One Sings, the Other Doesn't Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

One Sings, the Other Doesn't Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 31, 2020

Note: This version of this film is available as part of The Complete Films of Agnès Varda. See below for my link to a previous standalone version from The Criterion Collection that I reviewed some time ago, with the same technical specs but some different supplements.

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.

One Sings, the Other Doesn't is one of the films in this set that has had a previous standalone release, in this case by The Criterion Collection itself. For those unfamiliar with the film, I refer you to my One Sings, the Other Doesn't Blu-ray review of the first Criterion Blu-ray release for a plot summary and my thoughts on the film. Some of the verbiage below also comes from the original review.

One Sings, the Other Doesn't Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

One Sings, the Other Doesn't is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection. This appears to be identical to Criterion's prior release of the film, and so I'm repeating my original video review here, although as I mention in the "main" review for the entire Varda collection, Criterion only provided check discs for purposes of these reviews, so I'm not privy to any different information that may be included in the collection's written material (therefore, my mention of an "insert booklet" refers to the first standalone release).

One Sings, the Other Doesn't is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.66:1. Two sets of technical specs are offered with this release, one via a text card at the beginning of the presentation, and the other inside the insert booklet. The text card states:

L'une chante l'autre pas directed in 1976 by Agnes Varda on 35mm silver color stock in a 1.66 format was restored by Ciné Tamaris in 2014 at the laboratory Éclair with the support of the CNC. The 2K digital restoration of the images was done from a 2K scan of the original negative. The color grading was supervised by Agnès Varda and the DP Charlie Van Damme. The sound restoration was made by L.E. Diapason* from the original 35mm magnetic mix.

The insert booklet contains the following verbiage on the transfer:

One Sings, the Other Doesn't is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.66:1. On standard 4:3 televisions, the image will appear letterboxed. On standard and widescreen televisions, black bars may also be visible on the left and right to maintain the proper screen format. This new 2K digital restoration was undertaken from the 35mm original camera negative by Ciné -Tamaris at Éclair in Vanves, Frances, with support from the Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée.

The original monaural soundtrack was remastered from the original 35mm magnetic mix by L.E. Diapason* in Paris.

This is a generally very pleasing looking transfer which recreates the kind of diffuse, at times intentionally soft, look of the film, with Varda and DP Van Damme often opting for backlit scenes which tend to create effulgent glows around characters. Detail levels are commendable throughout the presentation, and some of the outdoor material is quite ravishing looking. There are still a few tiny signs of age related wear and tear in the form of things like white flecks, but they're very minimal and were never distracting to me personally. It's been decades since I last saw One Sings, the Other Doesn't theatrically, and so I don't want to entirely trust my memory on this, but the color grading struck me as skewing a bit more toward blue at times than I had remembered, something that tends to give a kind of hazy slate overlay to some scenes. Contrast looked a bit milky as well, especially in some interior scenes. Grain resolves naturally throughout the presentation, and I noticed no other compression anomalies.

*I'm sure other organ players will join me in congratulating Mr. Diapason for having one of the all time best surnames for a sound tech guy.

One Sings, the Other Doesn't Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

One Sings, the Other Doesn't features a nice sounding LPCM Mono track in the original French. As if to belie my comment above, in some Director's Notes included with this release, Varda explicitly states that this film is in fact a musical, and there of course is quite a bit of singing in it (I frankly had a bit of a laugh in an early scene where a choir Pauline is in just launches right into a complex four part piece without getting any notes from a pianist or other helper). The folkier aspects of the score sound fantastic throughout, with clear renderings of both voices and instruments like guitars (there's one funny scene where the accompaniment is clearly a piano, but all of the instrumentalists are playing guitars). Dialogue as well as quite a bit of voiceover sound clear and clean throughout this problem free presentation.

One Sings, the Other Doesn't Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Kind of interestingly, this features a somewhat different slate of supplements than the standalone release.

• Nausicaa (1080p; 1:38:35) is not the Hayao Miyazaki film, but an abandoned project by Varda, here presented from the only known existing workprint. In French with English subtitles.


• Women Are Naturally Creative: Agnès Varda (1080p; 47:22) is a 1977 documentary directed by Katja Raganelli, featuring an interview with Varda shot during the making of One Sings, the Other Doesn't, which also includes interviews with Valérie Mairesse and Thérèse Liotard. In French with English subtitles.


• Trailer (1080p; 1:50)

One Sings, the Other Doesn't Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Varda's films can sometimes feel like leisurely strolls through the French countryside, interspersed with the occasional run-in with a student revolutionary or something like that. The narrative structure of this film has some built in hurdles, including leaps forward in time as well as an arguably distancing factor introduced by characters talking about events rather than having those events actually depicted. Still, this is a really sweet yet still tart examination of women trying to take control of their lives, and both succeeding and failing, as virtually anyone who has ever tried to take control of his or her life has probably experienced themselves. Technical merits are generally solid, and as usual Criterion has assembled some appealing supplements. Highly recommended.