The Documentaries of Louis Malle [6 Discs] [Criterion Collection]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

A half dozen thought-provoking documentaries from this French filmmaking legend. Includes Vive Le Tour (1962/19 min.), his short but energetic look at the Tour de France; Humain, Trop Humain (1974/75 min.), a look at an automobile plant; Place de la Republique (1974/94 min.), a study of a Parisian streetcorner; Phantom India (1969/3 hrs., 3 min.), an epic journey through the country; Calcutta (1969/99 min.), a city on the edge of oblivion; God's Country (1985/89 min.), a look at a Minnesota farming community, and And The Pursuit of Happiness (1986/80 min.), Malle's document of the immigrant experience in America. 6 DVDs. In French with English subtitles. Color/NR/fullscreen.

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 6
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
• Screen: Color
• Subtitle: Eng

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Louis Malle
       Louis Malle - Narrator

• Director:

  Louis Malle

• Producer:

  Vincent Malle

• Screenwriter:

  Louis Malle

• Cinematographer:

  Ghislain Cloquet, Louis Malle, Jacques Ertaud, Étienne Becker

• Composer (Music Score):

  Georges Delerue

• Editor:

  Suzanne Baron, Kenout Peltier, James Bruce, Nancy Baker

• Associate Producer:

  James Bruce

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Danny Michael

REVIEWS:

• Louis Malle shot and edited together this delightful, little-seen short about the Tour de France in 1962, in between the miserable studio-bound experience of helming A Very Private Affair and his decision to craft the masterful Le Feu Follet. In it, the director explores visually, with his cameras, one of his great life-time passions (bicycle racing) and that adoration is evident throughout. Grounded in the director's desire to carry alien viewers into a deeper appreciation of its subject, the picture successfully conveys a very singular passion to an unfamiliar audience; it exudes cycle worship in every single frame. Most refreshingly, Malle resists the temptation to utilize a single overtone; in this brief, 18-minute film, the director interweaves strands of joy, terror, ebullient humor, absurdity, and wonder, making Vive le Tour not only a veritable carnival of emotions, but essential viewing for students who plan to craft short subjects. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
• Louis Malle's massive, 6 1/2 hour opus Phantom India ranks among the two or three most formidable documentaries ever made. In terms of sheer artistic and sociocultural contributions, it sits on par with Triumph of the Will, Tokyo Olympiad and The Sorrow and the Pity, but its accomplishments are wholly unique and unlikely to ever be repeated. Throughout his life, Malle not only celebrated 'cinema direct' - the concept of simply standing back, camera rolling, and allowing events to unfold before the lens, resisting every urge to interfere with those events - but brazenly reinvented that form. With Phantom India, he pushed the envelope to its absolute breaking point by seeking out an environment with the most exotic, fascinating and conceptually challenging indigenous scenarios that he could find, and adamantly, stubbornly refusing to interpret any of the onscreen events for the viewer. That alone would make Phantom India a revolutionary work. But Malle also travels one step beyond, by lacing the soundtrack with repeated indications of his own bafflement and ignorance, his inability (alongside the viewer's) to even begin to grasp the events unfolding before him. This causes the entire documentary form to double back on itself, self-reflexively underscoring, for the viewer, the impossibility of definitive interpretation and the impenetrability of the cultural chasm between oneself and the spectacle(s) at hand. It also doubles the impact of the cinematic experience by drawing several times as much attention to the visual and aural plane of the motion picture; sensorially, the film functions as a kind of mass immersion into a cultural environment and actually transcends the limitations of its form. Phantom India's whopping length works to its advantage - at 378 minutes, it overwhelms the viewer with a staggering, blinding carnival of eastern life with innumerable sequences that burn themselves indelibly into the mind's eye; to single out any one would be doing the work a significant injustice. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi