Lionsgate: Jean Renoir Collection

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Cinesimilitude · #26 Post by **Cinesimilitude** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 10:57 pm

I love the artwork, can't wait to see the Bardot and Godard sets, I just hope that neither of them overlap with criterion or HVE. Also, with the price, I am more excited about these boxsets than I am Eclipse.

Kinsayder · #27 Post by **Kinsayder** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 11:07 pm

The artwork is a direct copy of the French 12-DVD Renoir jumbo funbox. If Lionsgate had their pick of anything from that set, I wish they'd included Madame Bovary, which is the one title that Studio Canal never released separately.

#28 Post by **Jeff** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 12:55 am

justeleblanc wrote:If they release all of their director's boxes in that clapboard shape, it's going to mess with OCD DVD collectors.

Well, they're not doing all of them that way. Remember that Hitchcock's box features a tasteful reproduction of his newly-dead countenance.

GringoTex · #29 Post by **GringoTex** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 2:47 am

Kinsayder wrote:French 12-DVD Renoir jumbo funbox.

Do those have English subs?

HerrSchreck · #30 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 3:02 am

Here's hoping the Lionsgate is a decent enough release. I sure didn't expect an R1, subbed release of this stuff so inreality it'd really need to suck for me to not grab it. The usual silents suspects (Kino, Milestone, etc, though an MoC NANA wouldve been nice; and Nick's answer reinforces some points over on the other thread about global DVD debuts) probably wont be touching this. Yet so few co's have the skills to pull off good images while NOT preconverting from PAL-NTSC, a strange cut rate miracle which Kino seems to be getting better and better at (see the silent catalog of the last couple of yrs-- the Stillers & Lubitsch's look amazing).

Even Kino SCARLET STREET, or HVe JAQUES FEYDER level interlaced would be fine.

Tommaso · #31 Post by **Tommaso** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 6:20 am

This sounds like fabulous news to me! Have been contemplating quite a while to get me at least the silent films in this set in the French editions ("Nana" is mindblowing, really). Does anyone know from past experience with Lionsgate whether subs will be removable, or whether they do replace the French titles by English ones?

Knappen · #32 Post by **Knappen** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 6:20 am

Not a syllable. You have to go and learn French hon.

Not completely true: La grande illusion and La bÃªte humaine have english subs. But those had been released separately long before the L'essentiel de Jean Renoir box set.

Narshty · #33 Post by **Narshty** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 8:00 am

This is fantastic news, but is it reasonable to deduce that Criterion already have several of the other StudioCanal titles missing from this set (Déjeuner sur l'herbe, Le Chienne, Madame Bovary, etc.)?

justeleblanc · #34 Post by **justeleblanc** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 11:25 am

Narshty wrote:This is fantastic news, but is it reasonable to deduce that Criterion already have several of the other StudioCanal titles missing from this set (Déjeuner sur l'herbe, Le Chienne, Madame Bovary, etc.)?

Or, Lionsgate will release Bovary in another box set.

Gigi M. · #35 Post by **Gigi M.** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 3:14 pm

Amazon's Pre-order

justeleblanc · #36 Post by **justeleblanc** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 3:47 pm

You gotta love that price!

Cinesimilitude · #37 Post by **Cinesimilitude** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 4:50 pm

Amazon.ca

#38 Post by **domino harvey** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 5:05 pm

what an insane deal

Cinesimilitude · #39 Post by **Cinesimilitude** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 5:26 pm

and to think we get a Bardot and a Godard box around that price too! and who kows what.

Greathinker · #40 Post by **Greathinker** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 7:37 pm

I haven't seen any of those films, are they any good?

Cinesimilitude · #41 Post by **Cinesimilitude** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:02 pm

The Film Nana is worth the cost of the boxset alone. Even if the transfers are terrible the box will be worth more than what we're paying for it.

Jean-Luc Garbo · #42 Post by **Jean-Luc Garbo** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 9:19 pm

I just pre-ordered mine now. It's only $21, but I've got my fingers crossed. SncDthMnky, can you say more about why Nana is so good? I've never seen it.

Tommaso · #43 Post by **Tommaso** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 7:06 am

"Nana" was his first 'long' silent film (150 mins. or so), adapting a Zola novel on the late 19th century theatre and demimonde world. It's extremely stylish and even erotic (for the time) and somehow resembles the films collected by Criterion in the 'Stage & Spectacle' box, but it is far more original. Certainly one of the very great French silents.
The French Studio Canal prints of the films of that era are all said to look great (and I can confirm it for "Nana", having seen it on TV last year), so I guess Lionsgate will use the same materials and we have nothing to worry about except perhaps problems with PAL/NTSC-conversion.

ellipsis7 · #44 Post by **ellipsis7** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 7:32 am

Yes there is a lovely Arte/Studio Canal French DVD of the restoration of NANA and new music track which I have... This Lionsgate box set also includes 3 other shorter silents also beautifully restored and released by Studio Canal in France... And they also have a digital restoration of LA MARSEILLAISE, considerably improved on a recent theatrical archive print I viewed...

To buy these in the French editions (5 DVDs in all, without Eng subs) would cost about â‚¬100/$130 before shipping!... Only hope the picture quality is up to scratch - I'm picking the set up as I have all but CORDELIER & LE CAPORAL, and even then its a superb deal for those two alone!...

NANA marks the apogee and the beginning of the end of his personal and professional relationship with his first wife and star Catherine Hessling... Less an actress, than an unique performer, Renoir invested all of his talent at the time and a sizeable proportion of his inheritance (selling his father's paintings) in making this epic, which nevertheless did not not find the success they both hoped for... Recently in the Renoir-Renoir exhibition @ Cinematheque Francaise Paris, there was a very small almost child sized dress, a costume for Hessling as NANA...

The schism with her - they never worked together again (she was furious not be offered the female lead in LA CHIENNE) and separated soon after, releasing Renoir for the next phase of his career and development of his creativity, which also coincided with the advent of sound and the political awareness of the 1930's... It was many years before they were formally divorced, and Catherine Hessling was quite bittter about their relationship and her career which never recovered...

Formally as a piece of filmmaking it is very interesting - Noel Burch devotes a whole chapter in his "Theory of Film Practice" to 'Nana, or Two Kinds of Space', essentially an exploration of the decoupage of the piece, and the establishment of off screen and on screen space, use of exits and entries etc...

Jean-Luc Garbo · #45 Post by **Jean-Luc Garbo** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 1:25 pm

Tommaso and ellipsis - thanks! That's some great information right there. I didn't even know that Nana was silent let alone 150 minutes or an important French silent. What more can you say about Hessling's acting and Burch's exploration of the decoupage, ellipsis?

ellipsis7 · #46 Post by **ellipsis7** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 1:42 pm

Hessling overwhelms Zola's Nana with her very assertive presence and personality, brash, and upfront and often alluring attitude, so the success of the movie depended on how much audiences fell for her, were seduced themselves etc., and it doesn't quite work on that level, while also not quite engaging entirely on a narrative level because of the strength of her presence which so dominates every scene, and of course Renoir's intelligence in devising the drama while clearly being infatuated with his wife... She has a raw quality and almost untutored talent, but ultimately while being his first great love and star, she was not suited to the sublety of his developing directorial touch, and the sleight of hand he was in demonstrate in movies to come... That's why the tiny dress was so fascinating, for inside fitted a fireball of energy...

It is a pity CC could not port in the Arte edition, it has a Renoir intro, an interview with him, documentary, and an alternative ending alongside a full new orchestral score and an accompanying book containing the script....

Back on Burch soon...

carax09 · #47 Post by **carax09** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 3:19 pm

Renoir must have really needed a palette-cleanser after the whole Hessling experience, because directly afterward he shot (the 17 min.) Charleston Parade.

This from someone on IMDB:

The story: it's the year 2028. An explorer from Central Africa (Johnny Huggins, a jazz dancer of the 1920s, who appears here in minstrel makeup; he actually was black) arrives in a post-apocalyptic Paris in a flying sphere. He encounters a scantily-clad wild girl and her monkey friend. The girl dances the Charleston to try to seduce him. He thinks she's threatening him and he runs away. She chases after him, dancing ever more aggressively and seductively. The explorer begins to watch, hesitantly, but curiously. The girl draws a telephone on the wall, which turns into a real telephone, and she calls some kind of disembodied human head with wings. Some other winged disembodied heads appear. The girl hands the phone to the explorer, and one of the heads speaks to him--apparently letting him know that the girl's OK. Then the explorer and the girl dance the Charleston together. The girl leaves with the explorer in his flying sphere, her tearful monkey friend waving goodbye.

I think it sounds pretty wonderful!

ellipsis7 · #48 Post by **ellipsis7** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 7:11 pm

Sorry... The girl in CHARLESTON is in fact Hessling too, gyrating in a manic overdrive, and overtly sexual... I just checked the chronology, and indeed Hessling worked on with Renoir for this and LA PETITE MARCHANDE DES ALLUMETTES (where she is actually quite sweet) their relationship very much on the wane, and then broke finally over the LA CHIENNE issue... I had these placed before NANA, but I stand corrected...
Before NANA, she worked on CATHERINE, JR as production associate/producer/scriptwriter and LA FILLE D'EAU, JR as W/D... The story of a relationship... They broke up in the late 20's and only got divorced somewhere round the end of WWII..

carax09 · #49 Post by **carax09** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 7:53 pm

Oops. I guess that I should have checked the chronology before posting. In my mind's eye I really "saw" someone different in that role. Anyway, I'm glad Lionsgate have decided to include such a racey little trifle. Did you find it enjoyable, Ellipsis7?

ellipsis7 · #50 Post by **ellipsis7** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 8:02 pm

Yes it's a fizzy little fun anachronistic piece... you can feel director and actor try to shake off the burden of a the lengthy large scale period feature by following the flow of jazz fashion and futuristic imagining, all in vain I'm afraid....