Blu-ray, DVD Release: Paris Belongs to Us

By
Laurence
– January 5, 2016Find Others: Blu-ray, DVD, Movie, New Release, NewsGet More: , , ,

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: March 8, 2015
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion

One of the original critics turned filmmakers who helped jump-start the French New Wave, Jacques Rivette (Around a Small Mountain) began shooting his debut feature, the drama-mystery Paris Belongs to Us, in 1957, well before that cinema revolution officially kicked off with The 400 Blows and Breathless.

Betty Schneider wears the stripes in Jacques Rivette's Paris Belongs to Us.

Betty Schneider wears the stripes in Jacques Rivette’s Paris Belongs to Us.

Ultimately released in 1961, the rich and mysterious Paris Belongs to Us offers some of the radical flavor that would define the movement, with a particularly Rivettian twist.

The film follows a young literature student (Betty Schneider) who befriends the members of a loose-knit group of twenty-somethings in Paris, united by the apparent suicide of an acquaintance. Suffused with a lingering post–WWII disillusionment while evincing a playful temperament, Rivette’s film marked the provocative start to a brilliant directorial career.

Presented in French with English subtitles, Criterion’s edition of the foreign language film contains the following:

  • New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
    • New interview with Richard Neupert, author of A History of the French New Wave Cinema
    • Jacques Rivette’s 1956 short film Le coup du berger,featuring cameos by fellow French New Wave directors Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, and François Truffaut
    • New English subtitle translation
    • An essay by critic Luc Sante
Buy or Rent Paris Belongs to Us
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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.