Jacques Rivette

[Michael Kerpan]

All I can say is that we are all built differently -- cinemaphilically-speaking. I really do think that encountering a different sort of movie requires the ability to tune into the proper wave length (or rhyrhm or something). If one can't synchronize with it, the movie is just not going to work. One CAN (at least sometimes) train yourself to re-adjust and learn to sync with something initially "impossible". In any event, I never DISliked C&J, it is just that it took 3 tries before I LOVED it.

[Stefan]

Great news: Radiance Films in England will bring out L'amour fou on Bluray in April:
https://www.radiancefilms.co.uk/products/lamour-fou-le
So will Potemkine in France:
https://store.potemkine.fr/dvd/35450200 ... s-rivette/
The first variant will have English subtitles. Still, it's time to revamp our knowing of Racine ...

[spectre]

Listing is up for Va Savoir+ on Potemkine (for 2 April release):

https://store.potemkine.fr/dvd/35450200 ... s-rivette/?

Also contains the theatrical cut and various special features. No indication of English subtitles, but I’ll make enquiries and report back!

[spectre]

Can confirm that there are no English subtitles, unfortunately.

[nicolas]

I received the Va Savoir / Va Savoir+ 4K-restored set.

Encoding is solid even though it's not a notable effort by Potemkine. Their effort was minimal for both cuts (as you can see in the MediaInfo screenshot below) but the result is better than expected considering the length of Va Savoir+. The shorter cut looks slightly better and more consistently throughout.
Va Savoir+ was restored in the fall of 2021 at Hiventy, Va Savoir in 2022 both under the supervision of Irina Lubtchansky.

Brief screenshot comparison of the two cuts (sorry, I don't have time for more): https://slow.pics/c/M0JAa5yL
Some individual caps in here:

Spoiler

[tenia]

What do you mean by minimal effort ? The authoring strategy looked good to me in terms of content split and movie priorisation.
I'm less fond of what has been done on L'amour fou, whose encode reminds me of the Lars von Trier, despite ample bitrates.

[nicolas]

What do you mean by minimal effort ? The authoring strategy looked good to me in terms of content split and movie priorisation.
I'm less fond of what has been done on L'amour fou, whose encode reminds me of the Lars von Trier, despite ample bitrates.

It seems to me that they just set their bitrate targets to 25 / 30 / 35 Mbps and said “done”. Audio-wise they slashed the 24-bit 5.1 track from the shorter version to 16-bit on Va savoir+ probably just to save space. This being a fully dialogue-driven project it won’t make a difference and I’m not complaining as both cuts look much, much better than anticipated, but still, when looking at the MediaInfo stats, I can’t help noticing that they let their software do all the hard work.

Also, I was positively surprised when it comes to the grading. It’s still quite warm but not a piss-bathed tint.

[dave1]

FWIW, the color grading doesn't look like any 35mm prints I've seen (the last time, as recently as last year). I've come to believe that a restoration "supervised by" doesn't really mean anything. La bande des quatre was supervised by Champetier and now has a b&w shot that was in color before.
As for Va savoir, the scene where Balibar goes to see Bonaffé at the park is probably the worst offender, and the scene where Balibar finds Basler passed out is noticeably darker than in the 4K restoration.

[tenia]

What do you mean by minimal effort ? The authoring strategy looked good to me in terms of content split and movie priorisation.
I'm less fond of what has been done on L'amour fou, whose encode reminds me of the Lars von Trier, despite ample bitrates.

It seems to me that they just set their bitrate targets to 25 / 30 / 35 Mbps and said “done”. Audio-wise they slashed the 24-bit 5.1 track from the shorter version to 16-bit on Va savoir+ probably just to save space. This being a fully dialogue-driven project it won’t make a difference and I’m not complaining as both cuts look much, much better than anticipated, but still, when looking at the MediaInfo stats, I can’t help noticing that they let their software do all the hard work.

They probably could have used a bit more bitrate on Va savoir +, but the disc is 46,869,550,700 bytes and the movie 46,272,122,880 bytes of it, so the disc is roughly 94% used and the movie uses pretty much all of that. Switching from 24-bit to 16-bit makes sense to me in the context of a 224 min 1.85 5.1 movie, so I'd say it's actually a good move in order to save some Mbps for the video. A quick calculation tells me keeping the sound at 24-bit would have made the 224 min movie ending up past the BD-50 capacity, and pushing the disc usage to its max would have "only" brought 2 extras Mbps.

With the shorter cut looking prioritized enough over the extras, though it could have been pushed a tad higher and get the movie's AVB up to 33 Mbps instead of 30, this all looks prioritized enough to me, hence my remark.

[hearthesilence]

Since my earlier post on Duelle was a lot of words and no illustration, here is a link to my tweet with some pics; other examples in the thread I'm replying to. Unsure about the conclusions I drew though; curious what people here make of the discrepancy, if anything.

Ugh. FWIW, just to confirm, I caught a DCP screening at MoMA's Bulle Ogier tribute - "Digital restoration courtesy of Arrow Films and the American Genre Film Archive" - and not surprisingly the blue tint was not present in those sequences either, they were definitely just black & white. I hope someone's got 35mm prints of this film.

[Captain Paranoia]

What software is that? It doesn't look like MediaInfo though it probably is.

[nicolas]

What software is that? It doesn't look like MediaInfo though it probably is.

It is MediaInfo (also says so in the upper bar) used with dark mode on Mac.

[dave1]

Since my earlier post on Duelle was a lot of words and no illustration, here is a link to my tweet with some pics; other examples in the thread I'm replying to. Unsure about the conclusions I drew though; curious what people here make of the discrepancy, if anything.

Ugh. FWIW, just to confirm, I caught a DCP screening at MoMA's Bulle Ogier tribute - "Digital restoration courtesy of Arrow Films and the American Genre Film Archive" - and not surprisingly the blue tint was not present in those sequences either, they were definitely just black & white. I hope someone's got 35mm prints of this film.

According to a Spanish book on Rivette I have, it's not a tint but rather that sequence was shot with a blue filter, which would explain why it's a weird-looking b&w in the 2K.

[hearthesilence]

Since my earlier post on Duelle was a lot of words and no illustration, here is a link to my tweet with some pics; other examples in the thread I'm replying to. Unsure about the conclusions I drew though; curious what people here make of the discrepancy, if anything.

Ugh. FWIW, just to confirm, I caught a DCP screening at MoMA's Bulle Ogier tribute - "Digital restoration courtesy of Arrow Films and the American Genre Film Archive" - and not surprisingly the blue tint was not present in those sequences either, they were definitely just black & white. I hope someone's got 35mm prints of this film.

According to a Spanish book on Rivette I have, it's not a tint but rather that sequence was shot with a blue filter, which would explain why it's a weird-looking b&w in the 2K.

That makes it more baffling - if the color is baked into the negative itself, why did they remove it in the grading? Frustrating and annoying, it's otherwise a great looking restoration but it's like getting your car back all polished and clean only to find out they kicked a dent into it.

[dave1]

In 35mm the opening credits are also blue, but they've been redone by Technicolor for the 2K (they're gold on black now).

[Guido]

This is more of a production question than anything, but perhaps some filmmakers on the forum have some technical insights. I'm rewatching late Rivette films (starting with La belle noiseuse), and I'm always struck by the elegance of his/Lubtchansky's moving camera, which seems unconstrained by a fixed track even in small spaces. Would these subtle but complex movements have been achieved with a jib as opposed to a traditional dolly?

[Noiretirc]

My predictions for 2026:

My Bloody Valentine will not release a new album.

Stephen Kotkin will not release Stalin Vol 3.

Criterion will not release L'Amour fou. (And neither will anyone else in Region A.)

[lazarus]

Regarding the upcoming Radiance edition of Joan The Maid:

The 2019 Blu-ray from Cohen Media was already a 4K restoration, correct? So other then some new extras (the Cohen was barebones), I’m guessing this isn’t worth a double-dip?

[senseabove]

"Newly improved English subtitle translation" would be reason enough to double dip for me. The subtitles across all Cohen's Rivette releases are pretty bad, and particularly bad for Jean... (and they're often forced or burned in, if you're annoyed by that kind of thing).

[Noiretirc]

Somehow I overlooked the fact that Radiance did Va Savoir last year, in both theatrical and "director's cut" versions, in Region ABC.

And Joan The Maid will also be ABC.

Rejoice!

(Or is my tea playing tricks with my brain!?)