Le Plaisir (Criterion Collection)

Le Plaisir (Criterion Collection)
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Format:  DVD
item number:  FQR7
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DVD Details

  • Rated: Not Rated
  • Run Time: 1 hours, 37 minutes
  • Video: Black & White
  • Encoding: Region 1 (USA & Canada)
  • Released: September 16, 2008
  • Originally Released: 1952
  • Label: Criterion Collection

Performers, Cast and Crew:

Starring
Performer: , , , &
Featured: &
Directed by
Edited by
Screenwriting by
Composition by
Director of Photography: &

Entertainment Reviews:

Certified Fresh89%

TOMATOMETER
[This] film addresses fundamental questions about the author's responsibility to her/his creations...
Sight and Sound
Dec 1, 2006
[P]erhaps Ophuls's most abstract, most musical film. The frenzied resistance to the passage of time dramatized in the opening sequence gradually modulates into the becalmed, mature acceptance of the concluding episode.
New York Times
Sep 15, 2008

Product Description:

LE PLAISIR (The House of Pleasure) is taken from three stories by French writer Guy de Maupassant. LE MASQUE opens at a Paris dance hall where a strange man (Jean Galland) dances with such abandon that he collapses. A doctor (Claude Dauphin) is summoned to revive him, only to discover a withered old man under a mask. When the doctor takes the man home, the man's wife tells the doctor the strange story of her husband's life.

LE MODELE opens with a middle-aged man pushing a woman in a wheel chair. A narrator explains that he is a famous artist. In a flashback to Paris in the 1890s, Jean (Daniel Gelin), falls in love with Josephine (Simone Simon), his beautiful model. He paints only portraits of her and achieves success, but their love affair ends tragically.

MAISON TELLIER is a charming tale of the bordello in a small French town. When Madame Tellier (Madeleine Renaud) takes all the prostitutes off to her brother Joseph's (Jean Gabin) farm for the weekend, the men begin fighting. The women are dazzled by the beauty of the county but they can't sleep because of the quiet. When they return home, the men of the town all turn out for a gala night.

Description by Image Entertainment:

Roving with his dazzlingly mobile camera around the decadent ballrooms, bucolic countryside retreats, urban bordellos, and painter's studios of late nineteenth-century Parisian society, Max Ophuls brings his astonishing visual dexterity and storytelling bravura to this triptych of tales by Guy de Maupassant about the limits of spiritual and physical pleasure. Featuring a stunning cast of French stars (including Danielle Darrieux, Jean Gabin, and Simone Simon), Le plaisir pinpoints the cruel ironies and happy compromises of life with a charming and sophisticated breeziness.

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Product Info

  • UPC: 715515031523
  • Shipping Weight: 0.31/lbs (approx)
  • International Shipping: 1 item

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