Lies & Deceit / Twisting the Knife: Films by Claude Chabrol

Discuss releases from Arrow and the films on them.

Moderator: yoloswegmaster

Message
Author
User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#26 Post by domino harvey » Thu Jan 27, 2022 6:12 pm

Hopefully not the Twist though!

User avatar
swo17
Bloodthirsty Butcher
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
Location: SLC, UT

Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#27 Post by swo17 » Thu Jan 27, 2022 11:53 pm

Sigh. Better titles (particularly Rien ne va plus) but they're still ones that Cohen had already done

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#28 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jan 28, 2022 12:46 am

swo17 wrote:
Thu Jan 27, 2022 11:53 pm
Sigh. Better titles (particularly Rien ne va plus) but they're still ones that Cohen had already done
And like last set, I still need one of the titles on Blu that wasn’t released by Cohen (Fleur du mal). But these are much better films overall, with all but Merci pour… great (and that one’s still okay!)

User avatar
swo17
Bloodthirsty Butcher
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
Location: SLC, UT

Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#29 Post by swo17 » Fri Jan 28, 2022 12:58 am

Ah, I'd misremembered Fleur du mal as one of the Cohen titles. That one's great and will be worth the upgrade, which again, I would be doing anyway as a vote for more Chabrol

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#30 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jan 28, 2022 1:08 am

Sadly, given that a large section of their audience will already have most of these films in both sets on Blu, I fully expect these to sell poorly and we never get more. These sets look like sabotage. Why would they not license from the pool of the 90% of Chabrol movies not previously available on Blu-ray?

User avatar
vsski
Joined: Thu Oct 13, 2011 3:47 pm

Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#31 Post by vsski » Fri Jan 28, 2022 5:33 am

Maybe someone here has details on the rights information of the late 60s Chabrols, as indeed it is puzzling that the movies that are generally regarded as his best continue to be absent from Blu-Rays anywhere so far.
I’m sure Arrow would have favored those if rights allowed for it (IIRC some restorations are done).

But this is a better set of films overall, so if you don’t already have the Cohens I would buy it - assuming you can stomach the creative license Eclair is taking with the colors, if this is like set 1.

Calvin
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2011 11:12 am

Re: Lies & Deceit: Five Films by Claude Chabrol

#32 Post by Calvin » Fri Jan 28, 2022 6:30 am

A second set has been leaked over at the other forum

Image
For five decades Claude Chabrol navigated the unpredictable waters of Cinema, leaving in his wake more than fifty feature films that remain among the most quietly devastating genre movies ever made. Sardonic, provocative, unsettling, Chabrol’s films cut to the quick with a clarity and honesty honed to razor sharpness.

The Swindle (Rien Ne Va Plus) sees Chabrol at perhaps his most playful as a pair of scam artists, Isabelle Huppert and Michel Serrault, get in over their heads. But who is scamming who and who do you trust in a life built on so many lies? The murder of a 10 year old girl sparks rumours and gossip in The Color of Lies (Au Coeur Du Mensonge), as suspicion falls on René (Jacques Gamblin) the dour once famous painter, now art teacher, who was the last person to see her alive. Enigmatic, perverse, seductive, Isabelle Huppert encapsulates everything that makes Nightcap (Merci Pour Le Chocolat) a film John Waters calls “Cinematic Perfection” in this tale of suppressed family secrets. Finally, in The Flower of Evil (La Fleur Du Mal), incest, old money and intergenerational guilt come under the scalpel as an outwardly perfect bourgeois family begins to unravel when the wife involves herself in politics.

Though influenced by Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock and Jean Renoir, Chabrol’s voice was entirely and assuredly his own, influencing in turn filmmakers like Bong Joon-ho, James Gray and Dominik Moll. His amused, unblinkered view of life and refusal to judge his characters makes his films timelessly relevant and accessible to all. Arrow Video is proud to present this second collection of films by Claude Chabrol with a wealth of new and archival extras.

LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS
- High definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentations of all four films
- New 4K restorations of The Swindle (Rien Ne Va Plus), Nightcap (Merci Pour Le Chocolat) and The Flower of Evil (La Fleur Du Mal)
- Original lossless PCM French stereo audio on all films plus DTS-HD 5.1 on Nightcap (Merci Pour Le Chocolat) and The Flower of Evil (La Fleur Du Mal)
- Optional English subtitles
- 80-page collector's booklet of new writing by Sean Hogan, Brad Stevens, Catherine Dousteyessier-Khoze, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, and Pamela Hutchinson
- Limited edition packaging featuring newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella

DISC ONE - THE SWINDLE (RIEN NE VA PLUS)
- Brand new audio commentary by film critic Barry Forshaw and author Sean Hogan
- Chabrol’s “Soap Bubble”, a brand new visual essay by Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze, author of Claude Chabrol: The Aesthetics of Opacity exploring the games Chabrol plays with his characters and audience
- Film as a Family Affair, Cécile Maistre-Chabrol, the stepdaughter of Claude Chabrol and his Assistant Director on fourteen features discusses his life, work and wisdom in this exclusive new hour plus interview
- Behind the scenes featurette
- Archive interview with Isabelle Huppert
- Archive introduction by film scholar Joël Magny
- Select scene commentaries by director Claude Chabrol
- Theatrical trailer
- Image gallery

DISC TWO - THE COLOR OF LIES (AU COEUR DU MENSONGE)
- Brand new audio commentary by critic Barry Forshaw and author Sean Hogan
- Nothing is Sacred, a brand new visual essay by film critic Scout Tafoya examining the ideas of art and legacy in Chabrol's The Color of Lies (Au Coeur Du Mensonge)
- What’s Eating Claude Chabrol? a brand new appreciation by film critic David Kalat examining the ways in which Chabrol’s films relate, reflect and refract each other
- Behind the scenes featurette
- Archive introduction by film scholar Joël Magny
- Select scene commentaries by director Claude Chabrol
- Theatrical trailer
- Image gallery

DISC THREE - NIGHTCAP (MERCI POUR LE CHOCOLAT)
- Brand new audio commentary by film critic Justine Smith
- When I pervert good…, a brand new visual essay by film critic Scout Tafoya which takes a closer look at late period Chabrol through the lens of his masterful thriller Nightcap (Merci Pour Le Chocolat)
- Archive interview with Isabelle Huppert
- Archive interview with Jacques Dutronc
- Behind the scenes featurette
- Screen test for Anna Mouglalis
- Archive introduction by film scholar Joël Magny
- Select scene commentaries by director Claude Chabrol
- Theatrical trailer
- Image gallery


DISC FOUR - THE FLOWER OF EVIL (LA FLEUR DU MAL)
- Brand new audio commentary by film critic Farran Smith Nehme
- Behind the Masks: Remembering Claude Chabrol, a brand new appreciation by Agnès C. Poirier, author of Left Bank: Arts, Passion and the Rebirth of Paris 1940-1950 in which she shares her personal reminiscence of Claude Chabrol and considers his unique position in French culture and cinema
- Behind the scenes featurette
- Archive interview with co-writer Catherine Eliacheff
- Archive introduction by film scholar Joël Magny
- Select scene commentaries by director Claude Chabrol
- Theatrical trailer
- Image gallery
DISC TWO - THE COLOR OF LIES
New commentary by critic Barry Forshaw and author Sean Hogan
New visual essay by film critic Scout Tafoya
New visual essay by film critic David Kalat
Behind the scenes
Introduction by film scholar Joël Magny
Select scene commentaries by Claude Chabrol
Trailer
Image gallery

DISC THREE - NIGHTCAP
New commentary by film critic Justine Smith
New visual essay by film critic Scout Tafoya
Interview with Isabelle Huppert
Interview with Jacques Dutronc
Behind the scenes
Screen test for Anna Mouglalis
Introduction by film scholar Joël Magny
Select scene commentaries by Claude Chabrol
Trailer
Image gallery


DISC FOUR - THE FLOWER OF EVIL
New commentary by film critic Farran Smith Nehme
New visual essay by Agnes Poirier
Behind the scenes
Interview with co-writer Catherine Eliacheff
Introduction by film scholar Joël Magny
Select scene commentaries by Claude Chabrol
Trailer
Image gallery

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Lies & Deceit / Twisting the Knife: Films by Claude Chabrol

#33 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jan 28, 2022 6:17 pm

Nice to see Kalat and Dousteyssier-Khoze involved in the new set

black&huge
Joined: Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:35 am

Re: Lies & Deceit / Twisting the Knife: Films by Claude Chabrol

#34 Post by black&huge » Sat Feb 19, 2022 2:44 am

I am more interested in Chabrol than ever and have never actually finished any of his films. A very long time ago I started on the only two criterion releasesL les cousins and le beau serge but I just lost interest part way trough them. It seems this arrow set is very divivise but are these really low tier Chabrol? I mean generally speaking. I am wanting to start here with this set and see where I go with him but what makes his more favored era (seems like it's the 60's judging by comments) better or different than what the two annoucned Chabrol sets offer?

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

Re: Lies & Deceit / Twisting the Knife: Films by Claude Chabrol

#35 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Feb 25, 2022 10:52 am

black&huge wrote:
Sat Feb 19, 2022 2:44 am
I am more interested in Chabrol than ever and have never actually finished any of his films. A very long time ago I started on the only two criterion releases les cousins and le beau serge but I just lost interest part way trough them. It seems this arrow set is very divisive but are these really low tier Chabrol? I mean generally speaking. I am wanting to start here with this set and see where I go with him but what makes his more favored era (seems like it's the 60's judging by comments) better or different than what the two announced Chabrol sets offer?
I think its more that Chabrol has a really obvious period in his career when after his early 60s French New Wave style works (such as Les cousins and Le beau serge) he produced a series of abstracted societal crime thrillers that were as much about dissecting the lives of their icily detached bourgeoisie characters and their Teflon-coated lifestyles as about the crimes that occur within them. In fact the hypocrisies of doing what needs to be done to keep the facade of respectable behaviour up is what causes the frissons in his films, as some horrible murder or other act of transgression occurs and yet somehow is able to be incorporated and somewhat 'covered up' by the accommodations of society to the extent that even the audience can be left wondering if the upending event they witnessed ever actually happened, as even if it causes certain explosively violent ructions at the moment of its occurrence the ripples disappear quickly leaving a smooth seemingly untroubled surface behind.

The period from Les biches in 1969 up to around the mid to late 1970s is his key period where he works out these themes. Much of his later work is worth watching too (especially his Ruth Rendell adaptations: La Cérémonie was his biggest success in the UK and kicks off his mid-90s resurgence of crime thrillers, many starring Isabelle Huppert), but the other factor is that whilst she does not appear in every film from Chabrol's key period he has an important muse actress in the figure of Stéphane Audran, who in the run of Les biches, The Unfaithful Wife (later remade as Unfaithful with Diane Lane and Richard Gere), La rupture, Just Before Nightfall and Le boucher really is as important as a central character through whom Chabrol is mediating the experience of his films as, say, Monica Vitti's presence is for Antonioni. She perfectly captures that sense of icy cool, almost to the point of callous, detachment that makes the explosions of emotion that occur in Chabrol so powerful. Really once her extremely sympathetic character, constantly buffeted around by the actions of the other characters meddling in and manipulating her troubled personal relationship for their mercenarily societal needs, wanders off into a park in a forcibly drug-induced psychedelic reverie, and everything around her blurs into just colours and shapes at the climax of La rupture (very similar to the ending of Bergman's The Passion of Anna) you have reached peak Chabrol.

(And Audran quite soon after this appears in a similarly detached bourgeoisie role for Bunuel in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, which itself feels a bit Chabrol-influenced just in a more comically strange avant-garde register than Chabrol's almost oppressively 'normal' surroundings that come to seem bizarre for that exact sense of calcified normality surrounding murders and betrayals in relationships)

User avatar
cdnchris
Site Admin
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 2:45 pm
Location: Washington
Contact:

Re: Lies & Deceit / Twisting the Knife: Films by Claude Chabrol

#36 Post by cdnchris » Thu May 05, 2022 3:19 pm

So, I completely missed this initially, but David Kalat's piece (which is listed on the cover for The Color of Lies) is missing from the supplement menu, but the file for it is on the disc (00013.m2ts). I'm not sure if it's supposed to be an easter egg of some sort but I didn't see a way to get at it from the menu.

User avatar
hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
Location: NYC

Re: Lies & Deceit / Twisting the Knife: Films by Claude Chabrol

#37 Post by hearthesilence » Thu May 05, 2022 3:24 pm

Got to dig that title for the film on disc four.

Aw, the flower....of EVIL!

User avatar
tenia
Ask Me About My Bassoon
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am

Re: Lies & Deceit / Twisting the Knife: Films by Claude Chabrol

#38 Post by tenia » Thu May 05, 2022 4:33 pm

I always suspected that the title simply is on a riff on Beaudelaire's Les fleurs du mal.
cdnchris wrote:
Thu May 05, 2022 3:19 pm
So, I completely missed this initially, but David Kalat's piece (which is listed on the cover for The Color of Lies) is missing from the supplement menu, but the file for it is on the disc (00013.m2ts). I'm not sure if it's supposed to be an easter egg of some sort but I didn't see a way to get at it from the menu.
If you're talking about What’s Eating Claude Chabrol?, it's advertised on Arrow's website, so I suspect it's not supposed to be particularly an easter egg or a hidden feature.

User avatar
cdnchris
Site Admin
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 2:45 pm
Location: Washington
Contact:

Re: Lies & Deceit / Twisting the Knife: Films by Claude Chabrol

#39 Post by cdnchris » Thu May 05, 2022 4:48 pm

Yeah, it's listed on the back cover as well, so I assumed it wasn't meant as an Easter Egg, but was giving them the benefit of the doubt and they didn't just miss including it on the menu.

User avatar
ianthemovie
Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2009 10:51 am
Location: Boston, MA
Contact:

Re: Lies & Deceit / Twisting the Knife: Films by Claude Chabrol

#40 Post by ianthemovie » Wed May 11, 2022 10:25 am

Farran Nehme apparently has seen Chris's review of The Flower of Evil and gave him this shout-out on Twitter:
Can't figure out how to get in touch with Chris Galloway of @criterionforum. If I could, I'd tell him I worship Claude Chabrol; I was nervous about doing a commentary for LA FLEUR DU MAL; and Galloway's kind words in his review meant a lot to me.

User avatar
ryannichols7
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2012 2:26 pm

Re: Lies & Deceit / Twisting the Knife: Films by Claude Chabrol

#41 Post by ryannichols7 » Wed May 11, 2022 10:14 pm

Farran should join this site, her commentaries, video pieces, and essays are uniformly excellent. looking forward to her commentary here

User avatar
Elizabeth Corday
Joined: Sun Apr 11, 2021 12:58 am

Re: Lies & Deceit / Twisting the Knife: Films by Claude Chabrol

#42 Post by Elizabeth Corday » Tue Jul 05, 2022 6:27 pm

I am wondering....since La Ceremonie was not included....do you suppose Criterion is aiming for a bluray release? It aired on TCM and Alicia Malone talked about it.

Surely they could do interviews and features.

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

Re: Lies & Deceit / Twisting the Knife: Films by Claude Chabrol

#43 Post by Matt » Tue Jul 05, 2022 7:44 pm

I’m sure it’s just a matter of time (measured in years) until they get around to it. A 4K master exists. I just don’t think Chabrol, even one of his best and most popular films, is a particularly high priority for them.

User avatar
Elizabeth Corday
Joined: Sun Apr 11, 2021 12:58 am

Re: Lies & Deceit / Twisting the Knife: Films by Claude Chabrol

#44 Post by Elizabeth Corday » Sat Oct 01, 2022 3:29 am

That's depressing. Especially since Isabelle is in Criterion and she even visited them in New York.

Criterion would probably put the best version out but Arrow....unless they're going to do a third set?

User avatar
hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
Location: NYC

Re: Lies & Deceit / Twisting the Knife: Films by Claude Chabrol

#45 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:39 pm

Yeah it's pretty sad. I actually saw that film for the first time via Hulu, well before Criterion had their own streaming service. It was one of many films on Hulu that had the Criterion logo attached but remained unavailable on physical media in the U.S. Many of those titles did get their own release with time (like L'Argent, though I don't recall if the streaming version used the same compromised restoration with the revisionist color), but it's been a decade and still no sign of La Cérémonie.

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Lies & Deceit / Twisting the Knife: Films by Claude Chabrol

#46 Post by domino harvey » Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:54 pm

Again, Criterion already passed on the film the first go around and it was kicked to HVe. They may reconsider, but don’t hold out for it

User avatar
ryannichols7
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2012 2:26 pm

Re: Lies & Deceit / Twisting the Knife: Films by Claude Chabrol

#47 Post by ryannichols7 » Sat Oct 01, 2022 2:52 pm

it may be a long wait, but hey if Celine and Julie can get a two disc edition...sometimes it can pay off. but not holding my breath

Post Reply