CHABROL’S LE BEAU SERGE OUT ON SPECIAL DUAL FORMAT BLU-RAY AND DVD EDITION

LE BEAU SERGE  (12) 1958 FRANCE        CHABROL, CLAUDE     £17.99 SPECIAL BLU-RAY AND DVD EDITIONS OF THE FILM

Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy star in the first of their collaborations with the great Claude Chabrol. The director’s masterful feature debut — ironic, funny, unsparing — is a revelation: another of that rare breed of film where the dusty formula might be used in full sincerity: Le Beau Serge marks the beginning of “the Chabrol touch.”

In this first feature film of the French New Wave, one year before Truffaut’s The Four Hundred Blows, the dandyish François (Brialy, of Godard’s A Woman Is a Woman, Rohmer’s Claire’s Knee, and countless other cornerstones of 20th-century French cinema) takes a holiday from the city to his home village of Sardent, where he reconnects with his old chum Serge (Blain), now a besotted and hopeless alcoholic, and sly duplicitous carnal Marie (Bernadette Lafont). A grave triangle forms, and a tragic slide ensues.

From Le Beau Serge onward up to his final film Bellamy in 2009, the revered Chabrol would come to leave a significant and lasting impression upon the French cinema — frequently with great commercial success. It is with great pride that we present Le Beau Serge, the kickstart of the Nouvelle Vague and of Chabrol’s enormous body of work, on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK for the first time.

In French with English subtitles

SPECIAL FEATURES IN THIS DUAL BLU-RAY AND DVD EDITIONS OF THE FILM

• Gorgeous new Gaumont restoration of the film in its original aspect ratio, presented in 1080p HD on the Blu-ray

• New and improved English subtitles

• Original theatrical trailer

• A 56-minute documentary about the making of the film

• L’Avarice [Avarice], Chabrol’s 1962 short film

• 32-PAGE BOOKLET with vintage writing by Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, Jean Douchet, and Jean-Claude Biette; and rare archival imagery

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New York times review of the film – http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9803E0DB1631EE3BBC4B53DFBE668382649EDE

DVD available to buy at – http://www.worldonlinecinema.com /Home/french-dvds