. . . I have not read much about this set that came out last year (how quickly "this year" becomes "last year") but it turned out to be a nice surprise (coming from the unreliable LIONSGATE outfit) with excellent to very good transfers of the films I have seen supplied by STUDIO CANAL . . .

. . . we have just begun to dig through the set, having watched the classic LA MARSELLAISE (1938) - a nice telling of the French Revolution as we follow a group of friends from the early days in Marseille, through a period of intense political discussion (Ken Loach must have been very impressed by this part of the movie as he certainly used the same idea in LAND AND FREEDOM [1995]), to the storming of the Louvre and the capture of the King and Queen - it reminded us of one of those WWII movies where you get the grunts eye view of events . . . as mentioned above, the print is in very good shape having been restored recently, and the direction is by a Renoir at the heighth of his powers . . .

. . . the big surprise of the set so far is the reason I wanted to make this post - THE DOCTOR'S HORRIBLE EXPERIMENT/LE TESTAMENT DU DOCTEUR CORDELIER (1959) is not a great film, it seems to have been an early experiment in television movie production which now comes across as both lacking in atmosphere and rather flatly directed; but what makes this telling of the often filmed JEKYLL AND HYDE rather fabulous is the central performance by the great actor Jean-Louis Barrault in the role of Dr. Cordelier/Mr. Opale . . . most of us will remember Barrault from Marcel Carne's CHILDREN OF PARADISE/LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS (1945) in his role as Baptiste Deburau, the tragic mime - we loved his performance in this favorite film, and have always wanted to see him do some other film role; sadly, we missed his many years of work in the French theater . . . anyway, his performance as Opale, a creature freed from all social restraint, shambling around Paris in an oversize suit (David Byrne of TALKING HEADS must have seen this film), acting like a crazed Charlie Chaplin as he tries to strangle a very young girl, or pull a baby from a mother's arms, or kick the crutches from under the arms of a disabled man, has quickly become my favorite manifestation of the "Hyde" character currently on film (even surpassing Jerry Lewis) . . .

. . . anyway, this set is fine so far, even when compaired to the work ECLIPSE is doing with their wonderful director series, although one does wish each of the Renoir films had its own disc, rather then share - but, at least on our system, it seems to have worked out pretty well . . .