Mon Oncle Antoine [2 Discs] [Special Edition] [Criterion Collection]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

French Canadian director and actor Claude Jutra enjoyed his greatest critical success with this evocative and loving (but unsentimental) look at a few memorable days in the life of a boy on the verge of manhood in a small Quebec mining community in the 1940's. Benoit (Jacques Gagnon) is an orphan just edging into his teens. He works part-time for Antoine (Jean Duceppe), his uncle who owns the local general store and moonlights as an undertaker; Antoine takes the boy under his wing for a few days while the shop is busy during the holiday rush. Benoit helps set up the store's annual Christmas window display, spies on the most beautiful woman in town (Monique Mercure) as she tries on some specially ordered lingerie, finds his feelings for teenage co-worker Carmen (Lyne Champagne) changing from indifference to attraction, and joins his friends for a snowball raid on the owner of the town's mining operation as he contemptuously distributes gifts to the poor. But when Benoit joins his uncle to collect the body of a boy who has recently died, he confronts mortality for the first time and comes to realize what sort of a man his uncle really is. Mon Oncle Antoine won eight Genie Awards (the Canadian Oscar) and was honored at seven international film festivals, but it wasn't until the film was broadcast on Canadian television that it was widely seen in its home country; since then, a poll of Canadian film writers named it the Best Canadian Film of all time in 1984, and similar polls in 1994 and 2004 found Mon Oncle Antoine still at the top of the list. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 2
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 (Vistavision)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Subtitle: Eng
• Features:
  • Disc One:
  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director of photography Michel Brault
  • Optional English-dubbed soundtrack
  • Theatrical trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • Disc Two:
  • On Screen!: "Mon Oncle Antoine," a 2007 documentary tracing the making and history of the film
  • Claude Jutra: An Unfinished Story, a 2002 documentary by Paul Baillargeon, featuring interviews with Brault, director Bernardo Bertolucci, and actors Genevieve Bujold and Saul Rubinek
  • A Chairy Tale, a 1957 experimental short co-directed by Jutra and Norman McLaren
  • Plus: a new essay by film scholar Andre Loiselle

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Claude Jutra - Fernand, Clerk

• Director:

  Claude Jutra

• Producer:

  Marc Beaudet

• Screenwriter:

  Claude Jutra, Clement Perron

• Cinematographer:

  Michel Brault

• Composer (Music Score):

  Jean Cousineau

• Editor:

  Claude Jutra, Claire Boyer

• Art Director:

  Denis Boucher

• Set Designer:

  Denis Boucher

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Claude Hazanavicius