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DVD & Blu-ray

Godard The Essential Selection

One of the pillars of French , director Jean-Luc Godard helped transform conventions of European and world cinema.

Along with former critics and movie obsessives at Cahiers du Cinema, such as Francois Truffaut and Claude Chabrol, after a series of shorts, he made the leap into directing features.

With techniques such as shooting on location, jump cutting, and breaking the fourth wall, he presented characters with a bold freshness that had an immediate impact on French and global cinema.

The five films presented in this set span a period of great change in the world from 1960 to 1965 (looser sexual attitudes, youthful rebellion, nuclear tensions), which was the most exciting and memorable of Godard’s career. These films are so fun to watch, almost as fun was playing video games with Elo Boost services.


So much has been written about his landmark debut Breathless (1960) – the french translation is À bout de souffle meaning ‘out of breath’ – that it is hard to find something new to say.

The story of two lovers on the run (Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg) is a familiar one – e.g. Bonnie and Clyde (1967) or Badlands (1973) – but Godard brings a delightfully spontaneity to it here.

The influence on a later generation of filmmakers was the way it defiantly broke conservative ideas of a ‘well made film’, thus sending a message that it was OK to shatter those notions in the way that Citizen Kane (1941) had done before it.

For newcomers, look out for the loose narrative structure, use of locations, radical editing and perhaps have a listen to my 2010 interview with Pierre Rissient, who was an assistant director on the film.

Extras:

• Introduction by Colin McCabe (5 min)
• Godard, Made in USA (51 min)
• Room 12. Hotel de suede (79 min)
• Jean-Luc according to Luc (8 min)
• Jefferson Hack Interview (8 min)
• Tempo Godard Episode (17 min)
• Jean Seberg Featurette (12 min)
• Trailer (3 min)
• Posters


His next feature, A Woman Is a Woman (1961) – or Une femme est une femme – was a very different story, but told with equal verve and panache. If US gangster films inspired his debut, then this was a vibrant homage to the US musical.

The story involves a love triangle between a dancer (Anna Karina), her lover (Jean-Claude Brialy) and his best friend Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo).

Shot in glorious colour and widescreen by his regular DP Raoul Coutard, it embodies the playful side of Godard, with frequent bursts of music, stares at the audience and even a reference to Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player (1960).

Yet there is a slight melancholy here, perhaps reflected by his private personal worries over Karina, which foreshadows some of his later work.

Extras:

• Anna Karina interview
• Introduction by Colin McCabe (4 min)
• Photo Gallery
• Posters


The third film in this collection is Contempt (1963), where he managed to double-down on his earlier innovations and embrace a post-modern narrative of a film within a film.

Godard’s outer story is of a screenwriter (Paul Javal) married to a glamorous actress (Brigitte Bardot) and his troubles working on a film version of Homer’s The Odyssey, with a famed director (Fritz Lang) and a Hollywood producer (Jack Palance).

The screenwriter’s personal and professional meltdown on-screen also seemed to reveal Godard’s life off of it, with his wife Karina (not in the film) and U.S. producer Joseph E. Levine.

Although frequently gorgeous to look at, with some iconic images, there is something of a sour quality to it, which suggests that the French auteur was gradually losing faith in the American cinema he adored as younger man.

Extras:

• Introduction with Colin McCabe (6 min)
• Once Upon A Time There Was… Contempt (53 min)
• Contempt…tenderly (32 min)
• The dinosaurs and the baby (61 min)
• Conversation with Fritz Lang (15 min)
• Trailer (3 min)


In 1965 Godard made two films which both represent his further disillusionment with mainstream cinema and the wider world, which reeling from the JFK assassination, the Vietnam War and the threat of nuclear annihilation.

The dystopian sci-fi setting of Alphaville (1965) may have seemed an unlikely one for Godard, but it was perfect. He broke new ground, but also returned to his love of US crime dramas. Think of Blade Runner (1982) shot in black and white on a lower budget.

A perfectly cast Eddie Constantine plays a detective trying to find a missing agent and to destroy the central computer that is controlling the population of Alphaville (which includes the perennial Anna Karina) under a totalitarian system.

It is possibly his most daring film thematically, with small details indicating a distrust of right and left ideologies of the Cold War and how the tools built by man can lead to self-destruction. Note the clever art direction and Raoul Coutard’s stunning black and white photography.

Extras:

• Anna Karina interview
• Introduction by Colin McCabe (5 min)
• Posters
• Trailer


The fifth and final film of this box set is Pierrot le Fou (1965), which offers a similarly bleak view of the world, except this is a virtual remake of Breathless in glorious colour with Belmondo and Karina playing a couple on the run.

Given his status in world cinema by this time, one could sense his desire to break free from the shackles of the French new wave. When Belmondo’s character leaves a stifling dinner party to go on the run with his nanny, we may suspect where this tale is heading.

Except that we don’t really – whereas the lovers in Breathless went out of Paris and back again, here the couple exit Paris for a more nihilistic journey down South.

Paradoxically, this is Godard’s most visually ravishing film filled with dazzling colours that counterpoint the unpredictable behaviour of its characters.

Like in Contempt, Godard seems attracted to the dazzle of Hollywood filmmaking and simultaneously repulsed by the nation that gave birth to it: a report from Vietnam is heard on the car radio, Belmondo openly mocks US sailors on the beach.

The visual beauty of Southern France is cleverly juxtaposed with the inner emotional torment of the leads, as the offscreen hell of colonial wars in South-East Asia rumble on. (Remember that France was the original colonial power in Vietnam before the US arrived).

All this points to a gradual shift in his career as he embraced more explicitly political filmmaking with Weekend (1967) and Wind from the East (1969). Perhaps his work was always tinged with politics, yet Pierret le Fou seem to mark the end of his early phase.

It was just the first chapter of a remarkable career which still hasn’t ended, with his last feature Goodbye to Language (2014) premiering at Cannes two years ago. However despite his prolific career, he never quite recaptured the magic of these early films.

The new Studiocanal Blu-ray box set presents these classic films in a neat bundle, whilst the BFI Southbank in London is hosting a Godard season until March 16th and Le Mepris will have an extended run in selected UK cinemas.

> Buy the Godard Essential Selection on Blu-ray from Amazon UK
> Find out more about Jean-Luc Godard at Wikipedia

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DVD & Blu-ray

The Best DVD and Blu-ray Releases of 2010

Here are my picks of the DVD and Blu-ray released in 2010, which include Dr. Strangelove, Pierrot Le Fou, The White Ribbon, Dr. Zhivago, The Last Emperor, A Prophet, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Psycho, The Third Man, Se7en, The Exorcist, Carlos and Inception.

Just click on the film title to read the original reviews and the links on the side to buy them.

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FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRIL

MAY

JUNE

JULY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

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NOTABLE IMPORTS

N.B. As I’m based in the UK, all of these DVDs are UK titles (apart from the imports) but if you live in a different region of the world check out Play.com or your local Amazon site and they should have an equivalent version of the film.

> Browse more DVD Releases at Amazon UK and Play
> Browse all the cinema releases of 2010
> The Best DVD and Blu-ray releases of 2009

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blu-ray DVD & Blu-ray

Blu-ray: Pierrot le fou

One of the key films of the French new wave, Pierrot le fou (1965) is Jean-Luc Godard‘s landmark drama about two lovers who go on the run.

Based on Lionel White‘s novel Obsession, it is the story of Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a young intellectual married to a rich Italian, who is utterly disillusioned with his luxurious bourgeois existence. When his new babysitter for his young daughter turns out to be his former lover, Marianne (Anna Karina) he sees a chance to escape.

When he and Marianne leave for the south of France, they confront criminals, petrol attendants, and American tourists as they discover more about themselves and become a kind of existential Bonnie & Clyde.

Godard here returned to the territory of A bout de souffle (1959), but this is arguably a more complex and challenging work which features musical numbers, as well as allusions to painting, literature and cinema itself.

The striking use of colour is just one of the many visual treats, as is the breaking of the fourth wall with characters looking into the camera and some innovative editing.

The Blu-ray comes with the following extras:

  • Introduction by Colin McCabe, Godard expert
  • Godard, Love and Poetry: Documentary on Godard (53 mins)
  • Documentary film analysis by Jean-Bernard Pouy (106 mins)
  • Trailer
  • German TV Advertisement
  • Posters (5)
  • BD Live
  • Booklet: Analysis of the movie by Roland-Francois Lack, Senior Lecturer in French and Film at University College London.

The technical specs are:

  • Cert: 15
  • Region B
  • Feature Running time: 105 mins approx
  • Blu-ray Feature Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
  • Colour PAL
  • Feature Audio: DTS Master Audio Dual Mono
  • English language
  • Video: 24p 1080
  • Disc Type: BD50
  • Cat no: OPTBD0826
  • RRP: ÂŁ24.99

Pierrot le fou is out on Blu-ray now from Optimum Home Entertainment as part of The Studio Canal Collection

> Buy Pierrot le fou on Blu-ray from Amazon UK
>Pierrot le fou at the IMDb

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blu-ray DVD & Blu-ray

UK DVD & Blu-ray Releases: Monday 15th February 2010

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DVD & BLU-RAY PICKS

Up (Disney): Pixar’s latest animated film is the tale of a retired balloon salesman named Carl (Ed Asner) who, at age 78, decides to use his balloons to finally go on a trip down to South America along with an unexpected young stowaway named Russell (Jordan Nagai). [Read the full review here]

The Go-Between (Optimum): A Blu-ray only release for this 1970 adaptation of L.P Hartley’s novel, directed by Joseph Losey and adapted by Harold Pinter. Set over a Norfolk summer in 1900, it sees a young boy become a pawn in the illicit relationship between an aristocratic woman (Julie Christie) and a local farmer (Alan Bates). [Read the full review here]

Pierrot Le Fou (Optimum): A Blu-ray only release for one of the iconic films of the French New Wave, which is Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 film about a couple – Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Marianne (Anna Karina) – who get caught up in a mysterious gun-running scheme involving Marianne’s brother (Dirk Sanders). [Read the full review here]

The Ladykillers (Optimum): A Blu-ray only release for this classic 1955 Ealing comedy directed by Alexander Mackendrick. It stars Alec Guinness stars as criminal mastermind who leads a group of thieves about to commit the perfect crime and rents a room from sweet and harmless old lady (Katie Davies) in her crooked London house. [Read the full review here]

The Leopard (BFI): Luchino Visconti’s classic 1963 adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s best-selling novel, which stars Burt Lancaster as the head of an ageing  Sicilian family coming to terms with the emerging unified Italy in the 1800s. Finally released on Blu-ray – a fitting format for one of the most sumptuous epics ever made. This is the complete and uncut version released by the BFI in collaboration with Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Inc.

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ALSO OUT

Cirque Du Freak – The Vampire’s Assistant (Universal) [Buy it on DVD | Buy it on Blu-ray]
Life on Mars: The Complete Series (Fox) [Buy it on DVD]
Ong Bak: The Beginning (Sony) [Buy it on DVD | Buy it on Blu-ray]
Pandorum (Icon) [Buy it on DVD | Buy it on Blu-ray]

> The Best DVD and Blu-ray releases of 2009
> UK cinema releases for Friday 12th February including The Wolfman, Ponyo and A Single Man