72 L'Enfance-nue

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souvenir
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 12:20 pm

72 L'Enfance-nue

#1 Post by souvenir » Wed Jun 25, 2008 2:27 pm

L'Enfance-nue

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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.

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zedz
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#2 Post by zedz » Wed Jun 25, 2008 3:54 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.

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zedz
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#3 Post by zedz » Thu Jun 26, 2008 7:31 pm

Steven H wrote:(zedz has been this film's forum cheerleader for years and pushed me in its direction during the 60s list)
Gimme a P! Gimme an I! Gimme an A!

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).
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.
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.)

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.

Macintosh
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#4 Post by Macintosh » Fri Jun 27, 2008 2:10 am

Saw it on a double bill with My Little Loves at the French institute. Amazing night overall i must say... somewhere between The 400 Blows and Fanny and Alexander lies My Little Loves as the defining film about struggling adolescence.

Perkins Cobb
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#5 Post by Perkins Cobb » Fri Jun 27, 2008 12:26 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).

peerpee
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#6 Post by peerpee » Fri Jul 04, 2008 1:35 am

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.

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zedz
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#7 Post by zedz » Fri Jul 04, 2008 3:54 am

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.

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Cabiria21
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#8 Post by Cabiria21 » Fri Aug 29, 2008 1:06 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.

Narshty
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#9 Post by Narshty » Fri Aug 29, 2008 1:54 pm

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.
You could just look at the screengrab.

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).

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Awesome Welles
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#10 Post by Awesome Welles » Fri Aug 29, 2008 2:51 pm

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?

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Cabiria21
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#11 Post by Cabiria21 » Fri Aug 29, 2008 6:04 pm

Narshty wrote:
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.
You could just look at the screengrab.
well, it was early in the morning... :oops:

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What A Disgrace
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#12 Post by What A Disgrace » Fri Aug 29, 2008 6:28 pm

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?
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.

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MichaelB
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#13 Post by MichaelB » Sat Sep 06, 2008 5:23 am

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.
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?

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.

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#14 Post by sidehacker » Sun Sep 07, 2008 6:16 pm

Trailer. I'm a bit worried that my expectations are becoming a bit unrealistic, but I still can't wait.

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zedz
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#15 Post by zedz » Sun Sep 07, 2008 8:55 pm

sidehacker wrote:Trailer. I'm a bit worried that my expectations are becoming a bit unrealistic, but I still can't wait.
I can't believe they put the cat in there. (And that's just the start of it.)

peerpee
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#16 Post by peerpee » Sun Sep 07, 2008 10:00 pm

That cat scene at the start is actually a different take to what appears in the film! (Only discovered that the other week).

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zedz
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#17 Post by zedz » Mon Sep 08, 2008 8:32 am

peerpee wrote:That cat scene at the start is actually a different take to what appears in the film! (Only discovered that the other week).
They must have had a big ol' box of cats on hand for the multiple takes.

(We've probably lost half your presales already!)

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MichaelB
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#18 Post by MichaelB » Mon Sep 08, 2008 8:46 am

Given that the BBFC passed it uncut, I think it's very safe to assume that no harm came to them in real life.

They don't mess about when it comes to the Animals Act, as Second Run found out the hard way with Knights of the Teutonic Order and Marketa Lazarova!

peerpee
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#19 Post by peerpee » Mon Sep 08, 2008 9:09 am

Michael, I got BAD BOY BUBBY past em. Lemme know if you ever need any help :)

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GaryC
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#20 Post by GaryC » Fri Sep 12, 2008 2:35 am

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.

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sidehacker
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#21 Post by sidehacker » Fri Sep 12, 2008 3:23 pm

For what it's worth, the French DVD is in 1.66:1.

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#22 Post by zone_resident » Mon Sep 15, 2008 7:50 am


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Cronenfly
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#23 Post by Cronenfly » Mon Sep 15, 2008 3:41 pm

zone_resident wrote:DVD Times
Very nice:
The disc is region-free.
I hope the rest of the MoC Pialat discs follow suit, if only so I can lend them to non-region free friends.
Last edited by Cronenfly on Mon Sep 15, 2008 4:05 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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GaryC
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#24 Post by GaryC » Mon Sep 15, 2008 3:56 pm

I hope the rest of the MoC Pialat discs follow suit, if only so I can lend them to non-region free friends.[/quote]

Police, which I will be reviewing next week for DVD Times, is region-free as well.

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Matt
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#25 Post by Matt » Mon Sep 15, 2008 4:06 pm

GaryC wrote:Police, which I will be reviewing next week for DVD Times, is region-free as well.
They're still PAL, though, right? Gonna be a problem unless your friends are watching on a computer.

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