Criterion Catch-Up 2, Part 6B: The Other Five Moral Tales

...continued from Criterion Catch-Up 2, Part 6A.

Ah, color, lovely color!  Yes, even though 1967's The Collector is Tale #4, it was made third, meaning Eric Rohmer went from early black and white, to color, then back to black and white: one more small reason viewing these films in the intended order rather than release order feels right.  Anyway, color is especially appropriate for this tale about the power of external beauty.  Lazing around on an old chateau by the beach, two chauvinist cads (one in particular) wind up throwing themselves on the rocky shores of a young woman named , with a reputation for being a temptress.  The humor is up in this one, and you'll learn a lot about the philosophy of dandyism.  Probably more than you're ready for.  But it's worth it; this movie is so fun.

2006 Criterion DVD top; 2020 Criterion BD bottom.

We've moved onto a new page, so I'll just reiterate, all of these Criterion DVD transfers are letterboxed, which was arguably a good thing on old tube TVs, but it's a welcome improvement to see the new BDs take advantage of their full potential resolution.  The previous Tales all started at 1.31:1 on DVD, which was adjusted to 1.37 for their blus.  The same is true here except this DVD is 1.32:1.  Just casually tossing your eyes down the page, immediately you'll have noticed that the blu-ray's colors are more vivid and the contrast is stronger.  This one's a new 2k scan of the original 35mm negative, and the difference is obvious.  Not just film grain (although, yes) but lots of fine detail is restored compared to the soft, milky image of the old transfer.  All these blu-rays are clear improvements, but it's all the more appreciable with these later ones.

And again, while both discs have the original French mono with optional English subtitles, the blu-ray bumps it up to an uncompressed LPCM track.

Also again, we're saving all the short films in these sets 'till the end, but there are a couple of Collector-specific extras on hand, in both the DVD and BD boxed sets.  Well, primarily one, a vintage television interview with Rohmer that runs almost an hour (presumably it originally filled the entire hour slot with commercials).  Anyway, it's great and very direct, revealing a lot of his history and thinking behind the film.  There's also the original theatrical trailer.

Finally (because, again, Moral Tale #6, Love In the Afternoon, has already been covered here), we arrive at Claire's Knee from 1970.  The beautiful lakeside property in this film makes The Collector's chateau look like a dump.  Unfortunately, we've hit the cosmically ordained "creepy middle-aged guy leches over teenage girls" story in our saga, but Rohmer handles it as elegantly as anybody could, and it's far more self aware than most modern attempts.  This isn't a Woody Allen-style romanticization of line-crossing May/ December relationships - though it may come off that way at first - but a sincere and critical exploration of that more unfortunate aspect of human nature.  But admittedly, it comes off more skeevy now than it did in its day.

2006 Criterion DVD top; 2020 Criterion BD bottom.

Well, we're back to 1.31:1 versus 1.37:1.  This DVD has a bit of a red hue, which the blu-ray color corrects, despite having a more natural warm tone.  You can see how much richer the colors are in that first set of shots, where the DVD comes off as far more pale.  This is another fresh 2k scan of an original 35mm camera negative, and while grain capture is a bit patchy, it's light years beyond the DVD's transfer, which doesn't even hint at it's film grain origins. 

As always, both discs provide the original French mono with optional English subtitles, but the blu-ray kicks it up to LPCM.

For extras, we get the theatrical trailer again.  And as with My Night At Maud's, we get another vintage television clip.  This time it's nine minutes with stars Beatrice Romand (who's gone on to appear in at least five other Rohmer films), Jean-Claude Brialy and Lawrence de Monaghan.  We're told Rohmer doesn't appear because he refuses to be filmed as he is "quite unsociable."  It's rather superficial and chatty, with the actors basically just pressed to give their impressions of Rohmer as a person.  Also, the picture quality's pretty rough.  But it's a rare bit of video, so it's nice to have it preserved here.

And so now it's finally time for those shorts, which I guess we shall tackle chronologically.  And I'll just take this moment to remind you the 1958 short Veronique and her Dunce, which is in both Criterion boxes (indeed, all the shorts and extras are the same across the 2006 and 2020 sets) has already been covered here.  We'll start with Charlotte and Her Steak, a brief 1951 clip starring Jean Luc Goddard as a young man who tries to make one woman jealous by visiting the titular Charlotte, who does indeed cook and eat a steak.  It plays like a brief chapter in a story otherwise left untold - in an opening screed, they call it a sketch - but it's a well written scene for what it is.

2006 AE DVD top; 2006 Criterion DVD mid; 2020 Criterion BD bottom.

Well, I'll tell you up front: don't expect remasters for any of these shorts.  They're included as extras and treated as such.  The just barely shifts from 1.34 to 1.33 to 1.35, respectively, and that's not down any difference in the framing, just a very imperceptible pinching of the image.  The blu-ray's an upconvert, so they're all just using the same master, which has some damage, dirt, scratches, judder and just a generally old and gruff presentation.  The opening credits are literally crooked.  And then there's some modern edge enhancement added to the mix.  All three discs have lossy French mono, but at least the subtitles are removable.

2006 AE DVD top; 2006 Criterion DVD mid; 2020 Criterion BD bottom.

Next we have the 1964 short, Nadja In Paris.  She's an exchange student studying abroad in... some French city, I can't remember which.  It's a sort of a brief, personal travelogue essay as she narrates footage of her time wandering around, chatting with the locals and visiting the museum.  It doesn't look that much fun to me.  The blu-ray is a pinch wider (1.35:1, as opposed to the DVDs' 1.33), but otherwise there's really no notable difference between the transfers.  The French audio is mono (obviously), and the English subtitles are removable on all three discs, so that's nice.

Now, these next three shorts aren't in the Artificial Eye set, only the Criterion(s).

2006 Criterion DVD top; 2020 Criterion BD bottom.

First up is a twenty-minute education film about the philosopher Blaise Pascal from 1965, appropriately titled On Pascal.  It's really an episode of a vintage TV show (En profil dans le texte), where two guests, an author and a priest, discuss/ debate their feelings on his writings.  The DVD is 1.32:1 and the BD is 1.34.  Both discs have lossy audio with removable subtitles.  The DVD has a faintly blueish hue, while the BD is more green.  Both are interlaced, but one benefit of HD is that the combing is smaller/ subtler, so it's by a very thin margin, but I'd actually call the 2020 release an improvement.

2006 Criterion DVD top; 2020 Criterion BD bottom.

Next we have the 1966 short A Modern Coed.  This is another documentary piece, not a fictional work, where a female student stars and narrates, a la Nadja In Paris, but this one spends more time actually at school.  It's kind of an early feminist observational piece.  The only real difference in terms of the image is a slight pinch in the DVD's AR, which is 1.33:1, that the BD shifts to 1.34.  The French audio is lossy mono on both discs, which each have removable English subtitles.

2006 Criterion DVD top; 2020 Criterion BD bottom.

This leaves us at the last Criterion short, the considerably more modern The Curve from 1999.  It's not really a Rohmer film, written and directed by actress Edwige Shakti, who of course also stars.  Rohmer is just credited as technical adviser, but she's clearly taking a lot of inspiration from him.  She plays the model of an art student who meets up with his grandfather to discuss the curve of her back as a symbol of female beauty and comparing her to various works of art.  It plays like a clunky student film, and probably was something along those lines.  For Rohmer completists, though, it's a nice little bonus.  The film is 1.32 on the DVD and 1.34 on the BD and interlaced on both.  It was shot on miniDV, though, so that's likely inherent to the footage.  Even though it's a new film, the audio is still mono, and lossy on both discs.  As always, the subtitles are removable.

But wait, we have one more short film - this one's only in the Early Rohmer set, and not the Six Moral Tales boxes.  It's an hour+ 1968 TV documentary called The Lumiere Brothers, about the early cinematic pioneers.  It's basically two sit-down interviews with fellow filmmakers Jean Renoir and Henri Langlois with some clips inserted.  It's a bit dry, mostly just static shots of these guys in their chairs talking towards the cameras, but a rare and knowledgeable discussion by and about some important film masters.  It's framed at 1.31:1, and the film has some flecks, but looks pretty good overall.  The audio is mono in Dolby Digital 2.0 with removable subtitles.

Eric Rohmer: The Early Works just has the two DVDs in a clear amary case.  But the Criterion boxes are packed.  The discs are housed a fold-out digi-pack that's housed in a slipbox.  Also inside is a 64-page booklet with a series of essays and a vintage Rohmer interview.  And more impressively, a 262-page collection of all of Rohmer's original Six Moral Tales stories.  Criterion's BD box is easily the way to go for all six films and the accompanying shorts.  But Sign Of the Lion is only available on DVD as part of the massive French Potemkine set (briefly discussed here), so many of us Rohmer fans are still holding onto the AE DVDs, too.

Criterion Catch-Up 2, Part 6A: The Other Five Moral Tales

Today's post has been on my to-do list for ages.  I covered one of Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales in my initial post on Arrow's Eric Rohmer boxed sets.  Criterion, of course, has released all six in a fancy boxed set, which they later remade for blu-ray, and I included those editions of Love In the Afternoon in that post.  I also covered his 1958 short film, Veronique and her Dunce, on that page, since it's included in Arrow's DVD set and Criterion's Moral Tales boxes (as an extra, since it's not one of the Moral Tales).  But I never did the other five Moral Tales ...until now.

Tales covered on this page: The Bakery Girl Of Monceau Suzanne's Career My Night At Maud's

Tales covered on other pages: The Collector Claire's Knee Love In the Afternoon

Criterion released their 6-disc DVD boxed set of Six Moral Tales in 2006.  It also includes several short films by Rohmer and assorted extras, which we'll delve into further down.  It was the first time all six films had been released together, and for a couple of them, it was their DVD debuts altogether.  Love In the Afternoon had been previously released by Kino Lorber, while The Bakery Girl of Monceau, Suzanne's Career and My Night At Maud's (Tales #1-3, respectively) had previously been released on DVD in the UK by Artificial Eye.  I've still got two of those thanks to their inclusion in AE's 'Eric Rohmer: The Early Works' 2-disc set, also from 2006, because it included additional Rohmer films still unavailable elsewhere to this day.  So we'll pour through all of that as well.  And then, of course, Criterion reissued their Moral Tales in a 2020 3-disc blu-ray box with all new restorations.

So I guess I'll just go chronologically and start with 1962's The Sign Of Leo, even though it's not one of the Moral Tales.  It's Rohmer's first feature, and shows him working in some surprisingly conventional, uncharacteristic ways.  It features non-diegetic score and a widescreen frame.  But the story, about an American in Paris who spends his money recklessly because he is convinced he will luck his way into a fortume, and tone suggest the Rohmer we know: starting out a character with a philosophical notion and having the whole story test it, injecting a bit of fancy and fantasy into his contemporaries' Neo-realism.  Speaking of his contemporaries, Jean-Luc Godard has an uncredited cameo, and - purely coincidentally, I'm sure - went on to declare this #5 in his top ten films of the year (his own film, My Life To Live, ranked #6).

2006 Artificial Eye DVD.

AE's DVDs are non-anamorphic, which is fine for all the fullscreen stuff, but a problem with this widescreen movie.  I've left the negative space around the first screenshot above to illustrate why.  It's also framed at 1.58:1, which is presumably wrong (unhelpfully, the back of the case just claims it's "[p]resented in the original 1.33:1 original aspect ratio" for the set as a whole).  But otherwise it's a pretty nice transfer for DVD, non-interlaced and looking generally filmic.  Sporadic specks of dirt and damage might be taking that a little too far, but it's light and never distracting.  AE presents the original mono track in Dolby Digital 2.0 with removable English subtitles and also throws in a (similarly non-anamorphic) widescreen trailer.

Okay, so now let's get into the Moral Tales proper.  1963's The Bakery Girl of Monceau is #1, and it's actually just a 23-minute short.  Barbet Schroeder (director of the General Idi Amin Dada doc that we just looked at in Part 4) stars as a student who falls for a woman he spies wandering the streets of Paris.  It's a low budget affair, not even filmed with synced sound.  So a lot of it's narrated, though they eventually had to use ADR for some crucial dialogue exchanges in the second half.  As you can imagine, then, while it fits the concept of all the Moral Tales, where a man is dedicated to a woman, questions his beliefs when he's tempted by another, but ultimately winds up preferring the first, it isn't able to deliver the complexity or fascination of the bulk of Rohmer's work.  I don't normally think a low budget would work too hard against a film like this, but when you're at the level of no natural sound... well.  It's still a pleasant and engaging short film; but not one I'd bother to revisit much if it weren't part of the series.

2006 AE DVD top; 2006 Criterion DVD mid; 2020 Criterion BD bottom.

So we've got a bit of a shifting aspect ratio here.  AE starts us off at 1.33:1, just like it says on the tin.  Criterion's 2006 DVD is a bit skinny at 1.31:1, and in 2020, they correct it to 1.37:1.  It's not a huge difference, but the new framing is slightly cropping the image vertically.  And the Criterion DVD is once again windowboxed, which is annoying now that TVs don't have overscanning.  So the blu is already a welcome upgrade.  Scanned in 2k from the original 16mm camera negative, it's also a stronger image.  As an old 16mm film, we're not getting much more detail, but film grain is authentic and thoroughly captured.  Highlights are also a bit blown on both DVDs, which are brighter in general.  The BD fixes it, though that does mean it's a little easier to make out information in shadowy areas on the older DVDs than the blu sometimes.  But that's a small thing; I'd never want to go back.

All three discs provide the original French mono with optional English subtitles, but the blu kicks it up to LPCM.

In terms of special features, Artificial Eye just gives us a couple short films, which I'll circle back around to.  Criterion also gives up short films, which we'll also circle back to.  But they also include a big, new special feature (it's on their original DVD set and carried over to the BD set): a roughly 90 minute conversation between Barbet Schroeder and Eric Rohmer, where Schroeder interviews Rohmer in his office about everything to do with the Moral Tales, and even Sign Of the Lion.  As you can surmise from its length, it's fairly comprehensive - a bountiful treasure trove for fans, but casual viewers may find it tedious to sit through, though it is edited with multiple camera angles, etc.

Suzanne's Career, also from 1963, is arguably a short film, too, clocking in at 55 minutes.  But it finally bridges the gap to feature length films for the rest of the run, and now it's a glossier production with synced sound and all.  This one's memorable in Rohmer's filmography for being the one that starts out with a seance, though it actually proves less fanciful than many of his other films.  It's the story of a young man who finds himself constantly judging the titular Suzanne, mostly for failing to see through the charms of his caddish best friend.  The industrious analysis of flirtation and young romance seen here really feels like we've entered Rohmerville now, past the rough early stage of him finding his footing as a filmmaker and in the seductive groove he'd be for the rest of his career.

2006 AE DVD top; 2006 Criterion DVD mid; 2020 Criterion BD bottom.

Suzanne's Career has been scanned in 2k from the original 16mm camera negative just like Bakery Girl, but it looks considerably rougher.  I'll trust Criterion, I guess, and assume that the difference is just down to the original filmmaking, but it feels like this was taken from a print, with it's softer, dupier look and murky dark interiors.  Otherwise, the three discs take the same framing journey: 1.33, 1.31 windowboxed and ultimately winding up at a slightly matted 1.37:1.  And again, all three discs have offer the original French mono with removable English subs and lossless LPCM on the blu.  There are no extras for this one, except a couple short films that share disc space and we'll look at further down the line.

From now on, all the Moral Tales are proper feature length, starting with My Night At Maud's from 1969.  Why not The Collector, which came out in 1967?  Well, Eric Rohmer wrote all these stories before making the films, and so in the sequence he wrote and always intended them, My Night At Maud's is third and The Collector is fourth (not that there's any continuity between them).  He also made a bunch of shorts and TV films during that gap between '63 and '67.

Anyway, this is the film that brought Rohmer into the "mainstream."  You know, mainstream as far as foreign art films the general public will never get around to watching.  But, like, this film was nominated for two Academy Awards.  It's the one your parents might've actually heard of and that earned him a status sort of along the lines of Bertolucci, Truffaut, Pasolini and that cohort of globally recognized masters.  This one's got all the Rohmer hallmarks, Catholic and atheist couple debating Pascal and platonic relationships between men and women.  It's also his Christmas movie, and you'll notice several similar themes recur decades later in A Tale Of Winter.

2006 Criterion DVD top; 2020 Criterion BD bottom.

Rohmer's moved on to 35mm at this point, though Criterion wasn't able to find the negatives for this one, so the BD is scanned in 3k from an interpositive.  It's darker than the DVD, which is a bit washed but also has more contrasty highlights.  The blu has much deeper blacks and an overall more satisfying, absorbing image.  The aspect ratio is once again switching from 1.31 to 1.37, but this time, instead of matting the image, the blu-ray is revealing more picture along the sides.  Film grain is a little splotchy, and would surely look nicer on a UHD, but it's miles ahead of the DVD, which barely even hints that grain had ever been part of the image.  It's the biggest upgrade yet, and again raises the original mono up to LPCM.

Both discs have removable subs and a fun, vintage program about Maud's from French television.  It's just under fifteen minutes long and puts star Jean-Louis Trintignant and producer Pierre Cottrell in a room with the host and a film critic.  It's a bit light, but nice to hear Trintignant talk about his experience working with Rohmer.  The short film on this disc is about Pascal, too, so that's appropriate.  But we'll get to that on part B of this Catch-Up.

Part 2, Part 6B?  Yeah okay, I admit that's over-complicated and this got a little away from me.  I underestimated what a big job it would be to do all these Tales.  I mean, the short films in these sets could constitute a full post for themselves.  But okay, that's it for today, see you shortly for Criterion Catch-Up 2, Part 6B: The Other Five Moral Tales.  😛