6.4 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Joey is a struggling writer with no money. His roommate Carl is a charming stud with a taste for young girls. Together, these two insatiable dreamers will laugh, love and screw their way through a decadent Paris paved with wanton women, wild orgies and outrageous erotic adventures.
Starring: Paul Valjean, Wayne Rodda, Ulla Koppel, Avi Sagild, Olaf UssingDrama | 100% |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Video codec: HEVC / H.265
Video resolution: 4K (2160p)
Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.66:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH, French, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
4K Ultra HD
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 5.0 | |
Audio | 5.0 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Jens Jorgen Thorsen's "Quiet Days in Clichy" (1970) arrives on 4K Blu-ray/Blu-ray courtesy of Blue Underground. The supplemental features on the release include archival interviews with Barney Rosset; archival program with Joe McDonald; newly discovered and restored deleted scene; vintage promotional materials; and more. In English, with optional English SDH, Spanish, and French subtitles for the main feature. Region-Free.
Struggling writer by day, amateur love hunter by night.
Blue Underground's release of Quiet Days in Clichy is a 4K Blu-ray/Blu-ray combo pack. Both discs offer presentations of a brand new 4K restoration of the film. Both are Region-Free as well.
Please note that some of the screencaptures that appear with this article are taken from the 4K Blu-ray and are downscaled to 1080p. Therefore, they do not accurately reflect the quality of the 4K content on the 4K Blu-ray disc.
Screencaptures #1-28 are from Quiet Days in Clichy Blu-ray.
Screencaptures #29-36 are from Quiet Days in Clichy 4K Blu-ray.
The release introduces an exclusive new 16-bit 4K restoration of the film which was completed after the original camera negative was discovered. The previous Blu-ray release was sourced from a master struck from a 35mm theatrical print.
I have the previous Blu-ray release in my library and think that it offers a very solid organic presentation of the film, but the other night after I loaded up the new 4K Blu-ray release I could not believe what I was seeing on my screen. Some years ago, I attended a theatrical screening of this film and as a result know exactly how rough it looked, so the visuals that emerged on my screen surprised me a lot. Why? Because this new 4K restoration makes Quiet Days in Clichy appear almost as impressive as Vivre sa vie. I have always thought that Jens Jørgen Thorsen shot his film by imitating the style and personality of Jean-Luc Godard's film as best as he could, and now that we have such a pristine presentation of the former, it is pretty obvious that this was the case. I viewed the entire film with Dolby Vision and was very impressed by the quality of the visuals. They are quite diverse, too. Some were shot in areas with restricted light. Some were shot with plenty of natural daylight. Some were shot with minimal light at night. While there are plenty of native density fluctuations, the overall quality of the visuals is tremendous. Also, the grayscale is terrific. On the 4K Blu-ray, the dynamic range of the visuals is a tad more impressive, but in 1080p the entire film looks magnificent as well. On the previous Blu-ray release, occasionally it was easy to see that some highlights and shadows are not handled as well as they should have been, but this is the quality the then-available elements were able to produce. Now, all visuals look very balanced and have very solid and consistent organic qualities. Image stability is outstanding. The entire film looks very healthy as well. Incredible 4K restoration and technical presentations on 4K Blu-ray and Blu-ray.
There is only one standard audio track on this release: English DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0. Optional English SDH, Spanish, and French subtitles are provided for the main feature.
Even though there are some small but noticeable dynamic and clarity fluctuations, the audio is very healthy. Why do these fluctuations exist? Because this is how the audio was recorded, and this is what the lossless track reproduces. To be perfectly clear, you should not expect to hear distracting dynamic anomalies, but small fluctuations that are part of the film's identity.
4K BLU-RAY DISC
Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch's Chronicle of a Summer and Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre sa vie were released theatrically nearly a decade before Jens Jørgen Thorsen shot Quiet Days in Clichy. Even though Thorsen's film is a very loose cinematic adaptation of Henry Miller's popular sexually explicit novel, it appears to have been modeled after Chronicle of a Summer and Vivre sa vie, with the latter providing the majority of the inspiration. Unsurprisingly, it is a pretty good time capsule, not a bad pornographic film, as some film historians have argued in the past. Of course, it is very easy to make a case that Thorsen was not as good of a director as Morin, Rouch, and Godard and that the actors he worked with were not great performers, but these details do not change the identity of his film. (For what it's worth, the two famous controversial films Vilgot Sjöman directed at the same time, I Am Curious: Yellow and I Am Curious: Blue, share the same identity. Despite claims to the contrary, they are not pornographic films either). Blue Underground's 4K Blu-ray/Blu-ray release of Quiet Days in Clichy is sourced from a fabulous new 4K master that was prepared after an original fine-grain negative, previously thought lost, was recently discovered and the film was fully restored in 4K. It is a tremendous release. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
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