Jean Renoir Collector’s Edition (1925 – 1962 incl. Nana, La Marseillaise,
Jekyll/Hyde (as Dr. Cordelier), Elusive
Corporal/Lionsgate DVDs)/The Rules
Of The Game (1939/Criterion Blu-ray)/Swamp
Water (1941/Fox/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)
Picture:
C+/B/B- Sound: C/B-/B- Extras: C+/B+/C+ Films: B/B+/C+
PLEASE
NOTE: The Swamp Water
Blu-ray is limited to 3,000 copies and is available exclusively at the Screen
Archives website which can be reached at the link at the end of this review.
Jean
Renoir remains one of the most important filmmakers of all time, a
groundbreaking master of the art and one whose films all have something to
offer. Some are classics and others
interesting and different. These films
are now starting to turn up on Blu-ray and here, we cover a good number of his
films in both formats.
Lionsgate
issued the 3-DVD Jean Renoir Collector’s
Edition (1925 - 1962) a few years ago and shaped like a clapboard and made
of paperboard, it contained nine films, including shorts subjects, his first
solo directed feature and his final film.
He goes back to the silent era and yet, also become a groundbreaker in
the short film, sound film and the idea of making television more cinematic. Whirlpool
Of Fate (1925) is the first of many film to feature Catherine Hessling,
here going from tragedy to a possible happy ending in what we would consider an
early melodrama.
Free of
his co-director, the film is very effective for a film of its time, has a
smoothness and flow silent films had more of than you might think and was a big
critical and commercial success. As a
result, he spent a ton of his own money on the sexually charged and
bold-for-its-time Nana the following
year. Still a bit surprising by today’s
standards, it was a gamble that backfired, did not do well at all and Renoir
overestimated what his audience wanted and could take. Charleston
Parade is a short made cheaply, but is very creative and has a black male
astronaut of sorts (in a hot air balloon, the black actor wears blackface for
some weird, unexplained reason) and is a fantasy work from 1927 when that was
very uncommon. The Little Match Girl (1928) has a young lady trying to stay warm
in the cold by lighting a match, then lapsing into a fantasy world more
elaborate than the previous short. Jean
Tedesco co-directed, but Miss Hessling was once again the star. Based on a Hans Christian Anderson work, it
is uncanny in anticipating fantasy features like the 1939 MGM Wizard Of Oz, several Shirley Temple
films among others and even animated fantasy works of the time.
Renoir
thoroughly researched the events of The French Revolution and La Marseillaise (1938) turned out to be
a groundbreaking, rich historic film with a great cast, clothes by no less than
Coco Chanel and a film that deserves serious rediscovery. Why this is not better known is because too
many historic films get marginalized as costume epics (even Kubrick’s 1975
classic Barry Lyndon suffers this,
taking place at the same time), but this was made during his early peak and it
shows.
The Doctor’s Horrible Experiment (aka Le Testament Du Docteur Cordelier) was made for French TV in 1959,
but intended for international theatrical distribution as Renoir does his
unique take on Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, but it was not too successful despite
his intent to prove the French film industry could compete worldwide by making
lower budget quality works that worked and would turn profits quickly. It may not be the most shocking version of the
book on film, but it is one of the more clever versions versus the many bad
ones that have been made since, so it is definitely worth a look. Even his final film, the somewhat comical The Elusive Corporal (1962) which
revisits The Grand Illusion in odd
ways is worth seeing, though the attempts for the two prisoners trying to
escape is like a forerunner of future TV sitcom Hogan’s Heroes in tone. All
in all, a nice treasury.
The only
extra is the very informative documentary Jean Renoir: An Auteur To Remember
has a bunch of interviews with friends of, co-workers of and scholars on Renoir
(including Martin Scorsese) talks about his career and the films in this set
specifically. Hope this comes out on
Blu-ray like the rest of our selections here.
The Rules Of The Game (1939) is Renoir’s huge critical
and commercially successful classic about class division, ignorance and its
ultimately subtly deadly consequences set in one mansion with the strata of the
world represented by those with power and those who at first seem to have none
until the story starts to unfold. Though
I am a bigger fan of Grand Illusion,
this remains a remarkable film and considering how WWII was underway, a very
daring work.
Though
things start on a bright, almost Enlightenist note (a successful airplane
flight), that is instantly soured and foreshadows all that is to come. This new Criterion Blu-ray easily outdoes all
the previous versions I have seen of the film, including their own and this is
a great way to be introduced to the film.
I know I would have enjoyed it more if I had seen this print in the
first place. The cast (mostly made of
fine actors I have rarely seen elsewhere) are totally convincing and the points
the film makes are as formidable as ever, including that people never learn
from the fatal practices and mistakes of the past. Now is the time to see it again.
Extras
include Criterion’s usual high quality, illustrated booklet on the film
including informative text and in this case, tributes and five essays
(including text by Francois Truffaut, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alexander Sesonske
and two archival pieces by Renoir himself.
The Blu-ray adds a feature length audio commentary by Sesonske read by
Peter Bogdanovich, Comparison of the Film’s Two Endings, Chris Faulkner looking
at clips of the film with comments, excerpts from a 1966 French TV program with
Jacques Rivette on Renoir, the first part of a 1993 BBC show on Renoir by David
Thompson, video essay on the film’s original 1939 release & 1959
reconstruction, film critic Olivier Curchod on the film, Jean Gaborit &
Jacques Durand discuss their 1959 reconstruction of the film in a 1965 French
TV interview and another final piece features interviews with set designer Max
Douy, Renoir’s son Alain (already noted), and actress Mila Parély.
Things
got so bad in Europe that Renoir left and found projects in Hollywood, starting at Fox with Swamp Water (1941), an attempt to do
his kind of film in the classical studio system. The result is an interesting mix of set-bound
Hollywood filmmaking and Renoir’s approach
that may not gel, but has some odd moments that make watching this less than a
typical viewing of just any drama. The
film looks like a mid-budget drama, but Renoir is doing his take on the
Hollywood Western (even if this is not explicitly such a film) and trying to
make points and comments on human behavior (see the camerawork) beyond the
script.
Dana
Andrews is a hunter who finds a fugitive man (Walter Brennan) and his daughter
(Anne Baxter, who he falls for) in the middle of the swamp (what we now call
rainforest, but “rainforest water” would not be a title with the same impact) and
as part of it all, the older man is innocent of the crime he is accused of, but
cannot return because of how things were set up. Renoir (perhaps reflecting conditions in Europe with the Nazis) tells a timely tale of
discrimination and how the victims lose life, happiness and time.
Yet it
also has the language of Westerns (the daughter of the fugitive is brunette
(read innocent school marm) versus the seductive blonde who wants the hunter
and does not like it when she cannot have him.
You have the town bent on bandwagon-style revenge easily instigated and
you have the actual results play out like what became known as a revenge western
when the personal stories come to a head.
Yes, some
of this looks faker, faker than anything Renoir did before, but some of his
dark touch and deeper side of character study (restricted by the studio ways)
still can show, but all in all this does not cohere as one would like or hope. It also allows us to study both if we
wish. Walter Huston, Anne Baxter,
Virginia Gilmore, John Carradine, Ward Bond and Eugene Pallette also star.
Extras
include an illustrated booklet with an informative essay by Julie Kirgo &
tech information and an isolated music track by David Buttolph including
comments before some music selections begin.
The 1.33
X 1 image on just all the Renoir films on DVD, save the anamorphically enhanced
1.78 X 1 image on Corporal, can (all
in black and white) look good, but are on the soft side at times and the
transfers already a bit old. I would
like to see some more work done of the earlier films before Lionsgate and Le
Studio Canal+ do Blu-ray editions.
Otherwise, these are the best looking video versions until then.
The 1080p
1.33 X 1 digital black and white High Definition image transfers on both
Blu-rays can show the age of the materials used, but Game has had more work done on it and despite being a
reconstruction (the Allies accidentally bombed the original camera negative
into oblivion during WWII) is the best looking presentation here from a 355mm
fine grain copy off of the negative of the 1959 reconstruction and it has never
looked better. Water comes from the Fox vaults and though the film was made only a
few years later, it can look older and has more damage than expected, which
means Fox needs to consider an expensive upgrade down the line, but there are
some fine shots on this limited edition Blu-ray version and is also easily the
best this has looked in decades.
Longtime
Renoir cameraman Jean Bachelet was official Director of Photography on Game, but Jean-Paul Alphen, Jacques
Lemare and Alain Renoir also contributed to the shoot of what was the first
film of Renoir’s new production company.
Lucien Ballard (uncredited) and J. Peverell Marley (1953’s House Of Wax, 1939’s Hound of The Baskervilles with Basil
Rathbone, reviewed on Blu-ray elsewhere on this site) shared those duties on Water, so Renoir could make films with
more than one cinematographer and make them cohere to one look. Not easy.
The lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 sound on the Lionsgate DVD set can be harsh, bright and
sometimes shrill, even the stereo instrumentals on the silent films (which I am
not fond of to begin with) have sonic issues.
The PCM 1.0 Mono on Game
comes from a 35mm magnetic soundmaster and has been restored as much as
possible with really good results, especially considering the near-loss of the
film. The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 1.0
Mono lossless mix on Water is as
good with the sound having been taken care of as much as possible in the Fox
vault, though it is not perfect. The
isolated music soundtrack is DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless sound.
As noted
above, Swamp Water can be ordered
while supplies last at:
www.screenarchives.com
- Nicholas Sheffo
