759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

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swo17
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759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#1 Post by swo17 » Tue Feb 17, 2015 5:43 pm

The Confession

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The master of the political thriller, Costa-Gavras, became an instant phenomenon after the mammoth success of Z, and he quickly followed it with the perhaps even more riveting The Confession. Based on a harrowing true story, the film stars Yves Montand as an influential Czechoslovak dignitary who, in the early fifties, was abducted, imprisoned, and interrogated by fellow members of his country's Communist ruling party—their intentions vague, their methods terrifying. Also starring Simone Signoret and Gabriele Ferzetti, Costa-Gavras's film is an unflinching depiction of a troubled historical period and the miasma of twentieth-century politics.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
You Speak of Prague: The Second Trial of Artur London (1971), a twenty-one-minute documentary by Chris Marker shot on the set of The Confession
• New interview with the film's editor, Françoise Bonnot
• Conversation between director Costa-Gavras and programmer and scholar Peter von Bagh about the director's life and career, from the 1988 Midnight Sun Film Festival
Portrait London, a 1981 interview with Artur and Lise London, the real-life figures on whose story the film is based
• Interview with actor Yves Montand from 1970
• New interview with John Michalczyk, author of Costa-Gavras: The Political Fiction Film
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by film scholar Dina Iordanova


State of Siege

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Costa-Gavras puts the United States' involvement in South American politics under the microscope in this arresting thriller. An urban guerilla group, outraged at the counterinsurgency and torture training clandestinely organized by the CIA in their country (unnamed in the film), abducts a U.S. official (Yves Montand) to bargain for the release of political prisoners; soon the kidnapping becomes a media sensation, leading to violence. Cowritten by Franco Solinas (The Battle of Algiers), the electrifying State of Siege piercingly critiques the American government for helping institute foreign dictatorships while also asking difficult questions about the efficacy of radical violent acts to oppose such regimes.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New conversation between director Costa-Gavras and film scholar Peter Cowie
• NBC News excerpts from 1970 on the kidnapping of Dan Mitrione, on which the film is based
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by journalist Mark Danner

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#2 Post by zedz » Tue Feb 17, 2015 6:09 pm

Notice the otherwise unavailable (I think) Chris Marker film nestled in there.

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#3 Post by Minkin » Mon Apr 20, 2015 6:17 pm

For all the complaining we do about Criterion not releasing interesting or risky titles, none of that ire sure translated into posts in this thread... Thus it is more about them "not releasing what we want" than interesting films I suppose :P

I absolutely loved Missing, and certainly enjoyed Z, but hadn't seen any other of his films. How might people rate these two in that regards? Should I expect more Kafkaesque interplay of government/bureaucracy and the absurd/horrifying? The historical and political implications of his films are perhaps the most fascinating for me, thus I look forward to the extras quite a bit (I assume watching the NBC news report ahead of time might be useful).

Anyway, here's the Blu-ray.com review for State of Siege

The interview with Costa-Gavras and Peter Cowie was filmed right after the Charlie Hebdo attack - Which would make for an interesting dynamic/discussion, given the film's content.

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#4 Post by Arrow » Mon Apr 20, 2015 7:41 pm

Minkin wrote:For all the complaining we do about Criterion not releasing interesting or risky titles, none of that ire sure translated into posts in this thread... Thus it is more about them "not releasing what we want" than interesting films I suppose :P

I absolutely loved Missing, and certainly enjoyed Z, but hadn't seen any other of his films. How might people rate these two in that regards? Should I expect more Kafkaesque interplay of government/bureaucracy and the absurd/horrifying? The historical and political implications of his films are perhaps the most fascinating for me, thus I look forward to the extras quite a bit (I assume watching the NBC news report ahead of time might be useful).

Anyway, here's the Blu-ray.com review for State of Siege

The interview with Costa-Gavras and Peter Cowie was filmed right after the Charlie Hebdo attack - Which would make for an interesting dynamic/discussion, given the film's content.
I loved State of Siege as much as Z and Missing, though I've only seen it on an old dubbed VHS, so I'm hoping to get even more out of it. The Confession is quite good as well, I felt like it was very similar in style to Interrogation.


I love Costa-Gavras, but I will say the four films mentioned often feel like the same movie, an exception maybe being Missing which is more polished. It hasn't diminished my enjoyment of them, however.

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#5 Post by otis » Tue Apr 21, 2015 7:06 pm


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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#6 Post by otis » Fri Apr 24, 2015 2:55 am

Beaver on State of Siege

Unfortunately, both of these look to have been given the teal & orange treatment...

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#7 Post by domino harvey » Fri Apr 24, 2015 10:26 am

Given that the gray/blue-tint is commonplace in French cinema at the time the film was made, I don't see any reason to suspect nefarious revisionism

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#8 Post by otis » Fri Apr 24, 2015 1:24 pm

I certainly can't think of a French film of the era that looked like this, and certainly not a film shot by Raoul Coutard, as The Confession was. Anyway, for comparison, here are some of the same shots as the Beaver review as they appear on the French DVD:

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#9 Post by JabbaTheSlut » Fri Apr 24, 2015 2:33 pm

otis wrote:I certainly can't think of a French film of the era that looked like this, and certainly not a film shot by Raoul Coutard, as The Confession was.
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDrevie ... hadows.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And by Coutard

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDRevie ... gavras.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

All four shot in Eastmancolor. But again, all discs Criterion releases.

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#10 Post by domino harvey » Fri Apr 24, 2015 2:47 pm

And don't forget Un flic, with three different studios (none Criterion) giving it the same blue tint in their transfer

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#11 Post by otis » Fri Apr 24, 2015 3:05 pm

Yeah, I did look at the Beaver reviews for Army of Shadows and Z before I posted. It's not so much the grey/blue tint that seems off to me as orange cast of the skin tones, which reminds me of the Fox remaster of Desk Set which several people objected to. Also, if you look at the title card for The Confession, on the French DVD the words are pure white, but on the Criterion version they're a creamy colour. This could be a deliberate choice, but it's a slightly strange one to my eye.

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#12 Post by JabbaTheSlut » Fri Apr 24, 2015 4:52 pm

Depends a lot on the screen you are viewing, on my iPhone the orange skin is REALLY orange, but on laptop the skintone looks less quite "healthy".

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#13 Post by tenia » Sat Apr 25, 2015 5:46 am

The color timing of State of Siege looks typical to me from BD of movies shot around these years (70-80s) and restored by Eclair. Honestly, I'm not sure at all if it's faithful or not :

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/screensho ... osition=10" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://retro-hd.com/uploads/img/test/ga ... alise.jpeg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://retro-hd.com/uploads/img/test/ga ... cible.jpeg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://retro-hd.com/uploads/img/test/ga ... valse.jpeg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://retro-hd.com/uploads/img/test/ga ... -flic.jpeg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

In the case of State of Siege, the French DVD looks quite good to me color-wise, which is not somthing usual : a lot of old French DVDs of French movies have a huge magenta push and poor black levels. It looks a bit green, though.

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#14 Post by MichaelB » Sat Apr 25, 2015 12:07 pm

I can't speak for Costa-Gavras, but there's no doubt at all that Jean-Pierre Melville favoured a grey/blue colour scheme that's practically monochrome at times - both Henri Decaë and Pierre Lhomme have confirmed this (the latter when grading the recent resto of Army in the Shadows). And since I'd have no problem accepting an early-70s Melville film looking like that, it's not remotely a stretch to believe that the same is true of a very similar film by Costa-Gavras.

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#15 Post by EddieLarkin » Sat Apr 25, 2015 12:56 pm

At some point the Criterion page for the films changed from "New 4K digital restoration" (which is still quoted in the first post), to "New 2K digital restoration, supervised by director Costa-Gavras". That's not been mentioned during this discussion so I'm not sure anyone realised. Needless to say, there is no reason at all to doubt the colour.

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#16 Post by pro-bassoonist » Sat Apr 25, 2015 10:52 pm

EddieLarkin wrote:Needless to say, there is no reason at all to doubt the colour.
There are many reasons to doubt the new look (and yes, the fact that Costa-Gavras supervised the restoration isn't new information).

1. The new color scheme of State of Siege is questionable, with certain parts of the film actually looking flat-out problematic. There are nuances on display that are 100% digital. To be perfectly clear, there is grey -- the type that emerges when a transfer is filtered and collapses depth and contrast -- that overtakes what should be proper blacks and wipes out detail. Screencaptures #6 and 7 on the Blu-ray.com review very clearly illustrate the problem. I specifically took screencapture #7 to show how serious the deterioration is (you should be able to see that in the bottom of the frame detail is lost -- this is a digital effect).

2. The fact that blue is the prominent color isn't the issue. As noted above, there are many European films from the same era that have unique color schemes. (By the way, Tenia, I see you can sense that there is something wrong with the grading on your examples -- and you are correct. Some of them, however, are not encoded properly. In other words, this isn't how these films were shot, it is how they are currently graded by people at Eclair. :)). The problem is that there is a general shift towards very strong new color identities that has destabilized other color identities. (The same issue is present on Fox's transfer of Kazan's Wild River). The footage from the siege in the beginning of the film, for instance, should be blue (it is also on the French DVD), but the tonal balance is skewed. So, all sorts of other color identities are lost. This is a reoccurring theme throughout the entire film.

3. The prominent grey that is mentioned in the review also becomes part of the color scheme, but it is a byproduct of digital work. It is present in screencapture #6 (mixed with the orange Otis mentions) and in screencapture #20 (left bottom corner where detail is again lost).

This isn't how Costa-Gavras shot his film.

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#17 Post by doc mccoy » Sun Apr 26, 2015 5:05 am

pro-bassoonist wrote:This isn't how Costa-Gavras shot his film.
That's quite an indictment, pro-bassoonist - if you feel that strongly, then respectfully how can you give it 4 stars for PQ?
Would not a 2 or at best, a 3, be more appropriate?

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#18 Post by MichaelB » Sun Apr 26, 2015 6:35 am

Pro-bassoonist also thinks that the Criterion Thief is absolutely true to how it appeared in 1981.

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#19 Post by tenia » Sun Apr 26, 2015 7:20 am

MichaelB wrote:Pro-bassoonist also thinks that the Criterion Thief is absolutely true to how it appeared in 1981.
To be fair (and Svet probably will speak for himself there), he thinks it's at least truer than the old HD master from MGM, which is magenta-pushed to death.
pro-bassoonist wrote:In other words, this isn't how these films were shot, it is how they are currently graded by people at Eclair. :)
Absolutely, which is what I wanted to emphasize. I think there is a common look on some French movies these days on BD which is not due to how they were shot, but how they have been graded by the restoration teams.
doc mccoy wrote:That's quite an indictment, pro-bassoonist - if you feel that strongly, then respectfully how can you give it 4 stars for PQ?
Would not a 2 or at best, a 3, be more appropriate?
I believe that a reviewer should also try and remain objective on giving a note on the PQ itself. If it is a new restoration which is at least not drastically filtered and has plenty of details, you can't just give it a bad grade, at least because then, what grade would you give to really bad PQ ?

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#20 Post by doc mccoy » Sun Apr 26, 2015 8:59 am

MichaelB wrote:Pro-bassoonist also thinks that the Criterion Thief is absolutely true to how it appeared in 1981.
Yes - I noticed that as well.
Last edited by doc mccoy on Sun Apr 26, 2015 9:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#21 Post by doc mccoy » Sun Apr 26, 2015 9:07 am

tenia wrote:
I believe that a reviewer should also try and remain objective on giving a note on the PQ itself. If it is a new restoration which is at least not drastically filtered and has plenty of details, you can't just give it a bad grade, at least because then, what grade would you give to really bad PQ ?
That's my point entirely - obviously a 1 star would be drastic because it ignores all the other virtues of the PQ. But then Svet has suggested that this restoration is not true to how Costa Gavras shot the film - I cannot think of many more damning charges than that and yet he only docks 1 star short of a 5. 4 is very good - how is not being true to the original look deserving of being very good?

And even though Svet does briefly touch upon the colour issues in his review (but not in the detail as he went into here), did what he write above sound like a 4 star review to you?

I'm going with the quote above - if svet had not written that, then it would be a case of YMMV and the 4 stars would barely bat an eyelid. But he has written it.

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#22 Post by pro-bassoonist » Sun Apr 26, 2015 3:13 pm

doc mccoy wrote:
pro-bassoonist wrote:This isn't how Costa-Gavras shot his film.
That's quite an indictment, pro-bassoonist - if you feel that strongly, then respectfully how can you give it 4 stars for PQ?
Would not a 2 or at best, a 3, be more appropriate?
I find the entire presentation somewhat questionable for the reasons mentioned earlier. I gave it 3.75/5.00 which I think is a very fair score.
MichaelB wrote:Pro-bassoonist also thinks that the Criterion Thief is absolutely true to how it appeared in 1981.
Then it should be very easy for you to produce a quote where he has written precisely that. But since you won't be able to do it and we are probably going to go through the same cycle of posts we did after The Conformist release, I think that Tenia's post is the one we can both accept.

On the other hand, as far as the Theatrical Cut on Arrow's disc is concerned, I am absolutely convinced that it is not how the film appeared in theaters.

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#23 Post by Minkin » Sun Apr 26, 2015 7:08 pm

This whole thing does seem somewhat silly. I'm willing to accept director revisionism of color grading, when it is their wishes (thus this isn't really similar to Wild River). In this case, it seems odd to claim better knowledge of how the film should look than the director, who has approved the damn thing.

I do find you (Svet) to be one of the best reviewers out there. (one of our other oft-mentioned reviewers has essentially abandoned reviewing, and just tries to make a mathematical equation out of bitrates and "warm skintones"). That said, some of your color complaints have seemed slightly odd. For example - giving the 4K Playtime a 3.5 vs the older transfer's 4.5 - where I'd imagine it would be more difficult to promote the older release, given the vast improvements in detail the 4k option offers (I don't recall any other reviewer having issue with the color). But so are the difficulties with reviews - as you have to consider the totality of the image. Things are more difficult when you try to give it a score. A question might be: is that score based off a universal ideal on how a blu-ray should look, or is it based off of "the best the image could ever hope to look for each individual film?" I'd prefer the latter option - as you can't hold everything to the same standard. Anyone else tired of all of the small detail finagling ? :P God help us if Ultra High-def discs become a standard.

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#24 Post by criterion10 » Sun Apr 26, 2015 10:34 pm

pro-bassoonist wrote:
MichaelB wrote:Pro-bassoonist also thinks that the Criterion Thief is absolutely true to how it appeared in 1981.
Then it should be very easy for you to produce a quote where he has written precisely that. But since you won't be able to do it and we are probably going to go through the same cycle of posts we did after The Conformist release, I think that Tenia's post is the one we can both accept.
Ahem:
pro-bassoonist on [b]Thief[/b] wrote: Just about all information that is present at the moment -- visual and factual -- points to the fact that "what was made at the time, in purest form" is in fact restored in the new Director's Cut of the film.
And for another:
pro-bassoonist on [b]Thief[/b] wrote: According to the materials sent by Criterion, the new transfer for the Blu-ray release is supervised by Michael Mann. Having seen the resto, I have every reason to believe that this is indeed the correct look of the film. The nighttime footage from Chicago -- with the psychedelic neon lights -- looks simply beautiful. Cold and very atmospheric visuals, the type of visuals I always thought the DVD should have had.

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Re: 759-760 The Confession and State of Siege

#25 Post by pro-bassoonist » Tue Apr 28, 2015 3:36 am

criterion10 wrote: Ahem:
You should've included the text I responded to so that people can see the entire exchange and realize whose words were used in the quote:
Blu-ray.com member:
While we should appreciate the artist's intent, we should also be allowed access to what was made at that time, in purest form...
Pro-Bassoonist
Just about all information that is present at the moment -- visual and factual -- points to the fact that "what was made at the time, in purest form" is in fact restored in the new Director's Cut of the film.
Quite a difference there, wouldn't you say?

To sum it up:

Correct look and "absolutely true" are not the same thing. This may come as a surprise to you, but I am not that naive to think or write that Blu-ray can reproduce "absolutely true" color tonalities.

In fact, long before the DEG leaked the proposed specs for UHD -- going back 6-7 years -- I had repeatedly mentioned that some of the biggest improvements one should expect with 4K content are in the area of color reproduction -- simply because Blu-ray's portfolio is capped and accurate color identities cannot be fully reproduced. So, while this is indeed the "correct" look for Mr. Mann's film, by default it is not absolutely true.

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