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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Sexuality > Teens > Italy > Family > Bull > Mexico > Romance > Sexism > French > Capitalist Elite > New > Appassionata (1974/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)/The Brave One (1956/RKO/VCI Blu-ray)/In The French Style (1963/Sony/Columbia/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)/Rich Kids (1979/United Art

Appassionata (1974/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)/The Brave One (1956/RKO/VCI Blu-ray)/In The French Style (1963/Sony/Columbia/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)/Rich Kids (1979/United Artists/MGM/Olive Blu-ray)



Picture: B-/B/B/B Sound: C+/B-/B-/C+ Extras: C/C/B-/D Films: C+



PLEASE NOTE: The Appassionata and In The French Style Blu-rays are now only available from our friends at Twilight Time, are limited to only 3,000 copies and can be ordered while supplies last from the links below.



Here are four dramas that deal with children, young adults, adults and those who don't quite become adults for all kinds of reasons, even if they are all limited and flawed works....



Gian Luigi Calderone's Appassionata (1974) is a still-controversial film about a dentist (Gabriele Ferzetti from On Her Majesty's Secret Service and L'Avventura) who is seeing his daughter's female friend (Ornella Muti) for dental work, when she starts to sexually seduce him. He resists at first, but they give in, beginning the tale of his slow obsession he should not have. Though it is not quite Lolita, we see his desire for her grow into unusual behavior as his already sick wife continues to deteriorate. Ultimately, his daughter could be affected, so what will he do (or not do) next?


This could have easily drifted into outright exploitation and it is graphic, i.e. Hollywood would never make this film and certainly like this, but it is slow moving and a bit uneven. However, it is still a more mature work than expected down to its ending and at 96 minutes, could have been a bit shorter. I had not seen it in eons, so its is nice to see it back in print, albeit limited. Definitely worth a look if you can handle the mature content and have some patience.



Irving Rapper's The Brave One (1956) is one of the rare 'respectable' films produced by B-movie legends The King Brothers (Gorgo), but even more than the fact that this is one of the few widescreen scope films (in color yet) that RKO ever released before they folded, or that it was a hit or that it was meant to be a family film for what the market was at that time, the film was written by Dalton Trumbo when he was still blacklisted... and won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award that year. VCI issued this on DVD in the early years of that format and now, they've come up with a new Blu-ray to replace it nicely.


The tale (with more whining and illicit appeal to pity than you might think) of a young man named Leo (Michael Ray) saves a baby bull in a terrible storm it barely survives, taking care of him, but spending the whole film trying to keep him when all the adults want to take him away. This culminates into a giant bullfighting event. Can Leo save him?


By today's standards, this is actually too violent for its intended age group, but is still historically important and all serious film fans should see it at least once. This new Blu-ray is the way to go.



Robert Parrish's In The French Style (1963) is a strangely failed film about a young woman (Jean Seberg) who wants to be a serious painter, but things are not picking up as she'd like. She starts to fall for one of the guys (Philippe Forquet) she's painting (the one portrait we see makes him look like he's ready to play Speed Racer!) and they start to hanging out. However, the mixed results are followed by negative encounters with other men, including her own father and the 105 minutes lands up covering several years of her life.


The film was actually a hit in its time since Seberg was still an item thanks to her breakthrough work in Godard's Breathless (1959), but the film has a mix of flat, failed and surreal moments that you either follow its plastic, unrealistic ways or be stunned at the bad choices that keep coming up. This one's worth a look to see how odd it gets.


A sequel was made with a different cast at a different studio called The Happy Ending, which Twilight Time also recently issued. You can read more about it at this link...


http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/14026/From+The+Terrace+(1960/Fox)/The+Happy+Endin



Robert M. Young's Rich Kids (1979) was co-produced by Robert Altman at the peak of his artistic credibility and powers, getting films made you cold barely get made then and could very likely not get made now. Altman's studio was the original Lion's Gate and his name meant something mature, ironic and challenging would be made. This one is about some young people (the film opens with them) in the park, but from money. Jeremy Levy and Trini Alvarado are young adults becoming interested in each other, but it is unfortunately in the midst of adults and parents who are divorced, dysfunctional, toxic or ready to disco.


The film says that these adults of the counterculture era might not be ready to be adults (hat would explain the Presidential election the following year) and though we get more than a few superfluous scenes that could have been cut or condensed, yet other scenes work nicely, are funny and are just honest in a pleasant way that is an Altman production at its best. Shot on location in New York, John Lithgow, David Selby, Paul Dooley, Roberta Maxwell, Kathryn Walker, Irene Worth, Olympia Dukakis and Terry Kiser play the adults. Despite its issues, definitely worth a look.




These Blu-rays all look really good, though the 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image on Appassionata has small flaws and detail issues throughout, but was originally issued in dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor 35mm prints and you can often see how good that color must have been. The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on Brave also has some issues with slight color inconsistency, but fares a bit better. Shot in CinemaScope, it too was issued in 35mm dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor prints and you can see how good that color looks in many shots throughout. A few shots look a little waxy, but otherwise, this far outperforms VCI's old DVD of the film.


The 1080p 1.66 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image transfer on French can show the age of the materials used a little bit, but there are also some great shots throughout that will impress, including location shooting.


The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Kids can show the age of the materials used from the thick grain and minor print flaws, but when the color is at its best, this is a presentation with its share of high quality visual surprises.


As for sound, all the films here are theatrical mono releases except Brave, which in its best prints offered 4-track magnetic sound with traveling dialogue and sound effects, presented here in a lossless PCM 5.1 upgrade that shows off the music score, but shows the agedness of the rest of the original audio. That quality split shows up all the time in such films into the 1980s, but the disparity is enough that the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 1.0 Mono lossless mix on French is able to compete sonically overall, but the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 1.0 Mono lossless mix on Appassionata and DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix on Kids are weaker and older, even a little compressed. In both cases, we expect it is from how those films were recorded.


There are sadly no extras on Kids, but extras on Appassionata and French include more nicely illustrated booklets on each film including informative text and another excellent set of ever-underrated essay by the great film scholar Julie Kirgo and Isolated Music Score tracks in both cases. French also adds a great feature length audio commentary track by Kirgo and fellow film scholars Lem Dobbs & Nick Redman, plus an Original Theatrical Trailer. Brave has a trailer, as well as the music of Victor Young isolated as an extra, but NOT as a track you can watch with the film.



To order the Appassionata and In The French Style limited edition Blu-rays, buy them and other great exclusives while supplies last at these links:


www.screenarchives.com


and


http://www.twilighttimemovies.com/



- Nicholas Sheffo


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