Fiction
DVD
Availability
Details
PUBLISHED
©2011
EDITION
DESCRIPTION
2 videodiscs (106 min.) : sound, black and white ; 4 3/4 in. + 1 booklet (40 pages : illustrations ; 19 cm.)
ISBN/ISSN
LANGUAGE
SERIES
Criterion collection #216
NOTES
Originally released as a motion picture in 1939
A scathing critique of corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners, in which a weekend at a marquis's countryside chateau lays bare some ugly truths about a group of haute bourgeois acquaintances. The film was a victim of tumultuous history: it was subjected to cuts after premiere audiences rejected it in 1939, and the original negative was destroyed during World War II. It wasn't reconstructed until 1959. That version, which has stunned viewers for decades, is presented here
Special features disc 1: Introduction by director Jean Renoir; audio commentary written by film scholar Alexander Sesonske and read by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich; comparison of the film's two endings; selected-scene analysis by Renoir historian Chris Faulkner
Special features disc 2: Excerpts from "Jean Renoir, le patron : la règle et l'exception" (1966), a French television program by filmmaker Jacques Rivette; part one of Jean Renoir, a two-part 1993 BBC documentary by film critic David Thompson; video essay about the film's production, release, and 1959 reconstruction; interview with film critic Olivier Curchod; interview from a 1965 episode of the French television series "Les écrans de la ville" in which Jean Gaborit and Jacques Durand discuss their reconstruction and rerelease of the film; interviews with set designer Max Douy, Renoir's son, Alain, and actress Mila Parèly
Booklet featuring an essay by Sesonske, writings by Jean Renoir, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bertrand Tavernier, and François Truffaut, and tributes to the film by J. Hoberman, Kent Jones,Paul Schrader, Wim Wenders, Robert Altman, and others
Director of photography, Jean Bachelet ; editors, Marguerite Renoir, Marthe Huguet ; music, Roger Désormière
Marcel Dalio, Nora Grégor, Roland Toutain, Mila Parély, Paulette Dubost, Julien Carette, Gaston Modot, Jean Renoir, Anne Mayen
DVD; region 1; NTSC; aspect ratio 1.33:1 presentation; Dolby digital mono
French dialogue with optional English subtitles