Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

T'as de beaux escaliers, tu sais 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.

This 1986 piece is a love letter to cinema, or perhaps more appropriately, to cinematheque, at least in the form of the French Cinematheque, whose 50th anniversary this documentary celebrates, albeit in a typically whimsical Varda-esque way. Isabelle Adjani's narration states that T'as de beaux escaliers, tu sais is "a tribute disguised as an ad," and despite its perhaps insanely brief running time, it features a wealth of snippets from various iconic films, many featuring the "stairs" of the film's title.

T'as de beaux escaliers, tu sais Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

T'as de beaux escaliers, tu sais is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.68:1, though a number of the film clips seen in passing are in variant aspect ratios presented within the 1.68:1 frame. The "contemporary" footage looks great here, with good black levels and well modulated gray scale, but a number of the film clips utilized are in pretty ragged condition at times. As a result, detail levels and grain structure tends to ebb and flow, depending on the source.

T'as de beaux escaliers, tu sais Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with many of the other shorts included in this collection, T'as de beaux escaliers, tu sais features only a lossy Dolby Digital Mono track in the original French. Isabelle Adjani's narration is always clear, and some of the contemporary scenes features equally vibrant sound as people gather around the Cinematheque stairs. A number of the film clips have pretty badly compromised sound, with music sounding especially muffled. Optional English subtitles are available.

T'as de beaux escaliers, tu sais Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Introduction from 2007 (1080i; 00:25) offers Varda's comments. In French with English subtitles.

T'as de beaux escaliers, tu sais Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Probably only someone of Agnès Varda's general comportment would even attempt to sum up 50 years of cinematic history in under four minutes, but she does it here with incredible style and ingenuity. Video encounters a few issues with regard to some of the film clips utilized, and this is another short with only lossy audio.