6.9 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A young woman is interrogated by the police and the judges at her trial, suspected of being a modern witch. The girl who shared her apartment has been found dead, bound to the posts of her bed, a pair of scissors impaled in her heart. Does the woman have the power to make all around her fall prey to her spell, forcing them to slide progressively into desire, lust and, ultimately, the unknown?
Starring: Olga Georges-Picot, Michael Lonsdale, Jean Martin (I), Jean-Louis Trintignant, Anicée AlvinaForeign | 100% |
Horror | 26% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.67:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.66:1
French: LPCM 2.0
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
More often associated with literature than with cinema, Alain Robbe-Grillet nonetheless made his mark on both, with fractured, circular, and/or self-
reflexive non-narratives that consciously pushed against what was expected of the two mediums. In the mid-1950s, his novels Le Voyeur and
La Jalousie established him as a key figure in the development of the Nouveau Roman (New Novel), a movement, caught in the gray
area between modernism and postmodernism, that attempted to do for fiction what the imminent Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) would do for
film—unhinge itself from the bourgeois "tradition of quality"-type storytelling of the 19th and early 20th centuries. "Plot" and "character" would no
longer be givens, and meta or non-linear narratives, along with other experimental forms, took the place of "straight" stories.
A key difference between the New Novelists and the New Wavers, however, was the role of authorial intent. While the former group sought to excise
the personal from their work, the latter placed an importance on directorial style and outlook and authority, which the critic-filmmakers at Cahiers
du Cinéma dubbed "auteur theory." For as much as Robbe-Grillet downplayed his own individual creative function in his novels—he once wrote,
“They are saying that the writer has a worldview, a sort of truth that he wishes to communicate, and that his writing has an ulterior significance. I am
against this”—when it comes to cinema, he is unreservedly an auteurist, with a vision and peculiarities that are all his own.
In his screenwriting debut, 1961's cryptic Last Year at Marienbad, he's credited as "co-auteur" with director Alain Resnais, and on the basis of
that film's success—it was nominated for that year's "Original Screenplay" Oscar and won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival—he launched his
own directorial career, characterized by a defiantly kinky eroticism and oblique, inverted takes on the murder mystery and detective genres. His films
were never as successful as those of his New Wave contemporaries, and historically, they've been hard to track down on home video in the U.S., where
they've never officially been released. That changes this year, however, as Kino-Lorber—under their Redemption Films label—are releasing six of Robbe-
Grillet's films, starting this month with Trans-Europ-Express and Successive Slidings of Pleasure.
Making its home video debut in the U.S., Successive Slidings of Pleasures—remastered in high definition using original 35mm materials—looks excellent. Kino-Lorber's "as-is" approach to their transfers can be hit or miss depending on the source prints/negatives they have access to, but in this case, there are no substantial distractions. Print damage, when it does show up—which is rarely—is extremely light, consisting of a few flecks and brief scratches. Nothing heavy, nothing pervasive, nothing harsh or ugly. The film's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer looks clean and filmic and natural, with visible grain and no evidence of digital noise reduction or edge enhancement. Colors are vivid and stable—and this is an all-around vivid film, color-wise—and contrast is neither too pronounced nor too flat. Overall clarity is also impressive; this was a low-budget film shot quickly in sixteen days, but focus is fairly consistent—it helps that Robbe-Grillet seemed to prefer deep depth of field—and there's plenty of fine detail, especially in closeups.
Likewise, there are no issues with the film's uncompressed Linear PCM 2.0 track, which is clear and stable throughout, with none of the crackling, peaking, or hisses that you often expect from films of this budget and era. Dialogue is pronounced in the mix, the sometimes experimental sound design is nicely reproduced, and Michel Fano's score sounds great. The disc features optional English subtitles, which appear in easy-to-read white lettering.
Circular stories can seem gimmicky today—after the time loops of Donnie Darko, 12 Monkeys, and Groundhog Day—but at the time, Successive Sliding's successive sliding from end to beginning and back again was a novel narrative experiment. This is an unusual film, not just in the construction of its story, but also in the way that it's highbrow and lowbrow simultaneously, wedding literary pretensions with 1970s euro- sleaze exploitation. And this is precisely why Alain Robbe-Grillet's films are worth exploring, and why Kino has opted to release them on the Redemption Films label, which specializes in the cultish and kinky. Recommended for S's & M's, nunsploitation fiends, and all fans of European cinema's independant outliers.
1967
N. Took the Dice
1971
L'homme qui ment / L'uomo che mente
1968
L'éden et après
1970
The Immortal One
1963
I vampiri
1957
江戸川乱歩全集 恐怖奇形人間 / Edogawa Rampo zenshû: Kyôfu kikei ningen
1969
Die Blaue Hand
1967
2018
キュア / Kyua
1997
Virgin Killer / Red Rings of Fear / Orgie des Todes
1978
Una farfalla con le ali insanguinate
1971
La morte ha sorriso all'assassino
1973
Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht
1979
Profondo rosso | Special Edition
1975
The Doll of Satan | Limited Edition to 3000
1969
Standard Edition | El Aullido del Diablo
1988
Standard Edition
1982
1968
La vampire nue | Limited Edition | Indicator Series
1970