Les Enfants Terribles: Criterion Collection

Les Enfants Terribles: Criterion Collection
by Jean Cocteau, Jean-Pierre Melville

Les Enfants Terribles: Criterion Collection

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DVD details

Actor: Edouard Dermithe, Jacques Bernard, Melvyn Martin, Nicole St?phane, Ren?e Cosima
Director: Jean Cocteau, Jean-Pierre Melville
Brand: Image Entertainment
Writer: Jean Cocteau
Cinematographer: Henri Deca?
Producer: Jean-Pierre Melville
Writer: Jean-Pierre Melville
Editor: Monique Bonnot
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); French (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 105 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-07-24
Studio: Arthur Mayer-Edward Kingsley Inc.

DVD Reviews of Les Enfants Terribles: Criterion Collection

DVD Review: A bore!
Summary: 1 Stars

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 idiot academics, but not for me.

DVD Review: Strange and at times unnerving masterpiece, French style.
Summary: 4 Stars

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".

DVD Review: an unusual realtionship between two siblings
Summary: 3 Stars

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 St?phane, 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.

DVD Review: How many people can we be at the same time?
Summary: 4 Stars

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.

OR

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.

DVD Review: Let's blame Cocteau
Summary: 2 Stars

This is a film I wish Jean-Pierre Melville never made. It's so removed from his milieu that I can't help being reminded of Alfred Hitchcock's involvement with the romantic comedy, MR AND MRS SMITH. It seems, however, that Melville wanted to do it so he has only himself to blame.

Here we are treated to a couple of overbearing teenagers orphaned early in the story -- apparently without emotional effect. Their story in the first part of the film is mostly confined to their shared bedroom in which torment each other at the top of their lungs. Some people are fascinated by this psychopathology, but it was pure hell for me.

Nicole St?phane as the sister has been revered for her performance -- yet I found it constantly over-the-top. I tolerated the performance of the actor playing the brother, Edouard Dermithe, better -- while he was roundly jeered by the critics. Because I don't speak French, I am reacting to only part of his performance.

An hour into the movie, and 46 minutes before the end, the film finally opens up and shows some momentum. That's about the time the American appears. He sings a pleasant ballad with a pleasant-enuf voice. Then the film begins to descend again, but it ends before it sinks to previous depths.

Jean Cocteau's source novel is considered a classic. Many people rank this film as a classic. That may be all you need to know about it.

If, like me, you want to see everything Melville did, than you have already decided to see this film. Just be aware that it is nothing like Melville's others ... I'm happy to say.

(To sample Melville, try his masterpieces - Army of Shadows or Le Samourai.)

Description of Les Enfants Terribles: Criterion Collection

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 Fran?ois 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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