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(aka "Fausse alerte" or "Abri 39" or "Un soir d'alerte" or "À Paris un soir")

 

Directed by Jacques de Baroncelli

France 1945

 

Born into poverty, Josephine Baker rose from a childhood living in a St. Louis slum to the toast of France - captivating audiences through the stage, recordings and motion pictures, and you'll get to see why in The French Way. It's a farcical romantic-comedy set in contemporary WWII France, about young lovers forbidden to marry by their respective families. Baker, as Zazu, the owner of a nightclub, inherits a job restoring harmony between the two families and allowing the young lovers to 'se marier.' A mélange of French character actors add to the fun, but when Josephine's on the screen she is as Ernest Hemingway once said, the most sensational woman anyone ever saw. The French Way filmed in 1940 -- literally amidst bombing raids - released in France in 1945, and briefly shown in the USA in 1952 where the order of some scenes was changed and about 2-3 minutes of dramatic footage was cut. In all other respects, it is virtually complete as originally released. Note: In real life, Josephine Baker aided the French Resistance and was awarded, among other honors, the Croix de Guerre by the French military.

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The French Way (Fausse Alert) stars American expatriate musical star Josephine Baker as a Parisian cabaret singer. The plot is your standard "star-crossed lovers" melange, distinguished by the conspicuous lack of clothing on the female characters. The coy ingenue is played by 18-year-old Micheline Presle, several years removed from her international stardom vis-a-vis Devil in the Flesh. Because Josephine Baker was black, and because she performed in the nude for the most part, The French Way didn't make it to American shores until 1952. Even then, Ms. Baker's climactic feather dance was entirely excised, though the film spends its last two reels building up to it.

Excerpt from B+N located HERE

Poster

Release: July 27th, 1945

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Review:

Kit Parker Films - Region FREE - Blu-ray

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Distribution Kit Parker Films
Region
FREE Blu-ray
Runtime 1:14:31.967
Video

Disc Size: 21,428,692,391 bytes

Feature Size: 20,985,944,064 bytes

Bitrate: 34.14 Mbps

1080P Single-layered Blu-ray MPEG-4 AVC Video

Bitrate:
Audio

LPCM Audio French 1536 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1536 kbps / 16-bit

Subtitles English (burned-in)
Features Release Information:
Studio: Kit Parker Films

 

Disc Size: 21,428,692,391 bytes

Feature Size: 20,985,944,064 bytes

Bitrate: 34.14 Mbps

1080P Single-layered Blu-ray MPEG-4 AVC Video

 

Edition Details:
None

Blu-ray  Release Date: July 10th, 2018
Standard Blu-ray case

Chapters: 13

 

 

Comments:

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

Kit Parker Films give us an HD digital restoration of The French Way (Fausse Alerte) on a single-layered Blu-ray disc. With the English language title (but the French language throughout) this appears to be the cut US version referenced in the comments above - missing about 2-3 minutes - probably avec nudity. The image quality - from possibly the best print source available - is not stellar and has inconsistencies. The transfer has a max'ed out bitrate but looks waxy and possibly digitized with blown-out whites and a fuzzy kind of grain. There are some sequences that look superior but generally the image quality is sub-standard for the genre and, as I stated, probably more the fault of the source.  We'd love to have something to compare or see more Josephine Baker make it to 1080P.

Kit Parker Films has given us a linear PCM 2.0 channel mono (16-bit) track for the
Blu-ray. It sounds about as good as it look so imperfect but, at least, audible. The score is credited to Wal-Berg - also known as Voldemar Rosenberg, a French composer and conductor who conducted symphonic jazz concerts. He composed more than 300 pieces for symphony orchestra and scored about forty films. The film also has Mon Coeur Est Un Oiseau des Iles, sung (and later danced) by Josephine Baker and None, Nina, written by Wal-Berg and sung and danced with a chorus by Baker. There are burned-in English subtitles for both dialogue and the music numbers - on this Region FREE Blu-ray disc.

There are no extras - although it would have been nice to see some supplementary material on Baker and the film.

Despite the a/v limitations I got into the historical context of The French Way. It seems pricey considering the lack of extras and weak video but there is some value here seeing something very rare - it definitely whet my whistle for more of Josephine Baker on
Blu-ray  - how about Zou Zou, Princess Tam Tam and Siren of the Tropics coming to this format? This is targeted to a fairly select crows but I can only say I enjoyed this 40's French, occasionally daring, comedy.
    

Gary Tooze

 

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Subtitle Samples - Dialogue TOP - sung lyrics - BOTTOM

 

 

 


Blu-ray captures
 

 


 

 


 

 


 

 


 

 


 

 


 

 


 

 


 

 


 

 


 

 


 

 


 

 


 

 


 

 

 

Box Cover

   

CLICK to order from:

  

 

Distribution Kit Parker Films
Region
FREE Blu-ray



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