America as Seen by a Frenchman Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

America as Seen by a Frenchman Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 25, 2020

In this often difficult time when it can be downright upsetting to watch anything that even has a little bit to do with the news, some niche cable channels can offer a bit of relief. In that regard, I know I’m not alone in stating (since I’ve heard unashamedly from several other friends that they share this preference) that one of my “go to” escape channels recently has been HGTV. Has any news report made you laugh recently? Probably not, but an HGTV show I caught in the last few days that featured none other than Eve Plumb from The Brady Bunch did that very thing. Plumb was helping a woman who had a tendency to collect (quite possibly a euphemism for hoard) items to declutter and redesign a room in her house. This episode was done with appropriate social distancing guidelines with Plumb and the woman communicating via some Zoom like app, and had the woman showing Plumb around her house via a computer camera, a house which was literally stuffed floor to ceiling with tchotchkes, which even this woman seemed to be fairly embarrassed about. But the ever resourceful Plumb offered some saving grace, if for me personally a guffaw worthy punch line, when she described the woman’s domicile as “a museum of America”. There's a different kind of "museum of America" on display in America as Seen by a Frenchman, a film which perhaps presaged some of the knickknacks on display in that aforementioned HGTV episode with its original French title L'Amérique insolite, which translates roughly to Unusual America. Kind of interestingly, as Philip Kemp gets into in his "appreciation" of the film included on this Blu-ray disc as a supplement, director François Reichenbach had a history with museums himself, and so his "curating" of images and events for this intentionally piecemeal effort has a certain eye for the bizarre at times.

Reichenbach begins his journey in San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge, but he soon branches out into various nooks and crannies of the American landscape, offering a patchwork quilt of sorts of different people often involved in some kind of odd activities. That said, part of Reichenbach's opening salvo seems to prove the axiom "the more things change, the more they stay the same", as he documents all sorts of Americans with their "Kodaks" who are so busy snapping pictures of the surroundings they're visiting that they are barely "really" paying attention. The narration rather cheekily if pointedly makes the case that people are substituting film for their own memories, in a behavior that has obviously continued to the present day, albeit with more modern technologies like cellphones.

Reichenbach had actually previously used this camera motif to explore the vagaries of American advertising circa 1959-60, offering some candid shots of campaigns being photographed or filmed, in what is perhaps a none too subtle exploration of the "American Dream" (as revealed through ads) that will soon clash at least somewhat with the "American Reality" Reichenbach starts to document as he travels from state to state. While she is not credited in the film and I found no supporting documentation online to corroborate this thesis, my "spidey sense" tells me that that is none other than future America's Sweetheart Mary Tyler Moore frolicking in some crazy dance moves during a photo shoot for what the narration states was a calendar (fans will know Moore was a professional dancer before she became better known as an actress; see screenshot 2 for some evidence).

America as Seen by a Frenchman has any number of truly outré vignettes scattered throughout its hour and a half running time, though one of the things that runs through this piece and which may seem especially bittersweet for those dealing with the isolation required by the Covid pandemic which is (as this review is being written, anyway) part of that aforementioned troubling news cycle is the fact that many of the activities shown involve a community. Whether it’s a bunch of folks reenacting some kind of pioneer wagon train trek, or later moments showing huge neighborhood barbecues or even some wonderful vintage shots of Disneyland, many, maybe even most, of what Reichenbach offers shows large groups of people enjoying themselves and each other, even if some of their ostensible activities are on the slightly weird side.

With regard to that, I simply recommend parsing through the screenshots accompanying this review to get an idea of some of what's in store. Some of the more gonzo activities include a bucking bronco rodeo where the contestants are convicts vying for a chance to get their sentence reduced, a woman and her horse jumping into a pool in a sequence that might seem to be more at home in the 1920s or 1930s, and what is kind of a fun and funny convention of twins.

America as Seen by a Frenchman Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

America as Seen by a Frenchman is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video's Arrow Academy imprint with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Arrow's insert booklet contains only the following pretty generic verbiage about the transfer:

America as Seen by a Frenchman / L' Amérique insolite is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio with 1.0 mono audio. The master was prepared in High Definition by Les Films du Jeudi and delivered to Arrow Films.

While there are some variations in color temperature here, with a few selected scenes looking somewhat skewed toward blues, this is on the whole a really nicely organic, filmlike presentation. Grain can be just a trifle gritty against some of the skies (as can perhaps be made out in some of the screenshots accompanying this review), but resolves organically throughout. When not slightly cool looking, the palette radiates some really nice, authentic tones with generally commendable detail levels, though Reichenbach likes midrange and wide shots, probably to show off the scenic potential of the widescreen framings. I noticed no real damage to whatever source element was utilized other than some of the color variations.

America as Seen by a Frenchman Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

America as Seen by a Frenchman features an LPCM Mono track in the original French, which amounts to narration (with optional English subtitles). A few snippets of English seem to be heard in passing, but the main attraction of this track may be the weirdly carnival-like score by the great Michel Legrand. Legrand tries to evoke "Americana", perhaps fitfully with success, by utilizing things like banjos. The score sounds fine throughout, even if Legrand's compositional style is rather unlike the more lush, romantic qualities he would probably become better known for a bit later in both French and American film scoring.

America as Seen by a Frenchman Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• F for French (1080p; 23:34) is a really interesting appreciation of the film and Reichenbach in general by Philip Kemp. Perhaps surprisingly, given the fact that he worked largely in documentaries (and documentary shorts at that), Reichenbach is considered to be part of the nouvelle vague by Kemp. This features some intriguing snippets from some of Reichenbach's other documentaries.


• Image Gallery (1080p; 1:13)

Arrow also includes its typically nicely appointed insert booklet.

America as Seen by a Frenchman Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Don't expect much if anything in America as Seen by a Frenchman to impart any grave "meaning", but that said, certain inferences about late fifties - early sixties American culture can probably inevitably be drawn from some of this footage. This often plays like some odd collection of home movie footage, and it may be somewhat nostalgic for Baby Boomers in particular. Technical merits are generally solid, and America as Seen by a Frenchman comes Recommended.