6.9 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Her youth has been spent working for a farm family, being raped by father and son, marrying the son who has now left her a happy widow. She is happy because World War I is over and she is enjoying being in control of the farm. And then she hires the handsome stranger who helped her carry the new incubator for chicks from the bus and across the canal. In the house by the canal with the job of raising and lowering the bridge for passing boats lives the widow's envious sister-in-law along with husband and nubile daughter.
Starring: Alain Delon, Simone Signoret, Ottavia Piccolo, Jean Tissier, Monique ChaumetteForeign | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Romance | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.67:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.66:1
French: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 2.5 | |
Audio | 5.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
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
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).
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.
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.
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