JP Melville: "Le samouraï", "Le deuxième souffle"

[MJ Ryan]

In conducting my semi-regular search for releases of this master's work at Amazon.fr, much to my interest I found "Le samouraï" to have been released on October 9th, and "Le deuxième souffle" due for release on October 19th, both courtesy of TF1. Cheap too (for better or worse), at 154 FF a piece.

Details are decidedly sketchy, and even cover shots are not on offer. "Le samouraï", oddly, is only "généralement disponible en 1 à 2 semaines". No trace of either to be found at, say, www.dvdfr.com or www.dvdrama.net .

Can anyone shed any light on these?

[adamvbarker]

DVD Shopping Centre list Le Samourai here (http://www.dvdshoppingcenter.com/fiche.asp?id=13936&affilieid=14624) with the warning, "WARNING: FRENCH VERSION ONLY, NO ENGLISH SUBTITLES !! ", and gives its release date as 19/09/2001 which doesn't seem to tie in with the others. There is no cover scan.

It has the same for Le Deuxieme Souffle

www.alapage.com lists them as well but says nothing about them.

www.tf1video.fr says nothing about them, even though they are producing them.

[John Hodson]

I'm afraid my schoolboy French wouldn't stand a no subtitle version; Le Samourai is one of my most eagerly awaited titles, Anchor Bay's Un Flic having merely whetted the appetite (cheesey helicopter special effects and all!).

Never seen Souffle ; how does this stand in the canon?

---
So many films, so little time...

[jonathan.e]

Artificial Eye have the rights to Le Samourai in the UK (or they did) and it was one of the few titles they released on Laserdisc (I have a copy) so at least it’ll be done right. Unfortunately they seem very reluctant to release any back catalogue titles at all.

[Michael Brooke]

If I remember rightly, the dialogue in <I>Le Samouraï</I> is minimal in the extreme, and decidedly secondary to everything else - so if you've already seen it the lack of subtitles may not be an especially major problem.

And Artificial Eye are at least dipping a tentative toe into back catalogue waters with the <I>Three Colours</I> trilogy, <I>Fanny and Alexander</I> and <I>Solaris</I>, which is a promising sign. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they didn't licence the other Ruscico Tarkovsky transfers, since I think they own the UK rights to those as well (I haven't seen these yet, though <I>Andrei Rublyov</I> should reach me soon).

[MJ Ryan]

Thanks, everyone.

Very mysterious! :confused: It astonishes me that these do not seem to be regarded as key releases in France!

[JPMO]

Originally posted by MJ Ryan
Very mysterious! :confused: It astonishes me that these do not seem to be regarded as key releases in France!

They'd probably say the same about our treatment of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach...