72 L'Enfance-nue

Discuss releases by Eureka and Masters of Cinema and the films on them.
Message
Author
User avatar
Cronenfly
Joined: Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:04 pm

#26 Post by Cronenfly » Mon Sep 15, 2008 4:09 pm

Matt wrote:
GaryC wrote:Police, which I will be reviewing next week for DVD Times, is region-free as well.
They're still PAL, though, right?
Looks like they are from the review. Gonna need CPUs indeed...

User avatar
justeleblanc
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 6:05 pm
Location: Connecticut

#27 Post by justeleblanc » Mon Sep 15, 2008 5:07 pm

I've never quite understood the joy over a Region Free disc since NTSC/PAL seems to be just as important. And Netflix will only carry NTSC discs.

User avatar
TheGodfather
Joined: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:39 pm
Location: The Netherlands

#28 Post by TheGodfather » Mon Sep 15, 2008 5:11 pm

zone_resident wrote:DVD Times
That sounds really promising. Might have to get it after all. Wasn`t sure at first, with my evergrowing wishlist...

User avatar
Cronenfly
Joined: Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:04 pm

#29 Post by Cronenfly » Mon Sep 15, 2008 5:17 pm

justeleblanc wrote:I've never quite understood the joy over a Region Free disc since NTSC/PAL seems to be just as important. And Netflix will only carry NTSC discs.
You're correct, of course; unless you have a player that can decode both NTSC and PAL signals (if such a thing exists; I'm no expert, obviously), it really only helps vis-a-vis computers (and you can go region-free there via a [free] VLC player, so it's a non-issue, really), and it doesn't make the discs any more easily accessible to rent, either. I'd never really given the R0 joy much thought (as it's never been an issue for me, somehow; I've always been either region free/never had R0 PAL discs); I guess it's a symbolic freedom for the most part...

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

#30 Post by MichaelB » Mon Sep 15, 2008 5:33 pm

Cronenfly wrote:You're correct, of course; unless you have a player that can decode both NTSC and PAL signals (if such a thing exists; I'm no expert, obviously)
Such a thing not only exists, but is almost universal in Europe. In fact, I believe virtually all European DVD players can handle both PAL and NTSC with no problems, and only a handful of very elderly televisions can't cope with NTSC. In fact, I'm currently playing NTSC extras off a US-sourced Blu-ray disc on my British PS3 and British television, both entirely unmodified.

Which is why it's so odd that this seems to be so unusual on the other side of the Atlantic.

peerpee
not perpee
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:41 pm

#31 Post by peerpee » Mon Sep 15, 2008 8:03 pm

MichaelB wrote:Which is why it's so odd that this seems to be so unusual on the other side of the Atlantic.
I'm of the opinion it's all a Hollywood conspiracy dating back years, to protect the sale of NTSC product and to ensure a one-way flow of NTSC discs out of the country, without the fear of PAL discs flooding the market and wrecking their "little thing".

Now that PAL and NTSC are no more with respect to HD material on Blu-rays, all we have to do is get around region coding to create a truly level playing field.

hellochas
Joined: Fri Mar 14, 2008 3:29 am

#32 Post by hellochas » Wed Sep 17, 2008 4:08 pm

Already available. I am absolutely convinced that US major studio heads live in a dream world. Why Blue Ray region coding was sanctioned in the first place I'll never know. Like the oh so useful DVD region encoding never happened!

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

#33 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Sep 17, 2008 5:14 pm


User avatar
sidehacker
Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2007 2:49 am
Location: Bowling Green, Ohio
Contact:

#34 Post by sidehacker » Sun Sep 21, 2008 9:45 am

Amazon just sent me a shipping notice. I can hardly contain my excitement. It seriously took me hours just to write this post.

User avatar
Sanjuro
Joined: Fri Nov 03, 2006 1:37 am
Location: Yokohama, Japan

#35 Post by Sanjuro » Sun Sep 21, 2008 7:30 pm

MichaelB wrote:
Cronenfly wrote:You're correct, of course; unless you have a player that can decode both NTSC and PAL signals (if such a thing exists; I'm no expert, obviously)
Such a thing not only exists, but is almost universal in Europe. In fact, I believe virtually all European DVD players can handle both PAL and NTSC with no problems, and only a handful of very elderly televisions can't cope with NTSC. In fact, I'm currently playing NTSC extras off a US-sourced Blu-ray disc on my British PS3 and British television, both entirely unmodified.

Which is why it's so odd that this seems to be so unusual on the other side of the Atlantic.
I used to own a region-free DVD player which couldn't handle PAL. That was quite a while ago though. Since then almost every multi-region player on the market seems to contain a convertor. Even the cheap nasty plastic things they seem to be selling at the video store nowadays can manage it.

Nice to know it's no longer an issue with Blu-Ray though. Someone'll get past the region coding on those eventualluy.

User avatar
zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

#36 Post by zedz » Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:14 pm

A brisk bouquet to MoC for this wonderful release. The recent strategy of finding excellent European releases (often unsubbed) and finessing them into definitive, English-friendly editions (see also Mizoguchi, Dreyer and L'Herbier) is a smart one, and it surely reaches some kind of apotheosis with these Pialat releases, which take some of the finest releases to date in the medium (those Gaumont boxes) and improve upon them. I hope they're a respectable hit and lots of people discover these amazing films through MoC.

The extras for this set, direct from Gaumont, are impeccably thorough, with a key short, contemporary contextual material and restrospective featurettes. MoC's addition - the book - is up to their expected standard, and the Kent Jones essay does as good a job as anything I've seen of articulating just what's so extraordinary about Pialat's style in this film (and elsewhere). It's somewhat off-putting, but ultimately useful, that Jones pairs the inevitable Cassavetes comparison with one to Malick, and he argues the comparisons well, even though I come away thinking how far from either Pialat really is.

There's also a fantastically grumpy text interview with Pialat (not the last!) in which he comprehensively dismisses practically everything he's done to that point.

EDIT: Further to that, I just had to make mention of the Champ / Contre Champ interview, which is classic Pialat: a spectacular display of kamikaze self-deprecation in which he slags everything he's ever done but not without simultaneously dragging down the French film industry, film critics and the filmgoing public with him: idiots, sell-outs, talentless hacks the lot of them. And he doesn't spare his host either. After the guy bangs on and on about L'Enfance-nue's lack of success, Pialat finally unleashes the zinger that, yes, if the film had only been more successful they wouldn't be having this discussion, since he could have sold the film to a less shitty television network.

User avatar
kidc85
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2008 1:15 pm

#37 Post by kidc85 » Sun Oct 12, 2008 10:46 am

The Sunday Telegraph made it their 'DVD of the week', calling it "remarkable".

User avatar
GringoTex
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 5:57 am

Re: 72 L'Enfance-nue

#38 Post by GringoTex » Sun Nov 09, 2008 8:59 am

Amazing film. I have an issue with Jones' essay, though. He claims there's no causality for Francois' acts of destruction. I think he's falling into the trap of the adult perspective in the film, whereby the foster parents and others claim mystification at Francois' behavior, thereby absolving them of reponsibility. Each of Francois' blow-ups is preceeded by an injustice committed against him. For me, the causality is very clear. Others' thoughts?

User avatar
zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: 72 L'Enfance-nue

#39 Post by zedz » Sun Nov 09, 2008 7:02 pm

I think you're probably right. Pialat in this film seems to me to be scrupulous in allowing everybody's side of the story to play out with its own internal logic, including Francois. What's startling to me (and, I think, to the adults in the film) is the lack of proportion between cause and effect when it comes to Francois' actions, but that's hardly the same thing as a lack of motivation, and it's clearly related to his shaky socialization in that he doesn't have any clear sense of the consequences of his actions - or at least no empathy with them. There is a faint hope at the end of the film that he'll acquire a superego, but that's as much of a happy resolution as we're permitted.

User avatar
Yojimbo
Joined: Fri Jul 04, 2008 10:06 am
Location: Ireland

Re: 72 L'Enfance-nue

#40 Post by Yojimbo » Thu Jan 01, 2009 4:23 pm

Just placed my order: perhaps when I get it I may watch it as part of a triple bill with 'Les Quatre Cents Coups' and 'Kes'

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: 72 L'Enfance-nue

#41 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Jan 22, 2009 5:42 pm

Strictly Film School's notes on the film.

peerpee
not perpee
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:41 pm

Re: 72 L'Enfance-nue

#42 Post by peerpee » Wed Jan 28, 2009 10:17 pm

Montmartre Cemetary, today:

Image

Image

Image

Image

T99
Joined: Fri Nov 24, 2006 7:51 am

Re: 72 L'Enfance-nue

#43 Post by T99 » Thu Feb 12, 2009 8:33 am

L'Enfance-Nue - what a fantastic film. Thanks MoC!

However, did anyone understand a thing of what Pialat said in the 30 minute interview? He seemed to be contradicting himself in every other sentence. The things he said about choosing film subjects for commercial purposes seemed completely out of place considering what kind of films he was to make in the future.

User avatar
zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: 72 L'Enfance-nue

#44 Post by zedz » Thu Feb 12, 2009 4:32 pm

T99 wrote:However, did anyone understand a thing of what Pialat said in the 30 minute interview? He seemed to be contradicting himself in every other sentence. The things he said about choosing film subjects for commercial purposes seemed completely out of place considering what kind of films he was to make in the future.
Pialat was famously cantankerous, and I see that interview as primarily fuelled by his antagonism for the interviewer (who's continually bringing up L'Enfance nue's lack of commercial success). He's fucking with him, basically.

On the other hand, the grain of truth may be that Pialat did consistently address 'commercial' subjects - relationship dramas, artist bios, policiers, literary adaptations, films of childhood and adolescence - even if his approach to them was antithetical to their popular treatment (La Gueule ouverte is the gaping exception in terms of commerically acceptable subject matter). He embraced the star system (Depardieu, Huppert, Dutronc) and did incredible things with it - he even 'created' a star of his own in Bonnaire. Nothing I've read about Pialat suggests that he considered commercial failure as some kind of aesthetic badge of honour: he rather resented it, but accepted it as confirming his worst suspicions about the film establishment and general public (and probably himself).

ezmbmh
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:05 pm

Re: 72 L'Enfance-nue

#45 Post by ezmbmh » Tue Sep 15, 2009 5:44 pm

GringoTex wrote:Amazing film. I have an issue with Jones' essay, though. He claims there's no causality for Francois' acts of destruction. I think he's falling into the trap of the adult perspective in the film, whereby the foster parents and others claim mystification at Francois' behavior, thereby absolving them of reponsibility. Each of Francois' blow-ups is preceeded by an injustice committed against him. For me, the causality is very clear. Others' thoughts?
Part of the film’s considerable power (just finally dekevied it) is in it’s not explaining away the boy’s behavior with too obvious causalities. What it does instead is let us see just how hard it is for a kid in these circumstances, and for the more-or-less well meaning families that take him in, to figure anything out. His actions are troubling but not unfathomable, since he never knows when the Director’s gonna come pull the plug, when an attachment he makes, letting his guard down, will be aborted by illness, death, abandonment. Of course he’s raging, and the measure of his “good heart” is that he’s sensitive enough to life’s possibilities and smart enough about his own small portion in them that his rage is in direct emotional proportion to what’s been taken away, offered, taken away again.

spoiler alert:
SpoilerShow
The most touching scenes to me are with the Granny, and their effortless bonding—the remarkable moment when this thug-in-training gives her an unsolicited kiss, and the scene where the foster father shows his medals and pictures of his past. He’s had a rough time, suffered losses nearly equal to the boy’s, but somehow he’s managed to make a coherent narrative—a life story—out of them, largely because he knew where he came from and who cared about him, so there was a way to contextualize and to recover somewhat, therefore, from those losses. These are exactly what Francois doesn’t have, and it’s more powerful and evocative to do what Pilalat does, show us what a boy like this feel, does, than pontificate and anesthetize us with nostrums and social theories we already know.

User avatar
gyorgys
Joined: Sat Aug 02, 2008 3:11 pm
Location: Europe

Re: 534 L'enfance nue

#46 Post by gyorgys » Fri Aug 06, 2010 2:07 pm

It's region-free (= 0).

Dr. Geek
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2009 4:50 pm

Re: 534 L'enfance nue

#47 Post by Dr. Geek » Fri Aug 06, 2010 2:23 pm

gyorgys wrote:It's region-free (= 0).
Well, then, I read elsewhere that it is region 2 coded.

User avatar
Matt
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:58 pm

Re: 72 L'Enfance-nue

#48 Post by Matt » Fri Aug 06, 2010 2:57 pm

The disc is region-free, but it's also PAL. Most run-of-the-mill DVD players in the US can neither sidestep region coding NOR convert PAL to NTSC. Please see the conversation starting at the top of this thread.

Post Reply