Criterion Press Release: Pierrot le fou (Blu-ray) (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

Dissatisfied in marriage and life, Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) takes to the road with the babysitter, his ex-lover Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina), and leaves the bourgeois world behind. Yet this is no normal road trip: the tenth feature in six years by genius auteur Jean-Luc Godard is a stylish mash-up of anticonsumerist satire, au courant politics, and comic-book aesthetics, as well as a violent, zigzag tale of, as Godard called them, “the last romantic couple.” With blissful color imagery by cinematographer Raoul Coutard and Belmondo and Karina at their most animated, Pierrot le fou is one of the high points of the French New Wave, and was Godard’s last frolic before he moved ever further into radical cinema.
FILM INFO

• Jean-Luc Godard
• France
• 1965
• 110 minutes
• Color
• 2.35:1
• French
• Spine #421

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Interview with actor Anna Karina from 2007
• A “Pierrot” Primer, a video essay from 2007 written and narrated by filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin
• Godard, l’amour, la poésie, a fifty-minute French documentary from 2007, directed by Luc Lagier, about director Jean-Luc Godard and his work and marriage with Karina
• Excerpts of interviews from 1965 with Godard, Karina, and actor Jean-Paul Belmondo
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by critic Richard Brody, along with (Blu-ray only) a 1969 review by Andrew Sarris and a 1965 interview with Godard
• New cover by Steve Chow
  
  October 6, 2020

 

[Ronald Epstein]

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[ScottJH]

Another out-of-print coming back into print.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Hoping they get Contempt back now.

 

[Trancas]

So is it the "New 2K digital restoration" the one from before 2010? In other words the original Criterion transfer? Nowadays who is scanning film elements at 2k? Most films recently released by Kino Lorber have 4k scans........times have changed, cost of 4k scans have changed.

 

[Lord Dalek]

So is it the "New 2K digital restoration" the one from before 2010? In other words the original Criterion transfer? Nowadays who is scanning film elements at 2k? Most films recently released by Kino Lorber have 4k scans........times have changed, cost of 4k scans have changed.

This was a 2-perf techniscope production. I'm sure someone more knowledgeable would probably argue otherwise but the image is only 1/2 the size of a standard 35mm frame assuming the element used is pre-conversion (IE:blow-up) to anamorphic.

 

[Trancas]

This was a 2-perf techniscope production. I'm sure someone more knowledgeable would probably argue otherwise but the image is only 1/2 the size of a standard 35mm frame assuming the element used is pre-conversion (IE:blow-up) to anamorphic.

That sounds sensible. I remember watching the original blu ray and noticing how coarse the grain was.
But since film moves through the scanner vertically, and the Techniscope negative uses the whole width of the film frame, that means a 2k scanner would have only half the scanning elements employed for a film that is the same width as a conventional full frame negative. Wouldn't that leave things somewhat less well resolved?

 

[Robert Harris]

That sounds sensible. I remember watching the original blu ray and noticing how coarse the grain was.
But since film moves through the scanner vertically, and the Techniscope negative uses the whole width of the film frame, that means a 2k scanner would have only half the scanning elements employed for a film that is the same width as a conventional full frame negative. Wouldn't that leave things somewhat less well resolved?

View attachment 75526

Correct