6.2 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
During one man's unforgettable visit to liberal and socially permissive France, he meets and falls in love with a worldly and mysterious woman! But when the alluring charms of another prove irresistible, he finds himself courting scandal in a heated triangle of passion and desire!
Starring: Nick Nolte, Gwyneth Paltrow, Estelle Eonnet, Thandiwe Newton, Seth GilliamDrama | 100% |
Romance | 74% |
Biography | 34% |
History | 18% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 2.0 (192 kbps)
DTS-HD MA 2.0: 1560 kbps
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 2.5 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
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 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.
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.
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.
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