Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		2.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

The Widow Couderc Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov June 22, 2022

Pierre Granier-Deferre's "The Widow Couderc" (1971) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber. The supplemental features on the disc include exclusive new audio commentary by entertainment journalist and author Bryan Reesman and vintage trailer for the film. In French, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-A "locked".

The stranger

In the beginning it seems like Jean Lavigne (Alain Delon) is just passing through the rural area, possibly because he is on his way to the nearest big city. But after he carries a brand new and quite heavy incubator for the widow Couderc Tati (Simon Signoret) from the remote bus stop to her farm and she offers him a temp job that immediately intrigues him, it begins to look like he might be a seasonal worker. Even though the job does not pay much, Lavigne then decides to stay and unpacks his bag.

A few days later, Lavigne makes love to the widow and reawakens her desire to live her life to the fullest. Despite routinely clashing with her sister-in-law who lives on the other side of the canal, the widow begins dreaming of spending the rest of her life with Lavigne. If she chose to do so her relationship with Lavigne would instantly become the main topic in every inn in the village and the surrounding areas, but why shouldn’t she take a chance with him. He is young, handsome, healthy and kind, the type of man she always wanted to be with. However, before the widow gathers the courage to tell Lavigne how she really feels about him, she discovers that he has approached her sister-in-law’s beautiful daughter, Felicie (Ottavia Piccolo). Her heart sinks, but instead of instantly giving up, as most women her would, she decides to fight and earn Lavigne’s love.

While the widow quietly suffers, Lavigne seduces Felicie and then admits that he is unable to resist her youthfulness. Initially, the confession hurts the widow so badly that she hands Lavigne everything she owes him and asks him to leave, but then changes her mind because a man that is this honest should never be rejected. However, as their relationship slowly begins to grows stronger, Lavigne reveals that he is an inmate wanted by the police.

Pierre Granier-Deferre’s The Widow Couderc is not an easy film to critique because it does virtually everything right to be considered an accurate cinematic adaptation of Georges Simenon’s classic novel but at the end fails to match its brilliance. Indeed, Delon and Signoret were undoubtedly the right actors to play the two leads, Walter Wottitz gives the film a very fine period appearance, and Philippe Sarde’s beautiful score provides the perfect support for a very moving romantic story, but somehow the end product feels slightly underwhelming. Why?

The only good answer that I have been able to come up with is that the lengthy descriptions of the evolving relationship between the widow and Lavigne are incredibly difficult, perhaps even impossible to recreate with moving images. In the novel these descriptions reveal unique moods, feelings and sensations, and the only way they can be transferred to the film is through facial expressions, but given Simenon’s particular style of writing this strategy becomes something of an unfortunate compromise. It is why I think the great chemistry between Delon and Signoret isn’t enough to make the original story from the novel equally exciting in the film.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most memorable moments from the film are the ones where Sarde’s score gently makes an appearance and adds a very particular poetic beauty to the visuals. The music is simple yet strikingly lush, but also suggesting that a tragedy is inevitable. The feeling isn’t about the type of tragedy that usually materializes in a film either. It has a literary quality that is very much like that of the lengthy descriptions in Simenon’s novel.

The film ends with the following text: In 1922 Jean Lavigne, son of physicist Etienne Lavigne was fatally shot during a formal reception of two high personalities. To the president of the court, who asked him the reasons for his act, he answered, “I’d had enough.”

The Widow Couderc Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.67:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, The Widow Couderc arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber.

The release is sourced from a recent 4K master which was prepared after the film was fully restored in 4K at Hiventy in France. Most unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, the new makeover is very disappointing.

The entire film is very awkwardly graded and a result there are various obvious anomalies that are part of its technical presentation on Blu-ray. First, various primaries are not correctly set, which is why plenty of the visuals that are supposed to be taking place during a scorching hot summer look as if they were shot during late autumn/early winter. Blue, as a primary color, is essentially eliminated, and to a lesser extent so is proper red. (There is one night sequence where proper blues emerge). Light yellow(ish) and brown(ish) nuances give the entire film a very creamy warm but flat appearance that destabilizes various darker nuances and the native dynamic range of many darker sequences. You can see obvious examples in screencaptures #10, 11, 16, and 18. As result, even though the surface of the visuals is extremely healthy and grain exposure is lovely, delineation, clarity and depth are often quite mediocre. The poor color grading job even changes the epilogue, where the fate of Delon's character is described, which should be in white, not creamy yellow. See screencapture #20. (On Lionsgate's DVD release of The Widow Couderc, which was sourced from an old master provided by StudioCanal, the epilogue is in proper white. This DVD release is part of the Alain Delon - Five Film Collection). Image stability is outstanding. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

The Widow Couderc Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: French DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Optional English subtitles are provided for the main feature.

The difference in quality between the lossless track from the Blu-ray and the lossy track from my DVD release is pretty dramatic. The film has a superb soundtrack, so when the volume is turned up the lossless audio instantly fills up the entire room. The lossy track can't do the same. It produces a pretty thin, often even uneven audio whose greatest strength is that is pretty healthy.

The Widow Couderc Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer - a vintage trailer for The Widow Couderc. In French, with English subtitles. (3 min).

• Commentary - this exclusive new audio commentary was recorded by entertainment journalist and author Bryan Reesman.

The Widow Couderc Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

One of Philippe Sarde's all-time greatest scores is in The Widow Couderc, a terrific looking and very nicely acted but imperfect cinematic adaptation of Georges Simenon's famous novel. I love this film and really wanted to have a good Blu-ray release of it in my library, but the 4K restoration that was prepared at Hiventy in France is yet another big misfire. It has way too many similarities with the recent 4K restoration of La Piscine, which is not a good thing. Needless to say, I can't recommend this Blu-ray release.