Best English-friendly & video release · updated 28 days ago
Overview
Celestine, the chamber-maid, has a new job in the country, at the Lanlaires. She has decided to use her beauty to seduce a wealthy man, but Mr. Lanlaire is not a right choice: the house is firmly controlled by Madame Lanlaire, helped by the strange valet Joseph. Then she tries the neighbour, former officer Mauger. This seems to work. But soon the son of the Lanlaires comes back. He is young, attractive and does not share his mother's antirepublican opinions. So Celestine's beauty attracts Captain Mauger, young Georges Lanlaire, and Joseph. Three men, from three different social classes, with three different conceptions of life. Will Celestine be able to convince Georges of her sincerity?
Director: Jean Renoir
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab) · DVDBeaver (opens in a new tab)
(both from the same flawed restoration)
The BFI and Gaumont Blu-ray releases are both from the same restoration by Éclair. Although this restoration is much superior in detail to the old Criterion DVD, like many Éclair restorations, it has issues with colour. There is a definite yellow cast to the footage, making skin tones appear sickly and dampening the impact of the colour. The image is also murkier than the Criterion.
As Renoir scholar Tag Gallagher notes: "I talked a lot toward the end about the light blue walls (Criterion); but when I got the BFI blu I was greatly deflated, because the walls are light gray!"
That said, as visible in the screen caps at DVD Beaver, the Criterion has compromised colour too, and often looks too blue/magenta. There is a regraded edition of the BFI Blu-ray out there on the high seas.
The audio on the Blu-ray releases is slightly compressed, but better than earlier DVD releases and relatively full frequency.
The BFI is most likely the best English-friendly release as it includes English subtitles for the bonus features.
Director: Jean Renoir
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
2005 StudioCanal DVD
2005 StudioCanal DVD > Criterion
Director: Jean Renoir
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
The Criterion 4K Blu-ray has marginally better detail and grain structure than ESC 4K Blu-ray
The ESC France 4K Blu-ray is an SDR grade erroneously presented in HDR, but if your player can force the HDR into SDR it looks very good.
Director: Jean Renoir
Video format: 1080p Blu-ray
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Jean Renoir
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Director: Jean Renoir
2021 StudioCanal Blu-ray
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
2021 StudioCanal Blu-ray has better encode and gamma levels compared to older StudioCanal Blu-ray caps
StudioCanal 4k transfer
Director: Jean Renoir
Video format: 1080p Blu-ray
StudioCanal France and Spain
StudioCanal France and Spain have BDs
Director: Jean Renoir
Kino Lorber/Raro Blu-ray
Raro (Kino Lorber) and France TF1 Blu-ray
Video format: HD Streaming
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Amazon US HD Streaming is from the 2018 UCLA restoration. Olive Films Blu-ray is from an older scan and quite rough. caps
Olive Films Blu-ray is again rough, with distortion, crackle and other issues, but sounds much more natural. With some EQ the restored track can be significantly improved
Director: Elaine May
Cinématographe 4K Blu-ray
> MoC > Olive Films. From nicolas:
The master is good but it’s not that big an upgrade from the Olive Films disc and Vinegar Syndrome’ encode has some blocky highlights. A shame that they didn’t hire David Mackenzie here.
Cinématographe has unnecessary noise gating not present on the previous releases.
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
2017 Olive Films Signature Blu-ray
The Jokers 4K Blu-ray
(Jokers 4K Blu-ray has forced France subs)
The Jokers 4K Blu-ray has raised black levels/gamma issue, good when fixed
1992 Republic Pictures LaserDisc
Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray or 2018 Olive Films/BFI or 2012 Olive Films/Italy Sinister Films Blu-ray
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
All three are not ideal.
All three are not ideal.
Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has frozen grain, sharpening, lots of debris, and handles lesser materials. The supposed non-Superscope version is false advertising. It merely reveals more picture information.
1992 Republic Pictures LaserDisc PCM Mono
Criterion LaserDisc has exclusive commentary. Olive Films Signature Blu-ray and BFI Blu-ray each have exclusive extras. Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has exclusive commentary.
Director: André de Toth
Sources: cinema.ucla.edu (opens in a new tab)
New UCLA restoration from Original Camera Negative
Director: Dave Fleischer
Olive Films Betty Boop: The Essential Collection: Volume 4 Blu-ray
More Drama on Blu-ray
Director: Joel Coen
Director's Cut: Disappointing UK StudioCanal/US Criterion 4K Blu-ray
Theatrical Cut: LaserDisc or 2001 UK Universal DVD
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?p=21782879#post21782879 - comparison. StudioCanal is a massive improvement to the Criterion but still flawed in some areas (chroma noise)
Director: Liliana Cavani
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Iain Softley
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Both 88 Films and Germany Capelight are superior to the Shout! Factory in HDR10 but their FEL layer may even things out. Objectively, the Capelight looks best as they avoided the chroma blocking that’s visible in 88’s disc but they in turn included an Atmos mix. I have the Shout! Factory, love how it looks and the 4K transfer is spectacular. https://slow.pics/c/vPmFQSAH
Shout! Factory has the exclusive The Beauty of the Baud and the You Can't Stop Us All featurettes.
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Bruce Robinson
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Arrow 4K Blu-ray has stronger encode than Criterion
Director: Olivier Assayas
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Encoding is clunky on both Arrow and Criterion BDs but Arrow at least included the original stereo mix in addition to the 5.1 remix, while Criterion only included the 5.1 remix.
Director: John Woo
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
review: Disk Kino
Both have better encoding than Disk Kino, some shots are better on Shout! Factory, others on Arrow
Shout Factory still has the best video while Arrow did a questionable regrade. Arrow definitely has less grain in most shots, has a worse encode and is cm v2.9 compared to Shout’s cm v4.0.
Shout! Factory/Arrow 4K Blu-ray has the original mono
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