Le plaisir
Moderator: yoloswegmaster
- Ribs
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Le plaisir
The French writer Guy de Maupassant has inspired many great filmmakers. Among those to adapt his short stories and novels were Jean-Luc Godard, Kenji Mizoguchi, Walerian Borowczyk, Harry Kümel, Luis Buñuel and Christian-Jacque. But it was arguably Max Ophuls, with his 1952 feature, Le Plaisir, who proved to be the most adept.
Le Plaisir takes three of de Maupassant s stories as its source: in Le Masque, a masked dandy conceals a secret; in La Maison Tellier, the girls of a small-town brothel are taken on an outing to attend the communion of the madam s niece; and in La Modèle, a painter falls in love with his model, but the course of love isn t as smooth as either expected.
To tell these tales, Ophuls assembled a remarkable cast of French talent, including Jean Gabin (Pépé le Moko, La Grande illusion), Pierre Brasseur (Eyes Without a Face, Spotlight on a Murderer), Danielle Darrieux (Madame de..., Les Demoiselles de Rochefort), Claude Dauphin (Casque d Or, Barbarella), Simone Simon (Cat People, La Ronde) and many more besides.
SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS
High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation, from materials supplied by Gaumont
Original French mono audio (uncompressed LPCM on the Blu-ray)
Optional English subtitles
A Journey Through Le Plaisir, a 54-minute documentary by Philippe Roger featuring interviews with cast and crew, and a visit of the film s locations fifty years on
Diary of a Film Shoot, an interview with Ophuls assistant director, Jean Valerie
An interview with Marcel Ophuls, the filmmaker son of Max
Le Plaisir Restored, Ronald Boullet and Andre Labbouz discuss the restoration process
Theatrical trailer
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jennifer Dionisio
FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Alexander Jacoby and Philippe Roger
- rapta
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Re: Le plaisir
Up for this. Just picked up BFI's Madame de... so the timing couldn't be better!
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Re: Le plaisir
Excellent! Fingers crossed they also picked up Sans lendemain from Gaumont, which they recently restored.
- What A Disgrace
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Re: Le plaisir
Does anybody know anything about Screenbound's release of La Ronde? So frustrating to know nothing about that release.
- tenia
- Ask Me About My Bassoon
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Re: Le plaisir
I've seen a few screencaps and it didn't seem particularly good. It seemed like a dated master, coarse like what some older Universal masters can look.What A Disgrace wrote:Does anybody know anything about Screenbound's release of La Ronde? So frustrating to know nothing about that release.
I also recall having read bad feedback about the soundtrack.
- TMDaines
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Re: Le plaisir
It has some missing frames too as I couldn't sync up the old Criterion commentary, but is an otherwise serviceable release for £6.
- jsteffe
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Re: Le plaisir
Arrow's Blu-ray of Le Plaisir should look very good, as does Gaumont's previously released Blu-ray.
This is what I wrote elsewhere about Screenbound's Blu-ray of La Ronde:
This is what I wrote elsewhere about Screenbound's Blu-ray of La Ronde:
Actually, I would revise my opinion downward because of the noise on the soundtrack.I'm not a fan of Screenbound's Blu-ray of Max Ophuls' La Ronde. It is an advance over the DVD editions in terms of resolution, but I don't think they transferred the best available elements--or there were some technical problems with the transfer process. There is persistent frame (or perforation?) noise on the soundtrack. Also I want to emphasize, as feihong pointed out, that the subtitles are pretty bad, even downright unprofessional. They really are too small to read comfortably, and the line breaks are sometimes careless. It's better to wait for a higher quality version either from Criterion or from France.
Mind you, it doesn't look bad. But it's a lost opportunity.
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- Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2011 11:12 am
Re: Le plaisir
Seems to be a company called Impex-Films, as the CNC funded a restoration back in Februarydavid hare wrote:For la Ronde the BD uses the short cut (94 minutes) print and is IMO quite reasonable video quality albeit lousy audio (agreed Jim) but the film requires some attentive restoration and should ideally have its missing footage (14 minutes of it) restored. Could someone enlighten us on who actually has rights for La Ronde now? I suspect it isn't Gaumont. Certainy Marcel has no "control" over the long print, as he has (dubiously IMO) over Lola Montes so he is no impediment to a reissue in the long cut.
- hearthesilence
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- Location: NYC
Re: Le plaisir
Ugh. Looks heavy on the de-graining.
- swo17
- Bloodthirsty Butcher
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Re: Le plaisir
Is it at least preferable to the Criterion DVD?david hare wrote:I think the Gaumont is fine until the Maison Tellier eisode starting with the big lunch sequence after the girl's First Communion. THe source looks like thrid gen dupe and is appalling quality. I can't believe Gaumont didn't have somes other better element for the sdquence to at least patch the thing up.
- tenia
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Re: Le plaisir
Remember that Madame de WAS redone. That's why in the end, the Gaumont french release is better (and the BFI even more).
As for Eclair's grading, I've been denouncing this for years now, but elevated black levels is a conscious (stupid) choice from them is what I've been told.
This is again the case with La passion de Jeanne d'Arc.
As for Eclair's grading, I've been denouncing this for years now, but elevated black levels is a conscious (stupid) choice from them is what I've been told.
This is again the case with La passion de Jeanne d'Arc.
- MichaelB
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Re: Le plaisir
Although at least in that case we have an alternative in the form of Eureka’s James White-supervised restoration of the original Danish version.tenia wrote:This is again the case with La passion de Jeanne d'Arc.
- tenia
- Ask Me About My Bassoon
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Re: Le plaisir
Having now been able to compare both directly, the new Gaumont restoration is way better in all other respects, so I doubt the slightly elevated black levels (RGB values on a screencap are 11) are enough for the balance to shift towards the Eureka restoration. I was especially bothered by the constant flicker on it, and the Gaumont totally stabilised it.MichaelB wrote:Although at least in that case we have an alternative in the form of Eureka’s James White-supervised restoration of the original Danish version.tenia wrote:This is again the case with La passion de Jeanne d'Arc.
And comparatively, despite the elevated black levels, the Gaumont still look much more pleasingly contrasted.
- NABOB OF NOWHERE
- Joined: Thu Sep 01, 2005 12:30 pm
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Re: Le plaisir
Seeing your caps I agree. The Daisy does it.
Re: Le plaisir
Back to Le plaisir, seeing those caps reminds me of what a miserable release the Criterion was. I held on to the Second Sight DVD and I don’t think I’ll bother to upgrade with either Blu-ray.
- tenia
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Re: Le plaisir
He didn't and gave the Gaumont disc 4.0 out of 5 on PQ.