, and a variety of subtitles (English Spanish/Castellan etc)...[

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