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Le Beau Serge [Blu-ray]
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Description: Of the hallowed group of Cahiers du cinéma critics turned filmmakers who transformed French film history, Claude Chabrol was the first to direct his own feature. His absorbing landmark debut, Le beau Serge, follows a successful yet sickly young man (Jean‑Claude Brialy) who returns home to the small village where he grew up. There, he finds himself at odds with his former close friend (Gérard Blain)—now unhappily married and a wretched alcoholic—and the provincial life he represents. The remarkable and stark Le beau Serge heralded the arrival of a cinematic titan who would go on to craft provocative, entertaining films for five more decades.
***
Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy
star in the first of their collaborations with the great
Claude Chabrol. The director’s masterful feature debut —
ironic, funny, unsparing — is a revelation: another of that
rare breed of film where the dusty formula might be used in
full sincerity: Le Beau Serge marks the beginning of “the
Chabrol touch.”
In this first feature film of the French New Wave, one year
before Truffaut’s
The Four Hundred Blows,
the dandyish François (Brialy, of Godard’s
A Woman Is a Woman,
Rohmer’s
Claire’s Knee, and
countless other cornerstones of 20th-century French cinema)
takes a holiday from the city to his home village of Sardent,
where he reconnects with his old chum Serge (Blain), now a
besotted and hopeless alcoholic, and sly duplicitous carnal
Marie (Bernadette Lafont). A grave triangle forms, and a
tragic slide ensues.
From Le Beau Serge onward up to his final film
Bellamy in 2009, the revered Chabrol would come to leave a
significant and lasting impression upon the French cinema —
frequently with great commercial success. It is with great
pride that we present Le Beau Serge, the kickstart of
the Nouvelle Vague and of Chabrol’s enormous body of work,
on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK for the first time.
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The Film:
Technically this 1958 Claude Chabrol film was the first feature of the French New Wave to be released—though it was Chabrol's second film, Les Cousins, with the same stars, Gerard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy, that had an international impact. Brialy plays a tubercular theology student who returns to his hometown to convalesce and becomes reacquainted with a childhood friend (Blain), an alcoholic stuck in a bad marriage. Roland Barthes attacked this film for its “right-wing” and “static” image of man, and even Chabrol fan Tom Milne has found its Hitchcockian theme of “transference” expressed too overtly in terms of Christian allegory. I barely remember it, but it has a certain fascination as Chabrol's first practical (as opposed to critical) encounter with mise en scene.
Excerpt from Jonathan Rosenbaum at the Chicago Reader located HEREClaude Chabrol, a former film critic and writer-producer of "Le Beau Serge" (translated somewhat sardonically in this case as "Handsome Serge"), returned to his native village, Sardent, in central France, to film his story. Its rundown, forlorn stone houses and austere countryside provide fitting background for this dark tale of a convalescent city youth who returns to his home town to discover that his gifted boyhood friend and idol has degenerated into an unshaven, drunken and irresponsible husband. He finds, too, that his other friends are demoralized and apathetic. It is his efforts to rekindle the youthful promise once shown by his pal that form the bulk of the stark goings-on.
Excerpt from NY Times located HEREImage : NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.
Like Les Cousins, Le Beau Serge appears very strong on Blu-ray from Criterion. The 1080P image is very film-like with fine grain visible. Criterion's, impressive, contrast is exquisite although I did look closely at a specific scene to dismiss an initial identification of moriing. This is dual-layered with a high bitrate. Le Beau Serge is pristinely clean from an obvious healthy source. Detail has surprising moments of clarity and overall I have no strong complaints with the resulting image quality. It provided an exceptional presentation taking into account the age of the film.
There is probably more difference here of the Criterion and Masters of Cinema than in the Blu-ray comparison of Les Cousins, but it essentially boils down to how much darker the Criterion is. It just happens to be a shade more significant than in the other transfer. But again both have the same bitrates and look almost exactly the same in motion. The Criterion may show a shade more grain. Essentially, not enough in a side by side presentation to make issue with.
CLICK EACH BLU-RAY CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION
Criterion - Region 'A' - Blu-ray TOP vs. Masters of Cinema - Region 'B' - Blu-ray BOTTOM
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Criterion - Region 'A' - Blu-ray TOP vs. Masters of Cinema - Region 'B' - Blu-ray BOTTOM
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Criterion - Region 'A' - Blu-ray TOP vs. Masters of Cinema - Region 'B' - Blu-ray BOTTOM
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Duplicating our comments from Les Cousins: Criterion are again faithful with a mono track rendered in a linear PCM in original French at 1152 kbps
. There is the perception of some depth but the film is essentially dialogue-driven without much to spark anything dynamic in the soundstage via uncompressed. There are optional English subtitles and my Momitsu has identified it as being a region 'A'-locked like all Criterions to date.Again, too similar to get picky. Both offer a clean, lossless linear PCM mono track. The subtitle translation is slightly different (font, size etc.) - see sample above - and the Masters of Cinema disc is region 'B'-locked.
Extras :
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.
Criterion - Region 'A' - Blu-ray LEFT vs. Masters of Cinema - Region 'B' - Blu-ray RIGHT
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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.
Differences boil down to the supplements
- Criterion with the commentary takes a slight advantage but we still suggest obtaining the edition closest to your geographic region code. Both releases are strongly recommended!Gary Tooze
September 5th, 2011
Gary Tooze (and Eric Cotenas)
March 26th, 2013
About the Reviewer: Hello, fellow Beavers! I have been interested in film since I viewed a Chaplin festival on PBS when I was around 9 years old. I credit DVD with expanding my horizons to fill an almost ravenous desire to seek out new film experiences. I currently own approximately 9500 DVDs and have reviewed over 3500 myself. I appreciate my discussion Listserv for furthering my film education and inspiring me to continue running DVDBeaver. Plus a healthy thanks to those who donate and use our Amazon links.
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