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Le beau Serge



Of the hallowed group of Cahiers du cinéma critics turned filmmakers who would transform French film history, Claude Chabrol was the first to direct his own feature. His stark and 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 raw Le beau Serge heralded the arrival of a cinematic titan who would go on to craft provocative, entertaining films for five more decades.

Disc Features

- New digital restoration (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- New audio commentary featuring Guy Austin, author of Claude Chabrol
- Claude Chabrol: Mon premier film, a documentary by Francis Girod on the making of Le beau Serge, featuring interviews with Chabrol and actor Jean-Claude Brialy
- 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
- Theatrical trailer
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Terrence Rafferty

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Les cousins



In Les cousins, Claude Chabrol crafts a sly moral fable about a provincial boy who comes to live with his sophisticated bohemian cousin in Paris. Through these seeming opposites, Chabrol conjures a piercing, darkly comic character study that questions notions of good and evil, love and jealousy, and success in the modern world. A mirror image of Le beau Serge, Chabrol’s debut, Les cousins recasts that film’s stars, Jean-Claude Brialy and Gérard Blain, in startlingly reversed roles. This dagger-sharp drama won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and was an important precursor to the French New Wave.

Disc Features

- New digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- Audio commentary featuring film scholar Adrian Martin
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- Theatrical trailer
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Terrence Rafferty

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Finally!

It looks like they went all out on these Chabrols, very happy. The Adrian Martin commentary is terrific, offering Martin's requisite well-researched and non-fawning overarching discussion of Chabrol's career. Guy Austin's Chabrol book is quite good, too, so I'm thrilled he's on board too.

They really didn't disappoint. I am beyond excited for these.

Expect to see the specs change very soon. Gaumont might be rapping a few knuckles here.

Great news. Purchased the Madman discs not too long ago, but happy to upgrade.

Gaumont confirmed the the two documentary by filmmaker Pierre-Henri Gibert for the two Chabrol, are a exclusivity for France.

The information are changed on the Criterion Website.

NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:Expect to see the specs change very soon. Gaumont might be rapping a few knuckles here.

The docs are now gone.

Hopefully Criterion steps up with some exclusive material of their own then

It's very possible that the Gaumont B-D are region Free and have English Sub. ;)

Someone hinted on Facebook that Gaumont had "made a deal" with Criterion, like maybe in exchange for exclusivity on the docs they're giving Criterion access to certain other titles?

domino harvey wrote:Hopefully Criterion steps up with some exclusive material of their own then

I wouldn't count on it. The quantity of original supplements on new releases seems to be down quite a bit this year, probably a consequence of the amped up schedule of overall titles now being done each month.

So for right now, Les Cousins only has a commentary and trailer.

A two-hour commentary and a trailer. And a booklet.

If you don't already have the Madman disc, it can't be oversold how good Martin's commentary is, though

It seems at present to be just that Criterion jumped the gun by publicising the docs before final negotiations had been concluded with Gaumont who have yet to finalise their own specs for the Sept 14th release date.
However some other snippets hint at an involvement with maybe JLG in the supplements and their own position viz the inclusion of english subs in their own future releases, particularly where restoration costs have been high.
There is however possible another issue at stake here which is Criterion's editorialising of supplements, most notoriously of the 'Cinema de notre temps' series that had producer Andre S Labarthe seething at Criterion's slicing up of episodes to suit its own needs.
Apparently the docs on the Gaumont releases are going to be far more of an overview of Chabrol's position in the Nouvelle Vague and not simply title specific as initially suggested by the Criterion listing so maybe they were up to their old tricks again.
This is however totally speculation on my part but it is another card in the deck.

Also echo Domino's endorsement of the Adrian Martin commentary . Totally absorbing.

Might be worth waiting to see what Gaumont comes up with and get the Madman that was recently at a knock down price. Particularly for those of us with an aversion to triangles.

Here you go - Chabrol specs are up. English subs so if you hate the criterion artwork you gets a choice. Cross-posted on the Gaumont thread too.

Looks like Criterion has finalized their specs for Le beau Serge.

*New digital restoration (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
*New audio commentary featuring Guy Austin, author of Claude Chabrol
*Claude Chabrol: Mon premier film, a documentary by Francis Girod on the making of Le beau Serge, featuring interviews with Chabrol and actor Jean-Claude Brialy
*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
*Theatrical trailer
*New and improved English subtitle translation
*PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Terrence Rafferty

I just watched the first 20 minutes of Le Boucher and loved it, though the quality of the video was so bad. Is it fair to think of these as safe blind buys?

Yes. Admittedly I haven't seen these particular two, but Chabrol kept a certain level of fun even with his lesser regarded titles that ones held in such high esteem as these two deserve a blind buy.

The Pathfinder Chabrols do look like crap, but they were, for the most part, my introduction to Chabrol when I blind-bought the box set from Best Buy (those were the days...) a few years after I saw Merci Pour le Chocolat at a now defunct downtown Chicago movie theater. The films in that set (which is still available here) are all fantastic, with Le Boucher being a personal favorite. Since then I've picked up every Region 1 Chabrol release over the years and have not regretted one. Well, maybe Who's Got the Black Box... I say go for it and discover the generous, intelligent, witty, and suspenseful output of a director the likes of whom we'll probably never see again.

Bad transfers are so ubiquitous for Chabrol films that they become second-nature. Chabrol on Blu almost seems perverse!

It does! We can only hope that these first 2 Blu Chabrols are the first in a wave of Blu Chabrols. I'm really excited about these releases, especially considering I've never seen them. The earliest Chabrols I've seen are A Double Tour and Le Bonnes Femmes, and they're two of my favorites.

If you want to catch up with the late-60s / early-70s golden period of Chabrol, the UK box sets are probably a better bet than the US editions. Once you remove VAT, the first set works out at about two pounds per film. They're better transfers, as I recall, and you won't miss Pathfinder's dubious extras (the commentary on their Les Biches is probably the worst I've ever heard, which is a mind-bogglingly low cultural limbo bar to shimmy under).