O saisons, ô châteaux Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

O saisons, ô châteaux Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 31, 2020

Note: This film is available as part of The Complete Films of Agnès Varda.

In the wake (figurative or otherwise) of Agnès Varda’s death last year at the age of 90, quite a bit has rightfully been written about this iconic force in both French and global cinema. Varda’s output includes well over fifty credits as a director (including some television entries as detailed by the IMDb), and aside from listing some of her better known triumphs, many obituaries and/or eulogies about Varda mentioned any number of other biographical data points, including her rather unique position as a woman in France’s nouvelle vague movement, her own feminism which was featured none too subtly in some of her films, and her frequently provocative experimental style. But you know what one of the things that kind of fascinates me personally most about Varda? That she was married for 28 years to Jacques Demy, from 1962 until Demy’s death in 1990. That Varda, often a purveyor of verité infused “realism”, whether that be in outright documentaries or at least ostensibly more “fictional” outings, and Demy, a director whose candy colored, dreamlike and at least relatively "Hollywoodized" musicals with Michel Legrand brought a new luster and gloss to French cinema, managed to make a marital go of it for so long is certainly testament to the maxim that “opposites attract”, even if those oppositional forces in this instance played out at least in part in terms of what kinds of films the two were often best remembered for. If Varda's long marriage to Demy is more than enough reason to celebrate her personal life, her professional life is beautifully feted in this rather astounding new set from Criterion, which aggregates an amazing 39 films (albeit some running as short as a few minutes) to provide what is arguably one of the most insightful overviews of Varda's cinematic oeuvre. Perhaps unavoidably, but also undeniably movingly, these personal and professional sides of Varda merge in at least some of the films in this set, including The Young Girls Turn 25, The World of Jacques Demy, Jacquot de Nantes, and The Beaches of Agnès.

O saisons, ô châteaux is what might be termed one of Varda's "travelogue" shorts, with the film's location being its main unifying aspect. This 1958 documentary was Varda's first commissioned short film done for the French tourist bureau, and it does a wonderful job of highlighting the absolutely gorgeous Loire Valley. The narration gets into some of the history of the region (which includes such notable figures as Joan of Arc), but it's really the astoundingly beautiful scenery which is probably this short's greatest allure.

O saisons, ô châteaux Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

O saisons, ô châteaux is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. This presentation only has a pretty generic "digitally restored" prefatory text card, without any supporting information, and since Criterion only provided check discs for purposes of this review, I'm not privy to any additional information which may be included in the insert booklet. This is a really beautiful looking transfer, though, one which preserves the vividly saturated palette while also offering nice detail levels (even if much of the footage is done in midrange framings). Grain looks natural throughout and encounters no resolution issues whatsoever.

O saisons, ô châteaux Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Unfortunately, many of the shorts in this collection offer only lossy audio, and this release sports a Dolby Digital Mono track in the original French. That probably suffices perfectly well for the narration and even some of the ambient environmental sounds, but the film also includes some appealing jazz courtesy of composer André Hodeir, which probably could have benefited from lossless audio. There is some very slight distortion in some of the music cues, but nothing very problematic. Optional English subtitles are included.

O saisons, ô châteaux Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Introduction from 2007 (1080i; 1:34)

O saisons, ô châteaux Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This is another Varda film that serves as a lovely introduction to a region while also offering what might be thought of as Varda's frequent focus on small(er) community lives bound together in some way. Video looks great, but this features only lossy audio.