Subtitles (both):

English (SDH), none

Extras:

• New audio commentary featuring Guy Austin, author of Claude Chabrol
• Claude Chabrol: Mon premier film, a documentary by Francis Girod on the making of Le beau Serge, featuring interviews with Chabrol and actor Jean-Claude Brialy
• Segment from a 1969 episode of the French television series L’invité du dimanche in which Chabrol revisits Sardent, the town he grew up in and Le beau Serge’s location (10:00)
• Theatrical trailer
• Liner Notes booklet featuring an essay by film critic Terrence Rafferty

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Criterion - Region 'A' - Blu-ray TOP vs. Masters of Cinema - Region 'B' - Blu-ray BOTTOM

Criterion - Region 'A' - Blu-ray TOP vs. Masters of Cinema - Region 'B' - Blu-ray BOTTOM

Criterion - Region 'A' - Blu-ray TOP vs. Masters of Cinema - Region 'B' - Blu-ray BOTTOM

Audio :

On Le Beau Serge we get a new audio commentary featuring Newcastle University professor Guy Austin, author of Claude Chabrol. It is professional, detailed and educational. Also included is Claude Chabrol: Mon premier film, a 2003 documentary by Francis Girod on the making of Le beau Serge, featuring interviews with Chabrol and actor Jean-Claude Brialy. We also get a rough-looking 10-minute segment from a 1969 episode of the French television series L’invité du dimanche in which Chabrol revisits Sardent, the town he grew up in and Le beau Serge’s location - 11 years after the production. The segment was directed by Roger Kahane and Daniel Georgeot. There is also a theatrical trailer and a liner notes booklet featuring an essay by film critic Terrence Rafferty.

Eric Cotenas has covered the MoC extras: “Chabrol Launches the Wave” is the first part of a thus far two-part documentary split between the Gaumont (and now Masters of Cinema) releases of LE BEAU SERGE and LES COUSINS framing the director’s early works in the context of the French New Wave. Chabrol wrote LE BEAU SERGE initially when Roberto Rossellini came to France looking for young directors to make films in 16mm (Rossellini did not like Chabrol’s script). While other New Wave filmmakers started out with short films, Chabrol decided to plunge headlong into feature filmmaking. Rather than going the route of assisting a director for a number of years and finding a producer willing to take a risk, Chabrol decided to be his own producer utilizing his first wife Agnès Goute’s inheritance (Goute is also interviewed in this featurette and does not seem to regret the risk). Some parallels are drawn between the film and the shooting: tension with Blain over Lafont’s playful flirtation with Charles Bitsch had the latter leaving the production early, and Blain came to blows with replacement assistant director Philippe de Broca, who has a small role in the film as “Jacques Rivette” (the story intercut with the fight between Serge and Francois, although ruminations on the contrasting dispositions of Blain and Brialy are saved for the second part of the documentary on LES COUSINS). Discussion of the contrast between the metaphysical subject matter and realism of the mise-en-scene – a number of locals were incorporated into the film as extras and the settings were largely untouched – is illustrated with footage of the town of Sardent as it is today (with shots from LE BEAU SERGE superimposed over and resized as the older footage pans across the same locations).

“L’Avarice” was Chabrol’s contribution to the 1962 French/Italian omnibus film LES SEPT PÉCHÉS CAPITAUX (which also featured contributions from de Broca, Jacques Demy, Sylvain Dhomme, Max Douy, Jean-Luc Godard, Eugène Ionesco, Edouard Molinaro, and Roger Vadim) in which a group of twenty-five engineering students put hold a lottery to pick who gets to spend a 50,000 franc evening with a beautiful prostitute. The film was photographed in Franscope by Jean Rabier (Henri Decae’s camera operator on LE BEAU SERGE and LES COUSINS.) The disc also includes the trailer for LE BEAU SERGE (seemingly also digitally remastered).

The accompanying thirty-one-page booklet features a 1958 essay by Chabrol following his completion of LE BEAU SERGE titled “Flesh, Air, and the Subconscious” in which he describes the film’s structure as actually two juxtaposed films in which either Serge or Francois is the subject and the other the object. Also included is a page-long 1958 statement on the film by Francois Truffaut in which he describes it as beginning with psychology and ending with metaphysics. Jean Douchet’s 1959 “Ariel’s Sunglasses” applies psychoanalytic analysis to LE BEAU SERGE. Finally, in the 1984 essay “The Centre Man”, Jean-Claude Biette contrasts the conventions of Chabrol’s filmic subjects with the idiosyncrasies of his chosen mise-en-scene.

BOTTOM LINE:
I watched Le Beau Serge a second time (3rd including commentary) before reviewing to dispel my suspicions of moiring in the forest snow-scene and to try to improve my appreciation. I believe it was successful on both counts. I feel this I a more nuanced film than Les cousins and I believe that I like it even more than the director's second effort. There is a simplicity and suspense that runs under the surface - the Criterion Blu-ray package is a impressive and fans of French cinema or Claude Chabrol should be keen to pick this up.