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

ADDITION: Criterion Blu-ray (July 2021): Criterion have transferred Jacques Deray's La Piscine to Blu-ray. It is advertised as a "New, restored 4K digital transfer" and looks decidedly different from the 10-year older Park Circus 1080P transfer. Flesh tones warm, all colors become richer and deeper while black levels are more pronounced. It looks fabulous with a pleasing texture of fine grain which can appear a bit clunky at times. There are disparities in the frame with the Criterion, generally, showing more on the bottom and left edges of the 1.66:1 image and less on the top and right sides. Overall this looks like a substantial improvement with the end of the film citing "Daems made preparation of the 35 mm image negative, HIVENTY Film Heritage & Post-Production realized the 4K scan of the negative 35 mm image, the 4K digital calibration, the 4K digital restoration". A notable upgrade.

NOTE: We have added 58 more large resolution Criterion Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Criterion use a linear PCM mono track (24-bit) in the French language. There is a lot of music in La Piscine. The score is by iconic Michel Legrand (Cleo From 5 to 7 America As Seen By A Frenchman, Castle Keep, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The Young Girls of Rochefort, A Woman is a Woman, Ice Station Zebra) which includes Ask Yourself Why sung by Ruth Price and Run Brother Rabbit Runs sung by Delaney Bramlett. It is a beautiful mix of jazz, orchestral and haunting background chorus sounding clean, authentically flat and consistent in the uncompressed. Criterion offer optional English subtitles on their Region 'A' Blu-ray for the French feature but none for The Swimming Pool: “First Love Never Dies” English version (see below.) 

Taking advantage of its four lead actors' multilingual abilities, La piscine was shot simultaneously in French and English near Saint-Tropez, France, from August to October 1968. Offered is the slightly shorter English-language version of the film, released outside of France in 1969. For it, director Jacques Deray made his edits based on performances, rather than doing a shot-by-shot re-creation of the French version. The Criterion Blu-ray includes The Swimming Pool: “First Love Never Dies,” the English-language version of the film.  It takes up 9 Gig, running 1:59:25 in 1080P with a 10mbps bitrate on the Criterion Blu-ray. We also get Fifty Years Later, a 2019 1/2 hour documentary. Agnès Vincent-Deray, the widow of director Jacques Deray, made this short documentary on the production of La piscine in 2019, on the occasion of that film's fiftieth anniversary. It features interviews with actors Alain Delon and Jane Birkin as well as screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière and Jean-Emmanuel Conil, who wrote the novel on which the screenplay was based. There is a new, 20-minute interview with scholar Nick Rees-Roberts on the film’s cinematic and aesthetic legacy conducted by the Criterion in spring 2021 where he traces the influence of La piscine on the worlds of film and fashion in the half century since its release. There is 1/4 hour's worth of archival footage featuring. La piscine was one of the biggest art-house and commercial successes of 1969, due in part to the on-screen reunion of the former lovers Delon and Schneider. This selection of archival production and promotional footage features them actors Jane Birkin and Maurice Ronet, plus director Jacques Deray. Included is 42-seonds of the alternate ending. Director Jacques Deray and his producers added the brief final shot presented here to La piscine upon its release in Spain in 1969, to appease Franco-era censors upset by its morally ambiguous original ending. The same shot also concludes the English-language version of the film. There are trailers in French and English and the package has a liner notes booklet with an essay by film critic Jessica Kiang.

Jacques Deray's La Piscine is a masterpiece of seduction, jealously, lust, flirtation, the competitive nature of men and a sophisticated amoral view of love. It is as stunning as I have ever seen it - looking so rich and gorgeous via Criterion's new 4K restored Blu-ray transfer. La piscine was the fourth most popular movie in France in 1969! In its historical legacy - during the making of La piscine - the 'Markovic Affair' rose to prominence - where the body of Stevan Markovic, Alain Delon's bodyguard, was discovered discarded a public dump in late 1968. This Blu-ray gets out highest recommendation! 

Gary Tooze