Jean Renoir - 3-Disc Collector's Edition (1925-1962) [Repost]

Lionsgate proudly releases the Jean Renoir Collector’s Edition Box Set for the first time on DVD in North America, featuring seven films from one of the greatest geniuses of the French cinema. The collection includes completely re-mastered classics such as four of Renoir’s earliest movies – La Fille de l’eau, Nana, Sur un air de Charleston and La Petite marchande d’allumettes – a release from his political period – La Marseillaise – and two of his last movies – Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier and Le Caporal Epingle. The set also includes the documentary “Jean Renoir: An Auteur to Remember.” This documentary, created specifically for this box set, features:

Martin Scorsese – Academy Award®-winning Director/President Film Foundation
Prof. Janet Bergstrom – UCLA Dept. of Film Critical Studies
Ken Wlaschin – Fmr. Head of AFI Dept. of Preservation and Director of AFI Film Festival
Alain Renoir – Son/Fmr. Prof. Emeritus of Comparative Literature, Univ. of California at Berkeley

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After the death of her father, Virginie flees to the countryside to escape her cruel uncle. All alone in a strange land, she is befriended by a young poacher who begins teaching her his trade. But when an unpleasant farmer drives the poacher away, Virginie is left alone again. After stumbling into a quarry and falling deliriously ill, Virginie finally finds a home when she is brought to a farmer’s cottage where people can take care of her. This newfound happiness is short-lived, however, as her uncle soon appears to demand money from her.

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Nana, a proud young actress with no talent, dreams of a better life for herself in this adaptation of Emile Zola’s famed novel. Opportunity knocks for Nana when one of her performances enchants a government official, Count Muffat. With the help of his influence, Nana garners her first starring role. But when the play is a commercial disaster, Nana is forced to accept Muffat’s offer to become his mistress. Now living in the Count’s sumptuous apartment, Nana begins using her charms to seduce those around her, including her hairdresser, Hugon. But when jealousy drives Hugon to kill himself, the shock of his death drives Nana back to the life of drunken debauchery she thought she had escaped.










A space traveler arrives on Earth to find the planet in ruins after an apocalyptic disaster. He discovers a wild young woman who lives in a shack with a monkey. Impressed by the various dances the wild woman teaches him, the alien decides to take her away with him in his spaceship.










Hans Christian Anderson’s timeless story is the inspiration as Karen, a young match seller overcome by the Christmas time cold, falls into a deep sleep and begins to dream. She finds herself in a toyshop where the toys around her - including a battalion of wooden soldiers - come to life. Karen falls in love with one of the toy soldiers, a handsome young officer who dances with her. When a horseman bursts from a box and begins killing the toys around him, Karen’s learns her next dance may be with death itself.










Developed in a news-reel like fashion, the film depicts the early part of the French Revolution, from the storming of the Bastille in 1789 to the campaign to drive off the Prussian army in 1781. It is seen through the eyes of ordinary citizens and the royal court. The removal of the monarchy has a sad inevitability as a nation comes together and unites under the French tricoleur to the sound of that great anthem, La Marseillaise.










A large house in a respectable suburb of Paris is the residence of Dr Cordelier, an eminent psychiatrist who has withdrawn from society to pursue his secret research into the function of the human brain. His lifelong friend, lawyer Maître Joly, becomes concerned when Cordelier draws up a will in which he bequeaths his entire estate to a stranger, Monsieur Opale. When Joly discovers that Opale is a misshapen, sadistic brute, who willfully attacks children and women, he cannot understand why Cordelier would allow him sanctuary in his house. After Opale kills a colleague of Dr Cordelier, Joly confronts Cordelier, convinced that he is under the influence of the evil Opale. In Cordelier’s laboratory, Joly discovers the terrible truth of his friend’s strange behavior.










In a German prisoner-of-war camp in North-East France, three soldiers – a middle-class corporal, a myopic intellectual, and an ordinary working class man – are united by their desire to escape and return to their ordinary civilian lives. Repeated attempts to do so fail, and although the corporal comes close to finding his freedom, his good luck seems to always runs out at the last moment. Ultimately, the three soldiers find themselves in a German disciplinary camp, but their resolve to escape remains as strong as ever.

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Discs Features: Disc One - 7,62 Gb: The Whirlpool of Fate (1925) + Nana (1926) Disc Two - 7,59 Gb: Charleston Parade (1927) + The Little Match Girl (1928) + La Marseillaise (1938) Disc Three - 7,74 Gb: The Doctor's Horrible Experiment (1959) + The Elusive Corporal (1962) + BONUS: Jean Renoir: An Auteur to Remember

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Recommended. Okay, so the Jean Renoir Collector's Edition isn't seven for seven, but there are really no out-and-out misses on this three-disc set. Of the four silent films, only Nana is one that invites multiple viewings, but all of them show the innovation of a young filmmaker learning his craft, and even though the talkie La Marseillaise is a bit all over the place, one can appreciate how Renoir conducts his actors. That leaves the final two, The Doctor's Horrible Experiment and The Elusive Corporal, a send-up of a B-grade horror and a fresh look at the POW-camp genre. Both are excellent and represent the sort of high art we should expect from Jean Renoir. For them alone, you want to grab this boxed set. DVDtalk

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Huge Thanks to dang.