Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Jefferson in Paris Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson August 11, 2019

Jefferson in Paris is a project that director James Ivory had been working on since the early 1980s. Ivory shared many of his recollections developing and making the film with author Robert Emmet Long in the books, The Films of Merchant Ivory and Merchant Ivory in Conversation. Anthony Chase, a young American writer who did some writing for the New Yorker, was raised in Paris and like Ivory, became very interested in Thomas Jefferson's life and his alleged affair with Sally Hemings. After a lot of research, Chase worked on a script that Ivory also contributed to but it never really took off. But in 1992 when Jeffrey Katzenberg (then Disney's CEO) saw Howards End, he was very impressed and contacted Merchant Ivory Productions to inquire if they were working on anything so they sent over a new script penned by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Katzenberg read it quickly and decided that Touchstone Pictures, Disney's production arm, would supply around $15 million to finance the picture.

The late Jhabvala was not only a brilliant novelist in her own right but also an expert adapter of classic works of literature for the Merchant Ivory team. With Jefferson in Paris, she drew on an amalgamation of sources (including a large collection of Jefferson's letters) and notably Fawn Brodie's controversial 1974 biography, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, which created a firestorm among Jefferson historians because she claimed that the third US president fathered six children with his slave, Sally Hemings. But the Jefferson/Hemings relationship is only dealt with during the last hour of the movie.

Jefferson in Paris is set during 1784-89 when George Washington appointed Jefferson to become Benjamin Franklin's successor as plenipotentiary minister (i.e., special envoy to a foreign land). (The film thus takes place before Jefferson became secretary of state.) Jefferson (Nick Nolte) is a 41-year-old widower whose accompanied by his daughter Martha "Patsy" Jefferson (Gwyneth Paltrow) and later joined by his youngest daughter, Polly (Estelle Eonnet). Jefferson has been sent to Paris for diplomatic talks with King Louis XVI (Michael Lonsdale) and Queen Marie Antoinette (Charlotte de Turckheim). Jefferson has a lot to say about the rights of man and revolution. (Louis is too blind to notice that a big Revolution will be taking place in the streets of Paris shortly.) Although the film doesn't have a real solid dramatic center, it's principally about Jefferson's inamoratas (sexual and not) with Maria Cosway (Greta Scacchi), a painter and musician, daughter Patsy, and of course, Sally. Jhabvala's screenplay is less structurally tight and cohesive than her other works. The movie belabors to tell what it's really about. It's more a cinematic distillation of Jefferson's ideas about democratic societies and the era that it's set. However, cinematographer Pierre Lhomme's color lensing is gorgeous and Jenny Beavan/John Bright's period costumes are exquisite. The performances are uniformly very good. Nolte delivers an intelligent and restrained performance that never goes over the top but may be too dramatically underwhelming at times.

Jefferson in Paris Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Jefferson in Paris makes its global debut on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Studio Classics on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50. I originally bought the Region 2 PAL UK DVD over the R1 counterpart because the latter only encoded the 140-minute feature on a single layer plus it had those gaudy yellow subtitles. The BD improves on the SD editions but the film artifacts haven't been cleaned up. There are fairly frequent white speckles and light scratches that picked up during the last reel that I considered lowering my video score to 3.0. But colors, especially red and green, look bold and well-defined. The outdoor scenes are occasionally sun-dappled and give a light texture to figures and their environ (see Screenshot #s 9 and 10). Look also at the powdered faces and wigs, especially in #3. Dave Kehr, writing in the New York Daily News, commented that the "courtship scenes [are] filmed in a light, bright style..." and I would second that observation based on what I've seen on the DVD and this BD. In a similar vein, William Fark of the Daily (CA) Times-Advocate wrote that the film's style is "epic elegance. Paris has never looked more luxurious, nor dirtier and dingier as required, than in Pierre Lhomme's mostly soft, dreamlike photography." Kino has econded the feature at an average video bitrate of 34953 kbps.

2019 Kino Studio Classics Blu-ray = Screenshot #s 1-15, 17, 19, 21, 23, & 25
2004 Touchstone Home Entertainment UK DVD = Screenshot #s 16, 18, 20, 22, & 24

Kino provides only eight scene selections.

Jefferson in Paris Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Kino supplies a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo track (1560 kbps, 16-bit). To my knowledge, a Dolby Stereo 2.0 is the only mix that was used for the theatrical prints. Some of the dialogue is spoken in French and Kino has provided compulsory white English subitles in a pretty-easy-to-read font. There are also optional English subs for the English lines. Nolte sometimes mumbles his lines and other characters speak in a soft tone so both subtitle tracks are welcome. The original score is by the late Richard Robbins, who wrote many scores for the Merchant Ivory team. His instrumental style is akin to what he did for The Remains of the Day, which was the film MI last worked on two years before this one. It has that minimalist tone that reminds one of Philip Glass (who influenced Robbins) but the orchestral sounds are more classical than they are modern. David Bahanovich did a superb job of selecting and overseeing the historical music, a slew of baroque and operatic pieces performed in the film. As in a lot of MI films, there isn't much "action" so there really aren't any special sound effects that scorch the ears. Overall, this lossless track is adequate but nothing in particular stands out.

Jefferson in Paris Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary by Director James Ivory - the 91-year-old Ivory remains very sharp but his comments would have been better suited for a video interview. Each instance that Ivory delivers a series of remarks is followed by a long lull. The Oscar-winning filmmaker is unscripted and it shows. I don't know how much prep Ivory actually did and don't expect a running, scene-by-scene analysis. In English, not subtitled.

• Theatrical Trailer - a full-frame theatrical trailer for Jefferson in Paris but quality is not unlike a trailer you'd see on a VHS.

• Bonus Trailers - several other trailers for period films and the like that Kino has released on BD.

Jefferson in Paris Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As a longtime fan of Merchant Ivory's films, I'm very glad to see Jefferson in Paris finally make its way on to high-def. There are a lot of aspects that I appreciate and admire in the movie but I imagine that the long run time and lack of action will make it too slow and plodding for viewers. Many critics dismissed it as a turgid historical costume melodrama but it's better than that description. There's certainly nothing scandalous about the way MI surmise how a romantic entanglement between Jefferson and Hemings likely occurred. Studies of DNA evidence conducted in the late 1990s of Jefferson and Hemings' children indicate that he was the biological father. MI's film is about more than that but I believe certain scenes could been better dramatically underscored. If you're a fan of MI, Nolte, and/or Paltrow, I'd RECOMMEND that you pick up this disc. I do hope for a full remastering and restoration of the picture at some point, though.