534 L'enfance nue

[Matt]

L'enfance nue

[img]http://criterion_production.s3.amazonaws.com/release_images/2782/534_box_348x490_w128.jpg[/img]

The singular French director Maurice Pialat (Loulou, À nos amours) puts his distinct stamp on the lost-youth film with this devastating portrait of a damaged foster child. We see François (Michel Terrazon), on the cusp of his teens, shuttled from one home to another, his behavior growing increasingly erratic, his bonds with his surrogate parents perennially fraught. In this, his feature debut, Pialat treats this potentially sentimental scenario with astonishing sobriety and stark realism. With its full-throttle mixture of emotionality and clear-eyed skepticism, L’enfance nue (Naked Childhood) was advance notice of one of the most masterful careers in French cinema, and remains one of Pialat’s finest works.

DISC FEATURES

- New, restored high-definition digital transfer
- L’amour existe, director Maurice Pialat’s 1960 short film about life on the outskirts of Paris
- Choses vues, autour de “L’enfance nue,” a fifty-minute documentary shot just after the film’s release
- Excerpts from a 1973 French television interview with Pialat
- New visual essay by critic Kent Jones on the film and Pialat’s cinematic style
- Video interview with Pialat collaborators Arlette Langmann and Patrick Grandperret
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Phillip Lopate
Criterionforum.org user rating averages

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[Tom Hagen]

The same MOC supplements, no? Perhaps a bit of quid-pro-quo for the For All Mankind transfer.

[Oedipax]

A shame there's no bluray of this one. Great film but no reason to stray from MoC here.

[med]

The same MOC supplements, no? Perhaps a bit of quid-pro-quo for the For All Mankind transfer.

The Kent Jones visual essay is new, but who knows how much overlap there is content-wise between that and the essay he wrote for the MOC release. Said release I never did get around to picking up, so I may just go with this one.

[What A Disgrace]

I'm pretty sure there are two different 50 minute documentaries between the MoC and Criterion releases?

[dad1153]

Yay, Pialat's presence in the collection DOUBLES!

[broadwayrock]

I'm pretty sure there are two different 50 minute documentaries between the MoC and Criterion releases?

Its the same documentary, Criterion just used the french name for it.

The Criterion has a visual essay by critic Kent Jones but is missing the 2005 interview with Michael Tarrazon. The film and extras are on one DVD compared to MOC's 2 discs.

[HerrSchreck]

A shame there's no bluray of this one. Great film but no reason to stray from MoC here.

Ditto-- but those who never grabbed the MoC or are region locked.. jump! (sound of whipcrack)

[zedz]

Blah blah blah from me - for about the hundredth time, this is one of the great French films of the sixties (and therefore ever). Both this and the MoC are essentially ports of the original Gaumont (and that older transfer source presumably explains why there's no Blu), but if you've missed either of those editions, you're in for a treat.

It's sort of interesting that Criterion are keeping strictly to the original Gaumont extras and not adding anything - such as the numerous other early shorts they scattered throughout their Pialat titles.

Hopefully this release will also boost the profile (and sales) of those terrific MoC editions of their other Pialat films, so one day we might get the remaining two.

[domino harvey]

The MoC Pialats aren't region-locked

[HerrSchreck]

I've got them buried somewhere.. are they in PAL or NTSC?

[domino harvey]

PAL, yeah

[perkizitore]

Extras are NTSC, though.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

I've got the MOC so there's little use in buying this again. I hope that the sales go well anyway as once upon a time - well, last year when I was region-locked - I'd have jumped on this one the day of release. Maybe I'll just send Criterion another email asking for Mes petites amoureuses. On the bright side, 400 Blows has some company now that Fallen Idol is OOP. There's a new film to add to the canon of troubled French youth!

[domino harvey]

Again, being region-locked has nothing to do with anything

[Doctor Sunshine]

Palophobic.

[felipe]

Why does Criterion sometimes use the title of the film in its original language, and other times translates it to English? Why no consistency?

[sidehacker]

In this case, the original name most likely stayed in tact for its original distribution run.

[Jun-Dai]

I think they favor the title the film is generally known by (e.g., L'Avventura, but on the other hand, The Leopard). And then if it isn't generally known, they probably favor the original language title if it's something they think their audience will connect with (i.e., relatively easy to (mis-)pronounce, uses Roman letters, is in a language that a decent percentage of their audience will have studied in high school, etc.). Probably French and Italian titles are more likely to fall into that category, Russian films much less so, and rarely for Japanese films, and pretty much never for Chinese ones. Being shorter probably helps too (e.g., Le vieil homme et l'enfant vs. The Two of Us). And then there's the simple matter of which one sounds better (L'Enfance Nue sounds way better than Naked Childhood).

I'd be curious to see what their answer is, though.

[Mozart]

The MoC Pialats can be a treasury of every collection.... they are for sure for mine.
Some of the films are region free others are Region 2. As in most cases I would check first at the Beaver.

MoC vs. CC:
The cover is wonderful as is the MoC.
BUT the film and all bonus on 1 disc?!?!?
I can imagine that the image suffers of a low bit rate.

=> I wont double dip just for the visual essay.
But others (espececially in R1 land) may taste blood of Pialat and cause more Pialat-CC or the buy Pialat-CC (last month all 7 titles in theirs offers for only 69 GBP)

Best,
Mozart

[HerrSchreck]

Again, being region-locked has nothing to do with anything

Well, it's not like they're completely unrelated: how could a person in R1 with a region locked player play the Pialat? If you're a USA buyer whose unit is region locked , you more than likely are restricted to NTSC. A non-region locked player is going to be a PAL/NTSC player by default, so a non-region locked player, if genuinely functional (and if my understanding of this stuff is correct), is going to have to be PAL/NTSC and therefore open up the user to the rest of the world.

I know the distinction that you're making that disc-region assignation is different from PAL/NTSC, and if you were in regions 2-XX you'd be spot on (like my All-region player is simply an off-the-rack Pioneer dvd player from Australia-- plays PAL/NTSC by default). But for a USA buyer, owning a region locked player is going to cut them off from all non-R1 discs that are not in NTSC... the vast vast majority. It's true that Nick has released some discs that have NTSC masters that he released in NTSC... so if he released them All-Region then it's a true global disc. But if you're region locked in R1 you can forget the MoC L'enfance.

[domino harvey]

Huh? I'm pretty sure they don't even make DVD players anymore that don't let you play PAL/NTSC, even players without a region-free code.

[Arrow]

Huh? I'm pretty sure they don't even make DVD players anymore that don't let you play PAL/NTSC, even players without a region-free code.

I've got one Region locked DVD player from about 6 years ago (A toshiba) that won't play PAL R0, but i've purchased two since then and a bluray player that all do. I used codes to unlock the other DVD players and gave away the Toshiba. Still regretting not investing in a Region Free blu.

[Mozart]

yep, the L'Enfance Nue of MoC is Region 0.

So even if you have a NTSC-only DVD-player, which I doubt was produced the last 5 years, your TV may be able to work with PAL signals.

[HerrSchreck]

Whoops... My error then... I've been buying non-US players for so long (owing needing to get around the region-code/PAL restriction) I assumed they were all still being made--standard SD that is-- NTSC only.