Week-end Blu-ray - Jean-Luc Godard

(aka "Weekend" or "Le Week-end")

France 1967

This scathing late-sixties satire from Jean-Luc Godard is one of cinema’s great anarchic works. Determined to collect an inheritance from a dying relative, a bourgeois couple travel across the French countryside while civilization crashes and burns around them. Featuring a justly famous sequence in which the camera tracks along a seemingly endless traffic jam, and rich with historical and literary references, Weekend is a surreally funny and disturbing call for revolution, a depiction of society reverting to savagery, and— according to the credits—the end of cinema itself.

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Jean-Luc Godard’s "Week-end", released in 1967, is the last film the director made before France was seized by the student uprising and general strike of May 1968. Outrage at the effects brought about by accelerated modernization was peaking. The revolutionaries of the May Movement revolted against the myth that under their capitalist system, economic growth brings a betterment for the society as a whole. Instead, as seen through Week-end’s traffic jam, in a system based on competition where every man is for himself, people respond violently to maintain their differences and the consequences are negative for everybody.

Excerpt from Monika Wagenberg (from Brutal Optimism in a Primitive Civilization) located HERE

Posters

Theatrical Release: December 29, 1967

Reviews More Reviews DVD Reviews

Comparison:

Artificial Eye - Region 2 - PAL vs. New Yorker - Region 1 - NTSC vs. Criterion - Region 'A' - Blu-ray

Big thanks to Henrik Sylow for the Artificial Eye captures!

1) Artificial Eye - Region 2 - PAL - LEFT

2) New Yorker - Region 1 - NTSC - MIDDLE

3) Criterion - Region 'A' - Blu-ray - RIGHT

Box Cover
Distribution	Artificial Eye Region 2 - PAL	New Yorker Region 1 - NTSC	Criterion Collection - Spine #635 - Region 'A' - Blu-ray
Runtime	1:39:32 (4% PAL speedup)	1:39:39 (not converted)	1:44:09.284
Video	1.62:1 Original Aspect Ratio 16X9 enhanced Average Bitrate: 6.63 mb/s PAL 720x576 25.00 f/s	1.62:1 Original Aspect Ratio 16X9 enhanced Average Bitrate: 6.66 mb/s NTSC 720x480 29.97 f/s	1080P Dual-layered Blu-ray Disc Size: 46,936,985,686 bytes Feature: 30,529,032,192 bytes Video Bitrate: 39.08 Mbps Codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video
	NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.
Bitrate - PAL
Bitrate - NewYorker
Bitrate Blu-ray
Audio	2.0 Dolby Digital French	2.0 Dolby Digital French	LPCM Audio French 1152 kbps 1.0 / 48 kHz / 1152 kbps / 24-bit
Subtitles	English, None	English, None	English, None
Features	Release Information: Studio: Artificial Eye Aspect Ratio: Widescreen anamorphic - 1.62:1 Edition Details: • Interview with Raoul Coutard (18:56) • Mike Figgis on 'Weekend' (23:19) • Biographies on Godard, Coutard, Figgies and McCabe DVD Release Date: February 28, 2005 Keep Case Chapters 11	Release Information: Studio: New Yorker Video Aspect Ratio: Widescreen anamorphic - 1.62:1 Edition Details: • Audio Commentary by Critic David Sterritt • Interview with Raoul Coutard (18:56) • Mike Figgis on 'Weekend' (23:19) • Biographies on Godard, Coutard, Figgies and McCabe • Two page liner notes essay by Sterritt DVD Release Date: August 23rd, 2005 Keep Case Chapters 24	Release Information: Studio: Criterion Collection Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 1080P Dual-layered Blu-ray Disc Size: 46,936,985,686 bytes Feature: 30,529,032,192 bytes Video Bitrate: 39.08 Mbps Codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video Edition Details: • New video essay by writer and filmmaker Kent Jones (24:32) • Archival interviews with actors Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne (3:21), cinematographer Raoul Coutard (18:58), and assistant director Claude Miller (24:36) • On Location: Excerpt from a French television program on director Jean-Luc Godard, featuring on-set footage from Weekend shot by filmmaker Philippe Garrel (8:15) • Trailers - French (1967 - 2:52), US (1968 - 2:51) • PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic and novelist Gary Indiana, selections from Alain Bergala’s book Godard au travail: Les années 60, and an excerpt from a 1969 interview with Godard Blu-ray Release Date: November 13th, 2012 Transparent Blu-ray Case Chapters: 19

Comments

NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were ripped directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Criterion - Region 'A' - Blu-ray (October 2012): Criterion's new 1080P transfer takes huge strides over the past DVD with colors getting significantly bolder and a substantial amount of additional information is in the frame on the side edges. This is in the original 1.66:1 aspect ratio. Of the three the Blu-ray is the only edition in un-hindered theatrical running time with both DVDs exhibiting PAL speed-up. Contrast also improved and detail tightens. There is no real noise and the thick visuals are much more film-like than the SDs could provide.

Audio is in a linear PCM mono track. The score by Antoine Duhamel and pieces "Allo, tu m'entends" by Guy Béartand Mozart's "Piano Sonata No. 18 in D, K. 576: I. Allegro" benefit from the lossless transfer with a shade of depth. There are optional English subtitles on the region 'A'-locked Blu-ray disc.

Criterion offers a new (2012) video essay by writer and filmmaker Kent Jones. It is wonderfully insightful and runs just shy of 25-minutes. We also get archival interviews with actors Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne (3:21), cinematographer Raoul Coutard (18:58), and assistant director Claude Miller (24:36) and an 8:15 minute segment entitled 'On Location' which is an excerpt from a French television program on director Jean-Luc Godard, featuring on-set footage from Weekend shot by filmmaker Philippe Garrel. There are both French and US trailers plus a liner notes booklet featuring an essay by critic and novelist Gary Indiana, selections from Alain Bergala’s book Godard au travail: Les années 60, and an excerpt from a 1969 interview with Godard.

The director's fans should be extremely pleased with this HD rendering and the supplements included - all which eclipse previous digital editions. An easy recommendation.

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ON THE DVDs: Unfortunately New Yorker have used the Artificial Eye transfer but have not converted it first to the NTSC standard and hence there are all the associated deficiencies of that practice - ghosting, loss of sharpness and artifacts. The NY'er is also a bit dimmer than the Artificial Eye which has bright beautiful colors. Neither edition is extensively cropped.

In both releases audio is the original mono and does sound like an old transistor radio at times, basically no bass, all distant. But again, this is how the film sounds. There is some slight background noise in both editions. Steritt also gives a nice short essay included as some liner notes in the NY'er package.

The big improvement in the NY'er is the audio commentary by David Sterritt which is absent in the Artificial Eye. True Godard fans will want this feature as it goes into further detail about the film and Godard the man.

The shared video extras offer two perspectives on "Week End". One by an interview of Coutard by Godard biographer Colin McCabe, which is a bit weak, and a great reflection on the film by Mike Figgis, who talks about the film as a film.