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| Lucienne Bogaert, María Casares, Paul Bernard, Blanchette Brunoy |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Hélène (María
Casares): You don’t seem to understand where a woman’s
scorn can lead.
Eight strangers find themselves waking up in a strange cube-shaped room with no recollection of how they came to be there.
 The
work of Robert Bresson, the French director whose films would define
the austere aesthetic of cinematic minimalism, has lagged behind
as far as representation on DVD is concerned. Celebrated masterpieces
like Pickpocket and Diary of a Country Priest figure
highly on many a film lover's most wanted list for some time now.
It is therefore worth celebrating that The Criterion Collection
has made a start at bringing this hugely influential filmmaker's
work to DVD, even if this first release is a very early work, and
not very representative of the director's style, which has been
afforded its own adjective.
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne is a far more classical, melodramatic film than the later works in which the director would find his own voice. The story of romantic revenge has many echoes from Les Liaisons Dangéreuses as we follow an embittered socialite's duplicitous efforts to ruin her former lover's life and career by making him fall in love with and marry a former prostitute. The tragedy is played out with more emphasis on individual dramatic performances, all of which are very strong, than one might expect from Bresson. But compared with the other French melodramas of this period, Bresson already shows remarkable restraint as a director that serves as an early indication of his ultimate direction. Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne may not quite measure up to the full height of later Bressonian masterworks, but it will satisfy the director's many admirers while awaiting the rest of his films' appearance on DVD. |
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Available only as a Region 1 release
from The Criterion Collection.
The fullscreen image is framed
at its original aspect ratio of approx. 1.33:1. The available source
print has been cleaned up somewhat by The Criterion collection's
MTI digital restoration system, but the picture definitely still
shows its age. The surviving footage varies inquality from poor
to reasonable, with some parts showing severe greain as well as
blurriness, major scratches and debris.
The original mono soundtrack is rendered in Dolby Digital 1.0 and
sounds acceptably free of major hiss or distortion, but has only
very limmited dynamics.
The only supplement on the disc
is a stills gallery containing containing a handful of photos
taken for publicity purposes, some of which derive from deleted
scenes that have presumably been lost by now. The booklet
holds two brief but excellent essays that offer at least a modicum
of background information. The
static menu screens are handsomely and unfussily designed in the
manner to which we have grown accustomed from The Criterion Collection.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed:
May 21, 2003
Click
here for IMDB info on Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne.
Click here
to return to the front page.
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