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

ADDITION: Radiance Blu-ray (March 2025): Radiance are releasing three Alain Corneau film, Police Python 357, Serie Noire, and Choice of Arms, to Blu-ray in their "Hardboiled: Three Pulp Thrillers" Boxset. The films are from the late 70's to the early 80's and are spread on individual dual-layered Blu-rays - each with a max'ed out video bitrate. The visual style of the first film, Police Python 357, could be described as a striking blend of French noir aesthetics and the gritty realism of 1970s crime thrillers, infused with a cold, methodical precision that mirrors the film’s narrative tone. The cinematography, crafted by Étienne Becker (son of the French director Jacques Becker - he has shot for Jacques Rivette, Louis Malle, and Marco Ferreri among others) leans heavily on a muted, desaturated color palette - dominated by grays, blues, and earthy tones - that evokes a somber, almost oppressive atmosphere. There is some heavy green / teal. This choice aligns with the film’s setting in Orléans, a provincial French city portrayed as a mix of old-world architecture and modern blandness, which enhances the sense of isolation and existential dread permeating the story. The 1080P is clean and consistent - reasonably crisp with no much in the way of grain textures. The look of Série Noire is more raw - a visceral descent into the underbelly of 1970s suburban Paris, drenched in a grimy, overcast aesthetic that feels like a deliberate rejection of glamour. Shot by cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn (Truffaut's Day for Night and Sam Fuller's Street of No Return - Pierre-William passed in September 2024 at 80-years old,) the film trades the sleek polish of classic noir for a more unvarnished, almost documentary-like realism, while still retaining a dark, fatalistic soul. The color palette is bleak and washed-out - think pale grays, dingy beiges, and muted browns, punctuated by the occasional sickly yellow or cold blue. It’s as if the film is perpetually stuck under a heavy, oppressive sky, with natural light struggling to break through the haze, mirroring the protagonist Franck Poupart’s spiraling despair. Choice of Arms shifts gears from the raw grit of Série Noire and the austere precision of Police Python 357 into a more expansive, brooding neo-noir aesthetic that balances urban sophistication with rural melancholy. Shot, again, by Pierre-William Glenn. The film’s look is a moody, textured blend of French cinematic elegance and the hard-edged realism of 1980s crime dramas, reflecting its story of clashing worlds - old-school gangsters, modern criminals, and the fragile veneer of bourgeois stability. The Blu-ray presentation is the best of the three - very crisp, almost glossy at times with beautifully balanced contrast and colors. It looks almost new. All three are at Radiance's usual high video standards.

NOTE: We have added 158 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Radiance use linear PCM dual-mono tracks (24-bit) in the original French language. All three films have plenty of gun violence and despite the flat authenticity there is effective depth. The score for Police Python 357 was by Georges Delerue (A Man in Love, One Deadly Summer, Mister Johnson, Jules et Jim, The Woman Next Door, Cartouche, The Last Metro, Day For Night) supporting the film graciously in the lossless transfer. It is a masterful exercise in restraint and emotional resonance, perfectly complementing Alain Corneau’s taut, melancholic neo-noir vision. The atonal, jarring score score for Série Noire, composed by Pierre Jansen ( Claude Chabrol's Blue Panther, Bluebeard, Line of Demarcation, The Third Lover, Ophelia, Ten Days Wonder, Le Boucher, La femme infidèle and Les Biches to name a few,) is a jagged, dissonant beast that perfectly mirrors the film’s raw, unhinged energy and Alain Corneau’s descent into neo-noir madness. Jansen is known for his avant-garde leanings, crafts a soundtrack that’s less about melody and more about texture - an auditory assault that feels like the musical equivalent of Franck Poupart’s (Patrick Dewaere) spiraling psyche. The score for Choice of Arms was composed by Philippe Sarde (Madame Rosa, Max and the Junkmen, The Widow Couderc, Tess, La Grande Bouffe, Quest For Fire) and strikes a compelling balance between lyrical melancholy and tense, brooding atmosphere, perfectly suiting Alain Corneau’s neo-noir meditation on loyalty, violence, and the clash of old and new worlds. Sarde, a veteran of French cinema known for his work with directors like Polanski (The Tenant,) and Tavernier (The Clockmaker of St. Paul,) delivers a soundtrack that’s more emotionally layered and traditionally melodic than Pierre Jansen’s jagged dissonance in Série Noire, yet less minimalist than Georges Delerue’s restrained elegance in Police Python 357. It’s a rich, orchestral affair - strings for nostalgia, percussion for tension - that deepens the film’s moody visuals and the complex interplay between Yves Montand’s stoic Noël and Gérard Depardieu’s volatile Mickey. The audio is clean with consistent dialogue in the uncompressed transfers - I noticed no anomalies. Radiance offer optional English subtitles on their Region FREE Blu-ray.

The Radiance Blu-ray offers a new commentary on Police Python 357 by Mike White (The Projection Booth podcast.) He provides an insightful mediation blending meticulous scene-by-scene breakdowns with broader cultural and historical context, often delivered with a dry wit and a deep appreciation for genre cinema. He taps into the genre context, performances (Yves Montand - his affair with Marilyn Monroe, François Périer, Simone Signoret, Stefania Sandrelli,) casting, Fearing's book, visual and noir thematic insights, comparables and production notes. He can narrate a bit but overall it is excellent. Also on that first Blu-ray is writer and publisher Maxim Jakubowski on Police Python 357’s source novel and adaptation. He discusses Corneau and his association with crime fiction, in particular examining the famous Série Noire imprint, which brought hardboiled fiction to France. This is new (2024) and runs 1/4 hour. Lastly for this film is a 6-minute archival interview with Alain Corneau and François Périer about Police Python 357 from Belgian Television from 1976.

On the Série noire Blu-ray disc is the 2013 54-minute archival documentary featuring cast and crew on the making of the film entitled The Darkness of the Soul. In includes interviewees including producer Maurice Bernat, DoP Pierre, William-Glenn, actress Miriam Boyer, and Nadine Trintignant. There is a 1/2 hour archival interview with Alain Corneau and Marie Trintignant about Série noire from 2002. There are also 11-minutes of Série noire set interviews with Alain Corneau, Patrick Dewaere and Miriam Boyer from 1981 Belgian Television. Radiance include a new 1/2 hour visual essay about Jim Thompson adaptations for the screen by writer and programmer Paul Martinovic who explores the complicated history of Thompson's screen adaptations, and how filmmakers have attempted to adapt his distinctive prose to the screen. Jim Thompson (Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, Walter Hill's The Getaway, Stephen Frears' The Grifters) the hardboiled crime fiction maestro often dubbed the "Dimestore Dostoevsky," left an indelible mark on literature with his raw, psychologically twisted novels. His works, steeped in noir sensibilities and populated by unreliable narrators and morally unmoored characters, have proven both irresistible and challenging for filmmakers. Lastly on that Blu-ray is a trailer for Série noire.

For the Choice of Arms Blu-ray there is a short introduction by Jérôme Wybon. Wybon is a French filmmaker, documentarian, and "cinema archaeologist" known for his deep dives into film history, particularly through creating bonus features for DVD and Blu-ray releases. He’s collaborated extensively with StudioCanal, directing documentaries and curating extras for their catalog. Shooting Choice of Arms is from 1981 and has 22-minutes of interviews with the cast and crew including behind-the-scenes footage. There are also 18-minutes of 1981 interviews with Corneau, Deneuve, Montand and Depardieu from the set. Radiance add a new interview with writer and critic Manuela Lazic exploring the life and career of Yves Montand in the 1970s - running 24-minutes. She is an actress based in London, known for her incisive writing on cinema. Born in Clermont-Ferrand, France, in the mid-1990s, she graduated with a Film Studies degree from King’s College London in 2016 and has since built a reputation through contributions to outlets like Little White Lies, The Ringer, Film Comment, etc. Her work often explores emotional depth, visual style, and thematic complexity, with a particular affinity for genre films and auteurs like Kathryn Bigelow or Yorgos Lanthimos. Lastly on the third Blu-ray is a trailer for Choice of Arms.

The package has a reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters and a limited edition 80-page booklet featuring new writing by Charlie Brigden (a South Wales-based freelance writer and film music specialist known for his deep dives into movie soundtracks and genre films,) British journalist, critic, and editor Andrew Male, Nick Pinkerton (Goodbye, Dragon Inn: 1 - Decadent Editions,) cult and noir champion Travis Woods, and newly translated archival interviews with Alain Corneau. 

Firstly, these are all great neo-noir films. Police Python 357 fits snugly into the 1970s French crime wave, alongside films like Le Cercle Rouge or Un Flic, but its pedantic style and psychological focus set it apart. It’s less about action than introspection, a bridge between Melville’s cool detachment and the rawer, more chaotic Série Noire. Thematically, it shares DNA with Jim Thompson’s work - moral rot, obsession, identity - but trades his pulpy excess for a colder, European restraint. Themes include isolation / loneliness, love / betrayal, dehumanization, identity / disguise, and obsession / moral ambiguity. There is a recurring motif of photographs - Sylvia’s (Stefania Sandrelli - The Key, Seduced and Abandoned, I Knew Her Well, The Conformist) image as both evidence and obsession - underscores this. Great to see icons Montand (The Confession, Wages of Fear, State of Siege) and Signoret (Les Diaboliques, Casque d'or, Death in the Garden, Army of Shadows) working together - if only in a few brief scenes. Overall, Série Noire looks like a neo-noir fever dream filtered through the lens of French New Wave realism - less about seductive mystique and more about a brutal, unpolished portrait of desperation. It’s a film that feels damp, cold, and relentlessly bleak, with a visual style that drags you into its moral and emotional muck without apology. This French neo-noir starring favorite Patrick Dewaere (Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, Hôtel des Amériques, Beau Pere - we lost him at 35 to suicide) as Franck Poupart is a raw, chaotic descent into madness, distinct from the restrained precision of Police Python 357 yet sharing Corneau’s fascination with psychological and existential turmoil. Franck is a man drowning in futility - a low-rent debt collector trapped in a dead-end life, chasing scraps in a world that doesn’t care. Key themes, rooted in its narrative, visuals, and subtext include 'desperation / existential despair', 'obsession / destructive love', 'moral decay / psychopathy', 'identity / delusion' with fatalism at its core. Fate doesn’t just stalk Franck - it steamrolls him. His every attempt to seize control (stealing cash, killing obstacles) only tightens the noose, a chaotic tumble toward doom. Its adaptation of Thompson’s A Hell of A Woman keeps the novel’s feverish spirit while rooting it in a distinctly 1970s European malaise. It's my favorite film in the set. Corneau's Choice of Arms completes the thematic trilogy alongside Police Python 357 and Série Noire. It stars Yves Montand as retired gangster Noël Durieux as a weathered protagonist, Gérard Depardieu as raw, chaotic Mickey, and Catherine Deneuve as Nicole who embodies a blend of elegance, resilience, and quiet despair, serving as both an emotional anchor and a mirror to the film’s central conflict. This French neo-noir blends elegiac reflection with brutal confrontation, examining the clash between past and present through a richly layered narrative. Themes include 'past vs. present', 'violence and its consequences', 'loyalty and betrayal' - flawed men undone by their worlds. Compared to Jim Thompson’s anarchic fatalism, it’s more structured - closer to The Grifters’ tragic elegance than Série Noire’s madness - but retains a distinctly French melancholy. This is, to date, my favorite set of the year and should make noise in our year-end poll. These are brilliant neo-noirs with impressive performances. The Radiance Blu-ray package gets our highest recommendation. A huge keeper.

Gary Tooze