6.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
First Name: Carmen tells the parallel stories of a quartet rehearsing Beethoven and a group of young people robbing a bank, supposedly to get the funds to make a film.
Starring: Maruschka Detmers, Jacques Bonnaffé, Myriem Roussel, Christophe Odent, Bertrand LiebertForeign | 100% |
Drama | 78% |
Romance | 22% |
Music | 3% |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.33:1
French: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Note: FIRST NAME: CARMEN contains both female and male frontal nudity. Viewer discretion is advised.
The pre-credits of First Name: Carmen display the Golden Lion trophy that Jean-Luc Godard won after directing his twenty-fifth full-length feature at the 1983 Venice Film Festival. The shiny brass that fêtes one of the world's most accomplished auteurs contrasts sharply with the melancholic film he made to later earn the prize. Godard plays filmmaker "Uncle Jean" (a version of himself), who's relegated to a lonely room in a sanatorium as he battles depression and writer's block. Jean's niece Carmen X (Maruschka Detmers) pays a visit and solicits his help. Carmen and a ragtag group will soon rob a bank and she needs a strategy to set it all up. Carmen and Jean conceive that the robbers make it look like they're present to make a documentary film. Carmen also requests that she use Jean's seaside house in Trouville as a getaway safe haven and her uncle acquiesces.
Carmen and her accomplices recall the thieves who try to pull off a robbery in Godard's Bande à part (1964). In First Name: Carmen, Godard plays the robbery of a bank in downtown Paris with a mix of slapstick and half-seriousness. The off-screen Godard directs the sequence as if Carmen and her collaborators are filming a movie. Watching this film twice, the gunfire looks and sounds real but the spray bullets dodn't seem to always hit their intended targets or showing a convincing enough aftermath. Godard also refrains from showing much blood. As Carmen scampers across the bank's corridors, she gets hooked up with Joseph (Jacques Bonaffe), a handsome and auburn-haired security guard. He handcuffs her to him. Carmen pulls on Joseph as the pair rush out of the bank. They get into a car and head to a gas station to relief themselves. But because they're cuffed together, they have to head into the same (men's) restroom! It's here that Godard enacts—in a pretty revulsive way—a semi-recurrent trope in his oeuvre: bodily fluids and liquids. While Carmen and Joseph urinate (thankfully, mostly off-screen), a stubby man (Jacques Villeret) eats yogurt out of a can. (Did Tarantino see First Name: Carmen before he made Reservoir Dogs and his subsequent features?)
The auteur at his typewriter.
Kino Lorber's subsidiary Kino Classics continue their trend of releasing very fine editions of vintage Godard classics. First Name: Carmen appears on a BD-50 using the MPEG-4 AVC encode. The film's aspect ratio—both as it was shot and exhibited—has been a topic for debate over the years. I can confirm from the movie's French press kit, which was prepared by the production company Films Alain Sarde, that the images were composed in 1.33:1. I corroborated this by perusing a French film periodical that reviewed the movie. However, it was also shown in 1.66:1 in Paris cinemas as well as across the United States. International Spectrafilm Distributors lists 1.66:1 in their press kit and at least one print review does too. Raro Video and Lions Gate both presented First Name: Carmen in full frame on their DVDs while Fox Lorber and Warner UK displayed it in letterboxed (non-anamorphic) 1.66:1. It would have made this a more complete package if Kino offered both aspect ratios but at least we get an authentic presentation of what Godard, Coutard, and Menoud originally intended.
I can't confirm whether or not the transfer stems from a 4K scan but the print looks clean and sparkling without any gloss or rub-outs. Red, blue, and green show off their rich colors and details. In her review for The New Yorker, Pauline Kael described the color scheme as "a limited palette—soft, somber tones and subdued golden ones." I'd affirm her description (see especially Screenshot #s 5, 9, and 12). Kael praised Coutard's "ravishing lighting" and I wholeheartedly second that. Check out the lighting on the hollow wood of the instruments in #4 and inside Jean's house in #13. Kino has encoded the feature at an average video bitrate of 34998 kbps.
Ten chapter breaks accompany the 85-minute movie.
Kino supplies a French DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono (2018 kbps, 24-bit) as the sole audio track. The monaural mix is in very solid shape with no hints of any pops, hiss, crackles, or tape dropouts. As he's done on Vivre Sa Vie (1962) and other films, Godard plays with the dialogue and substitutes spoken words for ocean waves in one instance. There are some moments where the dialogue "checks out" for a brief time. For the record, the following pieces by Beethoven are performed in the film: Quartets No. 9 (op. 59 in C), no. 10 (op. 74 in E), no. 14 (op. 131 in C minus), no. 15 (op. 132 in A minus), and no. 16 (op. 135 in F). According to Craig Keller on this disc's commentary, Godard visited the set of Coppola's One from the Heart (1982) and must have gotten the idea to use a ballad by Tom Waites, which he does here with Waites's "Ruby's Arms."
The optional (white) English subtitles are legible and easy to read.
First Name: Carmen is narratively one of Godard's more accessible films but his formal devices and cutting patterns can lead the viewer through a tricky terrain. I got more out of the movie on my second viewing and savor the cinematography's framing and lighting. I should mention Carmen's remark about a "video craze" because Godard centralizes the technological apparatus in virtually all his work and the videocassette recorder is seen in one of the hotel rooms. Coppola and Storaro were intrigued with merging video with film for an "electronic cinema" in One from the Heart and it must have rubbed off on Godard after visiting the set of that musical. Godard was no doubt aware of the "video revolution" and I think he decided to photograph First Name: Carmen in full frame rather than widescreen to reflect the "square image" that consumers were adapting to in the early years of Betamax and VHS. While First Name: Carmen was shot on film in Eastmancolor and not videotape, there's nonetheless an image/screen ratio dialectic that greatly interested Godard.
Kino Lorber's Blu-ray looks and sounds excellent with a bonus Godard short to go with two commentaries by Craig Keller. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED.
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