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DVD
Image Entertainment
Publisher: Arthur Mayer-Edward Kingsley Inc.
Henri Decaë
Format: Black & White, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Actors: Nicole Stéphane, Edouard Dermithe, Renée Cosima, Jacques Bernard, Melvyn Martin
Studio: Image Entertainment Release Date: 07/24/2007
Jean-Pierre Melville's second film, made in 1950, became a significant influence among French filmmakers and earned Melville renown as a maverick who could do wonderful things outside his country's studio system. (Melville's independence was a forerunner of that enjoyed later in the decade by New Wave figures such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.) Les Enfants Terribles is based on a 1929 novel by poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau, who also wrote the script with Melville and according to some people interfered in everything from the casting (the rather stiff male lead was a Cocteau protege) to the photography. Nevertheless, the story of a sister (an outstanding performance by Nicole Stephane) and brother (Edouard Dhermite) who withdraw into their own, insulated world to play out suggestively erotic dramas, has a fluid, lyrical movement that is part of a visionary whole. In some ways a harbinger of the coming pop narcissism of youth culture, Les Enfants Terribles is also a timeless tale of mythic exploration of existence and purpose. --Tom Keogh
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| NEVER RECEIVED ITEM |
| Customer Rating: 1 out of 5 |
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I NEVER receivd this item from the 3rd party seller. I WILL NEVER use this service again. I will go to my local Barnes/Nobles. I waited THREE weeks after the agreed upon date and have yet to see the product. BAD SERVICE!!!!!
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| A bore! |
| Customer Rating: 1 out of 5 |
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Compare to JP Melville's later gangster movies, this is a god damn bore. Can't wait for it to end. A hinted incest relationship between the sister and the brother referred as "playing games" perhaps? Don't get excited weirdos,
there is no nudity in this film.
Glad the dvd player has a fast forward button, I used 34X to scan the disc to the end. The boy died for some reason and the girl shot herself. Terrible movie. Well transferred to DVD by Criterion - that's why I gave it one star. Maybe this movie is good for some academics who usually are legends in their own minds, but not for me. Go see Melville's Le Circle Rouge and La Samourai. They are much better done.
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| Strange and at times unnerving masterpiece, French style. |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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It took time to build, but when things got really rolling, I felt things could not happen otherwise. The settings and actresses are truly fine. The musical score, simple and obsessive, is perfect for this almost naive plot of youth angst "avant la lettre". The final monologue of Elizabeth about "how we have to make our lives ugly, unlivable" is worth many bad French Literature we "ought to read".
While I cannot say it has any meaning, the "form" of this movie is so good one just forgets. I agree with Amazon's Tom Keogh that it may be "a harbinger of pop narcissism", I thought exactly the same. Some images are beautiful, like Liz moving in the garden with barren trees and a cloudy sky, prodding elegantly in a house that doesn't belong to her.
Doug Anderson on Amazon wrote a good summary and a great line: "the unwholesomeness of the bond is immediately apparent" "little blonde fascist versions of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton-". The thread he and another reviewer have is interesting. I pinch from there my end line: "In film the "how" is everything".
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| an unusual realtionship between two siblings |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.
Les enfants terribles is about an adolescent brother and his adult sister. When the brother is injured in a schoolyard fight, the sister takes care of him. They live in recluse and have an eccentric relationship. It is based on a story by Jean Cocteau and directed by Jean-Pierre Melville.
I found the film to be odd which is to be expected as this was partially intentional.
The special features are an interview with producer Carole Weisweiller actress Nicole Stéphane, actor Jacques Bernard, and assistant director Jacques Bernard. Also included is "Around Jean Cocteau" a short film about the collaboration of Cocteau and Mellvill, a slide show of production photos, a theacrical trailer and audio commentary by movie critic, Gilbert Adair.
This film is not for everyone but does have some interesting moments.
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| How many people can we be at the same time? |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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1.)This is a terrific film for anyone fond of Cocteau or anyone fond of the screwed-up nature of human beings. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe? might be more human, more passionate and more real, but this film is an appropriately stranger, whimsical tragedy. It's enjoyable, the DVD is very fine. The Orphic Trilogy is Cocteau; it demonstrates his failure as a director and success as an eccentric artist and I enjoy it (them.) Yet only when Melville acts as foil does he become the master by being a servant.
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2.) Good... Not too weird, not too normal. Good. A nice pack of adequate French cinema and twisted Cocteau fantasia. Don't we all love the Dargelos persona? Isn't it a nice manipulation of victory over fear by re-designating the symbolism or the perception of symbolism assigned to the people involved in our lives; or relationships. Huh? Yeah. It's pretty good. Thank the Lord it's on DVD in the US. America could use some decency.
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