72 L'Enfance-nue
- souvenir
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 12:20 pm
72 L'Enfance-nue
L'Enfance-nue
One of the earth-shaking feature debuts in the history of cinema, Maurice Pialat’s L’Enfance-nue [Naked-Childhood] provides a perspective on growing-up that rejects both sentimentality and modish cynicism. Its unflinching, but also warmly accommodating, outlook on childhood attracted François Truffaut to take on the role as co-producer of Pialat’s film — which, ironically, exists as much as a response to Truffaut’s own debut The 400 Blows as that film was to the ‘cinema of childhood’ that came before the New Wave.
First-time actor Michel Tarrazon plays the young François, a provincial orphan whose destructive behaviour precipitates his relocation from the home of a long-term foster family to the care of a benevolent elderly couple. In the course of this transition, Pialat’s film presents the turbulence of François’s unmoored existence, and his explosive reactions to the contradictory emotions it engenders. This is the naked portrait of a soul’s — and an entire society’s — dysfunction, before the moment of reconciliation.
L’Enfance-nue represents the ideal introduction to the films of Maurice Pialat — an artist whose work resides alongside that of Jean Eustache and Philippe Garrel at the summit of the post-New Wave French cinema. One discovers in his pictures a raw and complicated emotional core which, as in the films of John Cassavetes, reveals upon closer examination a remarkably rigorous visual aesthetic, and a facility of direction which lifts both seasoned actors and debut amateurs to the level of greatness. Coupled here with Pialat’s poetic and brilliant early short L’Amour existe [Love Exists, 1960], L’Enfance-nue is the first masterpiece of an artist whose work has had an incalculable influence on contemporary directors as diverse as Bruno Dumont, Olivier Assayas, Michael Haneke, and the Dardenne brothers, among others — and whose 2003 passing led Gilles Jacob, president of the Festival de Cannes, to declare: “Pialat is dead and we are all orphaned. French cinema is orphaned.” The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Maurice Pialat’s 1968 debut feature film in a magnificent restored transfer for the first time on home video in the UK.
2-DISC EDITION features:
• New anamorphic transfer of the film in its original aspect ratio
• New and improved English subtitle translations
• L’AMOUR EXISTE [LOVE EXISTS] (1960) — Maurice Pialat’s poetic 19-minute film about life in the Paris banlieues
• 2003 video interview with co-screenwriter Arlette Langmann, conducted by former Cahiers du cinéma editor-in-chief, and current director of the Cinémathèque Française, Serge Toubiana
• 32-minute 1973 interview with Maurice Pialat, from the programme Champ contre-champ
• CHOSES VUES AUTOUR DE L’ENFANCE NUE [THINGS SEEN AROUND L’ENFANCE NUE] (1969) — 50-minute documentary by Roger Stéphane shot in the course of L’Enfance-nue’s production, examining Pialat’s film-in-progress and the plight of foster children
• 2005 video interview with Michel Tarrazon, the star of L’Enfance-nue
• The film’s original trailer, along with trailers for other Maurice Pialat films to be released by The Masters of Cinema Series
• 40-page booklet containing a new essay by critic and filmmaker Kent Jones, and newly translated interviews with Maurice Pialat
One of the earth-shaking feature debuts in the history of cinema, Maurice Pialat’s L’Enfance-nue [Naked-Childhood] provides a perspective on growing-up that rejects both sentimentality and modish cynicism. Its unflinching, but also warmly accommodating, outlook on childhood attracted François Truffaut to take on the role as co-producer of Pialat’s film — which, ironically, exists as much as a response to Truffaut’s own debut The 400 Blows as that film was to the ‘cinema of childhood’ that came before the New Wave.
First-time actor Michel Tarrazon plays the young François, a provincial orphan whose destructive behaviour precipitates his relocation from the home of a long-term foster family to the care of a benevolent elderly couple. In the course of this transition, Pialat’s film presents the turbulence of François’s unmoored existence, and his explosive reactions to the contradictory emotions it engenders. This is the naked portrait of a soul’s — and an entire society’s — dysfunction, before the moment of reconciliation.
L’Enfance-nue represents the ideal introduction to the films of Maurice Pialat — an artist whose work resides alongside that of Jean Eustache and Philippe Garrel at the summit of the post-New Wave French cinema. One discovers in his pictures a raw and complicated emotional core which, as in the films of John Cassavetes, reveals upon closer examination a remarkably rigorous visual aesthetic, and a facility of direction which lifts both seasoned actors and debut amateurs to the level of greatness. Coupled here with Pialat’s poetic and brilliant early short L’Amour existe [Love Exists, 1960], L’Enfance-nue is the first masterpiece of an artist whose work has had an incalculable influence on contemporary directors as diverse as Bruno Dumont, Olivier Assayas, Michael Haneke, and the Dardenne brothers, among others — and whose 2003 passing led Gilles Jacob, president of the Festival de Cannes, to declare: “Pialat is dead and we are all orphaned. French cinema is orphaned.” The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Maurice Pialat’s 1968 debut feature film in a magnificent restored transfer for the first time on home video in the UK.
2-DISC EDITION features:
• New anamorphic transfer of the film in its original aspect ratio
• New and improved English subtitle translations
• L’AMOUR EXISTE [LOVE EXISTS] (1960) — Maurice Pialat’s poetic 19-minute film about life in the Paris banlieues
• 2003 video interview with co-screenwriter Arlette Langmann, conducted by former Cahiers du cinéma editor-in-chief, and current director of the Cinémathèque Française, Serge Toubiana
• 32-minute 1973 interview with Maurice Pialat, from the programme Champ contre-champ
• CHOSES VUES AUTOUR DE L’ENFANCE NUE [THINGS SEEN AROUND L’ENFANCE NUE] (1969) — 50-minute documentary by Roger Stéphane shot in the course of L’Enfance-nue’s production, examining Pialat’s film-in-progress and the plight of foster children
• 2005 video interview with Michel Tarrazon, the star of L’Enfance-nue
• The film’s original trailer, along with trailers for other Maurice Pialat films to be released by The Masters of Cinema Series
• 40-page booklet containing a new essay by critic and filmmaker Kent Jones, and newly translated interviews with Maurice Pialat
Last edited by souvenir on Wed Jun 25, 2008 2:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
- zedz
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm
Fantastic: best French film of the sixties alongside Balthazar, in my opinion. There's acres of material available from the French sets, so with luck the two discs will be packed to the gunwales: all of those early French shorts, for starters (and, fingers crossed, the sublime Corne d'or).
Another contender for that increasingly crowded DVD of the Year list.
Another contender for that increasingly crowded DVD of the Year list.
- zedz
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm
Gimme a P! Gimme an I! Gimme an A!Steven H wrote:(zedz has been this film's forum cheerleader for years and pushed me in its direction during the 60s list)
Here's how I defended this particular darling last year. Looking back, I actually placed it several rungs above the Bresson (no. 4 on my list).
It's a really stunning film that, like many Pialat films, takes conventional notions of cinematic empathy and burns them to the ground. The boy is one of the most complex and realistic child characters put on film, and neither he nor the idea of childhood is sentimentalised in the least (c.f. Les 400 coups, which has a reasonably complex view of Leaud but nevertheless completely sides with him against his world). It's an extremely evocative, extremely specific film, not a generalised view of children, or parents, or institutions, and it's all the more emotionally powerful for that. It's one of the few films I know that powerfully evokes genuine parent-child relationships in all their messiness and ambiguity, as opposed to relationships mussed up and ironed out for dramatic convenience. (Somewhat ironic in that the film focusses on artificial parent-child relationships.)Me, in relation to the 60s list, wrote:For me, hands down the best French film of the decade, and one of the great debut features of all time. It has a depth and complexity that puts such rivals as Les 400 coups and Kes in the shade. Empathy is easy when your protagonist has the dramatic dice loaded against him (e.g. unthinking adults punishing the innocent or semi-innocent), but the behaviour of Pialat's kid is genuinely hair-raising, and his adults are not simplistically demonized. There's an amazing scene (one among many) when the desperate foster parents go to the authorities for help and they feel as panicky as we do when it's assumed they want to hand back their difficult charge.
Formally, Pialat shows in his first feature the rigour and control of mature Bresson, but the elements contained within that form (the performances, scenes, soundtrack) come from a completely different place, thus giving birth to the post-New Wave school of tough French naturalism.
On a meta- note, after seeing this film it's a glorious relief to see the two main child actors of this film resurface in Pialat's La maison du bois, living much happier and less complicated lives fifty-something years in the past - which gives you some idea of how desperately I wanted to imagine a happy ending for the characters after the upheavals of L'enfance nue.
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- Joined: Sat Sep 09, 2006 11:38 am
- Location: New York City
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- Joined: Tue Apr 29, 2008 12:49 pm
And as I commented in another thread, I found Naked Childhood utterly ordinary and not within shouting distance of the films Bresson was making around that time ... although zedz's passionate advocacy makes for interesting reading. I too saw it on a double bill with Eustache's Mes petites amoreuses, a far more complex and authentic film, I thought.
I'll concede that the Pialat is better than Truffaut's Small Change, at least (but then, so is Home Alone).
I'll concede that the Pialat is better than Truffaut's Small Change, at least (but then, so is Home Alone).
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- not perpee
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:41 pm
These Pialat releases won't be Blu-ray, I'm afraid.... maybe in 2011 or something.... if the economy doesn't crash.
The image gallery at the film's website page is made using DVD grabs from the finished MoC DVD9.
The image gallery at the film's website page is made using DVD grabs from the finished MoC DVD9.
- zedz
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm
The screen grabs look great - have the Gaumont transfers been tweaked, or does "new" mean brand spanking new?
The link also identifies the extras on this release (same as the extensive Gaumont ones, but subs and a much more extensive booklet make this hands down the definitive edition):
• New anamorphic transfer of the film in its original aspect ratio
• New and improved English subtitle translations
• L’AMOUR EXISTE [LOVE EXISTS] (1960) — Maurice Pialat’s poetic 19-minute film about life in the Paris banlieues
• 2003 video interview with co-screenwriter Arlette Langmann, conducted by former Cahiers du cinéma editor-in-chief, and current director of the Cinémathèque Française, Serge Toubiana
• 32-minute 1973 interview with Maurice Pialat, from the programme Champ contre-champ
• CHOSES VUES AUTOUR DE L’ENFANCE NUE [THINGS SEEN AROUND L’ENFANCE NUE] (1969) — 50-minute documentary by Roger Stéphane shot in the course of L’Enfance-nue’s production, examining Pialat’s film-in-progress and the plight of foster children
• 2005 video interview with Michel Tarrazon, the star of L’Enfance-nue
• The film’s original trailer, along with trailers for other Maurice Pialat films to be released by The Masters of Cinema Series
• 40-page booklet containing a new essay by critic and filmmaker Kent Jones, and newly translated interviews with Maurice Pialat
L'amour existe is a wonderful short, but it's a world away from Pialat's features: more like a Left Bank essay film and maybe the flashiest thing he ever did.
The link also identifies the extras on this release (same as the extensive Gaumont ones, but subs and a much more extensive booklet make this hands down the definitive edition):
• New anamorphic transfer of the film in its original aspect ratio
• New and improved English subtitle translations
• L’AMOUR EXISTE [LOVE EXISTS] (1960) — Maurice Pialat’s poetic 19-minute film about life in the Paris banlieues
• 2003 video interview with co-screenwriter Arlette Langmann, conducted by former Cahiers du cinéma editor-in-chief, and current director of the Cinémathèque Française, Serge Toubiana
• 32-minute 1973 interview with Maurice Pialat, from the programme Champ contre-champ
• CHOSES VUES AUTOUR DE L’ENFANCE NUE [THINGS SEEN AROUND L’ENFANCE NUE] (1969) — 50-minute documentary by Roger Stéphane shot in the course of L’Enfance-nue’s production, examining Pialat’s film-in-progress and the plight of foster children
• 2005 video interview with Michel Tarrazon, the star of L’Enfance-nue
• The film’s original trailer, along with trailers for other Maurice Pialat films to be released by The Masters of Cinema Series
• 40-page booklet containing a new essay by critic and filmmaker Kent Jones, and newly translated interviews with Maurice Pialat
L'amour existe is a wonderful short, but it's a world away from Pialat's features: more like a Left Bank essay film and maybe the flashiest thing he ever did.
- Cabiria21
- Joined: Wed Jul 18, 2007 12:10 pm
DVD Beaver
Too bad he doesn't say which films the 6 trailers are for! He could have accidentally revealed a few more future releases.
Too bad he doesn't say which films the 6 trailers are for! He could have accidentally revealed a few more future releases.
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- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 2:27 pm
- Location: London, UK
You could just look at the screengrab.Cabiria21 wrote:DVD Beaver
Too bad he doesn't say which films the 6 trailers are for! He could have accidentally revealed a few more future releases.
To save further agony, the upcoming five unannounced titles are:
Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble (We Won't Grow Old Together)
Gueule ouverte (The Mouth Agape)
Passe ton bac d'abord (Graduate First)
A nos amours
and
Sous le soleil de Satan (Under the Sun of Satan).
- Awesome Welles
- Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2007 6:02 am
- Location: London
- Cabiria21
- Joined: Wed Jul 18, 2007 12:10 pm
well, it was early in the morning...Narshty wrote:You could just look at the screengrab.Cabiria21 wrote:DVD Beaver
Too bad he doesn't say which films the 6 trailers are for! He could have accidentally revealed a few more future releases.
- What A Disgrace
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 10:34 pm
- Contact:
Well, there are five new titles revealed in the screengrab, and only four between L'Enfance Nue and Police. Sous le soleil de Satan was released after Police, so I assume it will be spine number 77.FSimeoni wrote:That's interesting, MoC usually align the spines by year but then that would make Police #76 and Sous le soleil de Satan #77 wouldn't it? Or will MoC not release them together like this?
- MichaelB
- Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
- Location: Worthing
- Contact:
Sorry - I'm with Zedz. An absolutely stunning film. I'm not sure how I'd have reacted to it before becoming a parent myself, but I found parts of it almost too painful to watch. What on earth is "utterly ordinary" about it?Perkins Cobb wrote:And as I commented in another thread, I found Naked Childhood utterly ordinary and not within shouting distance of the films Bresson was making around that time ... although zedz's passionate advocacy makes for interesting reading.
As with Police, I can't think of a single foot that MoC has put wrong with this release, from the surprisingly lyrical short L'Amour existe through an enormously impressive array of extras, many of them near-contemporaneous. In fact, as L'Enfance-nue is a better film than Police, this is arguably the more desirable set.
- sidehacker
- Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2007 2:49 am
- Location: Bowling Green, Ohio
- Contact:
Trailer. I'm a bit worried that my expectations are becoming a bit unrealistic, but I still can't wait.
- zedz
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm
- MichaelB
- Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
- Location: Worthing
- Contact:
- GaryC
- Joined: Fri Mar 28, 2008 3:56 pm
- Location: Aldershot, Hampshire, UK
Since La gueule ouverte isn't out yet, I'll mention this here as there's a trailer for it on L'enfance nue Disc 2...
I know a trailer isn't necessarily representative of the final DVD, but the trailer is in the wrong OAR. Nestor Almendros was the DP and according to his book A Man With a Camera, the OAR of La gueule ouverte is 1.37:1. (My copy is a Farrar Strous Giroux paperback edition, and this info is on page 295.)
I don't know why it is, as Pialat's films before and since all seem to be in 1.66:1. Almendros says in his book he prefers 1.66:1 to Academy ratio as he finds the latter "heavy" and "static". But he certainly used Academy a lot - all but one of his Rohmer films, La gueule ouverte, and Mes petites amoureuses for Jean Eustache...not to mention documentaries like Koko The Talking Gorilla. On the other hand, all of Almendros's Truffaut films are 1.66:1.
I know a trailer isn't necessarily representative of the final DVD, but the trailer is in the wrong OAR. Nestor Almendros was the DP and according to his book A Man With a Camera, the OAR of La gueule ouverte is 1.37:1. (My copy is a Farrar Strous Giroux paperback edition, and this info is on page 295.)
I don't know why it is, as Pialat's films before and since all seem to be in 1.66:1. Almendros says in his book he prefers 1.66:1 to Academy ratio as he finds the latter "heavy" and "static". But he certainly used Academy a lot - all but one of his Rohmer films, La gueule ouverte, and Mes petites amoureuses for Jean Eustache...not to mention documentaries like Koko The Talking Gorilla. On the other hand, all of Almendros's Truffaut films are 1.66:1.
- sidehacker
- Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2007 2:49 am
- Location: Bowling Green, Ohio
- Contact:
- Cronenfly
- Joined: Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:04 pm