criterionforum.org

The life force, Anna Magnani is Columbine and Camilla in the Theatre and in Life, and inextricably both in Renoir's hymn to performance and theatre, The Golden Coach from 1952. I've always found the comparison of this and Cukor's Heller in Pink Tights from 1960 irresistible but never had the chance to program them together until now in my own cinematic sanctum.

The screen is from an eye wateringly beautiful new-ish restoration to Blu-ray on the French TFI label, from CNC and PostHouse Digimage re composited from original 3 strip negs, then newly color timed and mastered. I am guessing, given the paucity of information on the disc the resto was performed sometime around 2012. This is a simply perfect rendition of one of the very greatest color films ever made, (photographed by Renoir-bro Claude) and one of the last 3 strip neg Tech productions and it's a revolutionary step up from Criterion's disastrous inclusion of a fatally compromised source from Gaumont in its three DVD "Stage and Spectacle" boxset from ten years or so ago. On my player the French subs on the English language version are removable, and the disc includes the rarely seen French audio version which was dubbed under other hands than Renoir's after the very first release in a third, and now totally unavailable Italian dub which premiered the picture in 1952. Renoir himself always nominated the English version as his preferred and he was right. Almost all the parts are spoken by the players themselves, with quite a bit of wild track running as principal audio, excepting the bullfighter and the BIshop who were dubbed in this and in the French version. Both versions are completely identical with the same takes, setups etc, and only a four second difference in running time but all the French dialogue has been post synched, again by most if not all the actors themselves, including Magnani whose French is as capable as her excellent English.

This is a movie I used to borrow in a lovely IB 16mm print from the then French Embassy library in Sydney, perhaps like many others here, and play endlessly onto a blank wall for friends and myself, until we had nearly worn out the drum on my old post WW2 Bell and Howell. It's some sort of tribute to encroaching age and the thought of life fading further and further into time that the very timelessness of this masterpiece can be brought back so vividly in such an ideal, premium quality format, in the latter part of one's life, and for a younger audience of cinephiles. Yet, when you watch post war Renoir the concepts of time, ageing and the passing of life itself seem so completely abstract in the face of his boundless reaffirmation of hope and the value of all life. I hope I live forever with Magnani's/Camilla's mantra from the opening scene ringing in my ears ... "is all this worth it for two hours every night?" Yes, it is