Les Orgueilleux Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.5

Les Orgueilleux Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov February 17, 2014

Winner of Bronze Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival, Yves Allegret's "Les Orgueilleux" a.k.a. "The Proud and the Beautiful" (1953) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of French label Pathe. The supplemental features on the disc include and original trailer for the film; archival video interviews with the French director and actress Michele Morgan; archival stills; and new video program featuring interviews with writer Gerard Bonal, documentary filmmaker and writer Alain Ferrari, journalist and writer Olivier Barrot, and actor and writer Francis Huster. In French and Spanish, with optional English and French SDH subtitles for the main feature. Region-Free.

The drunkard

The great Gerard Philipe is George, a young Frenchman who is trying to drink himself to death in a small Mexican town because he feels responsible for the death of his wife. But he has run out of money, which is why he has been forced to put his plan on hold.

At the only bus station in town, a beautiful French tourist (Michele Morgan, The Fallen Idol, Le Quai Des Brumes) asks for help because her husband (Andre Toffel) can’t stop vomiting. The inebriated George, who has started doing odd jobs for free drinks, cleans up the man and then a few workers carry him to a cheap hotel. After examining her husband and concluding that he has been infected with a meningitis virus, the local doctor (Carlos Lopez Moctezuma, Viva Maria!) warns Nellie that she has to be vaccinated as soon as possible. Shortly after, her husband dies.

While trying to figure out what to do with the body, the shocked Nellie discovers that someone has stolen her husband’s wallet. To pay for the hotel room, she sells her only valuable possession at the local bar - a small gold cross necklace.

In the following days a meningitis outbreak spreads over the town and the nearby villages. While assisting the doctor as he attempts to vaccinate as many people as possible, George begins to realize that after all life might be worth living. At the same time, the disillusioned and penniless Nellie is overwhelmed by a sense of guilt because she does not miss her dead husband as much as she should. Forced out of their comfort zones, George and Nellie begin to reevaluate their lives, and then slowly warm up to each other.

Based on Jean-Paul Sartre’s story Typhus, Yves Allegret’s Les Orgueilleux a.k.a The Proud and the Beautiful is unquestionably a grand classic waiting to be rediscovered. It was completed in 1953 and four years later nominated for Oscar award for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story.

There are some similarities between Philipe’s portrayals of the broke Modigliani in Jacques Becker's Les amants de Montparnasse and the penniless drunkard in The Proud and the Beautiful, but the atmosphere in these films is drastically different. There is a lot of beauty and plenty of hope in Becker’s film. In Allegret’s film the hope has been replaced with a sense of desperation that makes the film look notably raw and gritty. There is a short sequence in the beginning of the film where the drunken George is seen walking with a pig’s head dripping blood, but aside from the panicked Nellie who has just started looking for help no one notices him. When he delivers the head to the local brothel, a disillusioned prostitute begs him to stay and make love to her.

On the opposite end is Nellie, the elegant and seemingly innocent French beauty who has arrived in Mexico and quickly discovered that she never really cared much about her dead husband. Now her heart desires another man, but he is a drunkard who wants to die. Should she follow her heart and try to change his mind or be smart and keep him out of her life? In a different film Nellie’s dilemma probably would have been introduced with a heavy dose of melodrama, but here Allegret moves the camera closer to Nellie and instead quietly begins observing her as she struggles with the suffocating humidity. For a while it literally feels as if he is trying to punish her because she has lost her innocence.

The film’s visual style has a lot in common with that of Jacques Becker’s Casque d'Or - there are multiple very precise close-ups and light and shadow are treated with a great deal of attention. But the heightened sense of realism gives The Proud and the Beautiful an entirely different flavor, one that brings it a lot closer to another classic French film released in 1953 - Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear.

Les Orgueilleux Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.37:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Yves Allegret's The Proud and the Beautiful arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of French label Pathe.

The high-definition transfer uses as a foundation Pathe's 2K restoration and reconstruction of The Proud and the Beautiful which was completed at L'Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna, Italy in 2013, with the support of CNC. Currently, I do not have this film on DVD in my library and cannot perform any direct comparisons, but the new restoration is enormously impressive. Generally speaking, image depth and clarity are excellent throughout the entire film. The daylight sequences, in particular, look fantastic. Virtually all of the close-ups, some of which employ very effective highlights, also look terrific (see screencapture #14). Furthermore, contrast and sharpness levels remain stable. The blacks, whites and the wide range of grays are beautifully balanced and looking very healthy. The best news, however, is that there are no traces of compromising degraining or sharpening corrections. Unsurprisingly, the film has a very solid and very pleasing organic look. Lastly, dirt, debris, noise, scratches, cuts, and damage marks have been carefully removed. Also, some excellent transition improvements and stabilizations have been performed. All in all, this is a beautiful presentation of The Proud and the Beautiful, and in my opinion one of the very best in Pathe's classic catalog. (Note: This is a Region-Free Blu-ray release. Therefore, you will be able to play it on your PS3 or SA regardless of your geographical location. For the record, there is no problematic PAL or 1080/50i content preceding the disc's main menu).

Les Orgueilleux Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: French DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (with portions of Spanish). Also included is a Descriptive Audio DTS 2.0 track. For the record, Pathe have provided optional English and French SDH subtitles for the main feature.

The lossless track is excellent. Depth and clarity are very good and balance is terrific. Despite the fact that the film's sound design is fairly modest, dynamic intensity is also very good (see the sequence where Gerard Philipe dances in the bar to win the bottle of tequila). Also, there are no pops, cracks, background hiss, or distortions to report in this review. The English translation is excellent.

Les Orgueilleux Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Gerard Philipe: L'ascension de l'ange - in this new documentary program, journalist and writer Olivier Barrot, documentary filmmaker and writer Alain Ferrari, writer Gerard Bonal, and actor and writer Francis Huster (La femme publique, The Dinner Game) discuss Gerard Philipe's performance in The Proud and the Beautiful and the film's unique style and construction. In French, not subtitled. (19 min, 1080/50i).

• Galerie photos - a collection of stills from the film. With music. (5 min, 1080p).

• Film annonce - original trailer for The Proud and the Beautiful. In French, not subtitled. (5 min, 1080p).

• Au cinema ce soir: Les Orgueilleux - in this archival French video program from 1972, director Yves Allegret and actress Michele Morgan (Nellie) recall their work on The Proud and the Beautiful. In French, not subtitled. (26 min, 1080/50i).

Les Orgueilleux Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you are interested in classic French cinema, I urge you to consider purchasing Yves Allegret's The Proud and the Beautiful as quickly as possible. It is one of the best films from the early '50s that I have seen and it has been beautifully restored by Pathe. I would like to remind fans of the great Gerard Philipe that Allegret's Such a Pretty Little Beach has also been restored and released on Blu-ray in France, while Rene Clair's Beauty of the Devil is already available locally courtesy of Cohen Film Collection. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.