Le Plaisir | 
 enlarge | Director: Max Ophuls
Actors: Jean Gabin, Simone Simon, Danielle Darrieux
Studio: Criterion Collection
Category: DVD
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $24.99
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Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 12621
Format: Black & White, Dolby, Dvd-video, Full Screen, Ntsc, Subtitled
Languages: English (Subtitled), French (Original Language)
Rating: Unrated
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 97
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 1766
UPC: 715515031523
EAN: 0715515031523
ASIN: B001BEK8BU
Theatrical Release Date: 1952
Release Date: September 16, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
Roving with his dazzlingly mobile camera around the decadent ballrooms, bucolic countryside retreats, urban bordellos, and painter's studios of late nineteenth-century Parisian society, Max Ophuls brings his astonishing visual dexterity and storytelling bravura to this triptych of tales by Guy de Maupassant about the limits of spiritual and physical pleasure. Featuring a stunning cast of French stars (including Danielle Darrieux, Jean Gabin, and Simone Simon), Le plaisir pinpoints the cruel ironies and happy compromises of life with a charming and sophisticated breeziness. SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:New, restored high-definition digital transfer, Introduction by filmmaker Todd Haynes, English- and German-language versions of the opening narration, From Script to Screen, a video essay featuring film scholar Jean-Pierre Berthome discussing the evolution of Ophuls's screenplay for Le plaisir, Interviews with actor Daniel Gelin, assistant director Tony Aboyantz, and set decorator Robert Christides, New and improved English subtitle translation. PLUS: A new essay by film critic Robin Wood.
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What a pleasure! October 29, 2008
(I can't resist) LE PLAISIR is a pleasure. It's brilliant.
Director Max Ophuls transferred 3 Guy de Maupassant stories (set circa the late 1800s) to the screen while retaining an amazingly strong sense of their literary source.
The 3 stories are a wry look at love. They're not for those people "in love with love". They're for and about cynical, down-to-earth types. Despite that, the stories are vibrant and fun and I never lost interest.
This is a B&W film, directed with Ophuls mystical touch and influenced by the Impressionistic paintings of the story's milieu.
It's an ensemble piece filled with wonderful actors. Just to name a few: Danielle Darrieux -- so very lovely here -- and she gets to show off her equally lovely singing voice a little. Jean Gabin. Claude Dauphin. And a delightful surprise for me, Simone Simon, who demonstrates how much she was wasted by Hollywood.
This is a quality DVD from the Criterion Collection. The special features include an interview with one of the actors, Daniel Gélin, and an insightful behind-the-scenes presentation by French film scholar Jean-Pierre Berthome (speaking in English). I would suggest watching the "Intro" by Todd Haynes AFTER seeing the movie since he gives away too much for my taste (these stories are full of little surprises) -- but definitely watch it.
A couple years earlier, Max Ophuls made a similarly-themed ensemble piece with many of the same actors which Criterion has also made available: LA RONDE.
Ophüls' Swirling Lesson in Pleasure. October 23, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
It was a happy day when I learned Criterion was finally releasing Max Ophüls' three great films, La Ronde, Le Plaisir, and Earrings of Madame de.... Ophüls is celebrated for his brilliant tracking shots and elaborate camera movements (which influenced Stanley Kubrick). He is also revered for his sparkling, Oscar-nominated black-and-white French comedy/drama, Le Plaisir (1952), which is nothing short of truly great French cinema. After experiencing this film, few would disagree with Roger Ebert's assessment of Ophüls as "one of the great pleasures of the cinema."
Based on three stories by 19th-century French writer Guy de Maupassant (a protégé of Flaubert), Le Plaisir is a lesson in how humans are ruled by pleasure. Featuring an ensemble cast of French stars (including Danielle Darrieux, Jean Gabin, and Simone Simon), Le plaisir live up to the promise of its title. "Le Masque" tells the story of an aging man who hides behind a mask of youth at a dance hall in an effort to extend his youthful reveries in his pursuit of women. "La Maison Tellier" examines a small-town Madam and her bordello of girls (whores) on a summer outing to experience a first communion. "Le Modèle" (the best of the three tales) tells the story of an artist's model, who jumps from a window out of her love for Jean the painter.
The Criterion edition of Le plaisir features a newly restored high-definition digital transfer; an introduction by filmmaker Todd Haynes (Far from Heaven); "From Script to Screen", a video essay featuring film scholar Jean-Pierre Berthomé discussing the evolution of Max Ophuls's screenplay for Le plaisir; interviews with actor Daniel Gélin, assistant director Tony Aboyantz, and set decorator Robert Christidès; new and improved English subtitle translation; and a new essay by film critic Robin Wood.
G. Merritt
 Another classic from Ophüls October 19, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.
Le Plaisir, meaning "pleasure" is a film based on three stories by Guy de Maupassant. Le Masque, La Maison Tellier, and Le Modèle.
In the first story, Le Masque, an elderly man hides his age with a mask and goes to a ball and dances energetically with a woman and he later falls down in exaustion. In the second story, La Maison Tellie, the women and madam of a brother go on a field trip. In the third story, Le Modèle, a woman falls in love with a male artist whom she poses for.
I found the film to be entertaining and liked the opening sequence with the old man in the mask.
The DVD has some great supplements too which are quite good. Todd Haynes gives an introduction to the film, also is a video slideshow with narration which provides the transition of the film from its script to its production, there are also interviews with actor Daniel Gélin, and crewmembers, Tony Aboyantz, and Robert Christidès. There are also alternate language versions of the opening narration in English and German.
This is a film that you won't want to miss.
Max Ophuls' marvelous film of pleasure and, perhaps, love June 24, 2008
16 out of 17 found this review helpful
The screen is pitch black and we hear a voice..."I'm so happy to be talking in the dark as if I were beside you, and maybe I am." The speaker is Guy de Maupassant (voiced by Jean Marais), and Le Plaisir is three of his stories filmed by the great director Max Ophuls. The connecting thread? That pleasure, or even love, lies in how people intermingle their lives, with a shrug, assumptions, an apology, a thank you. Le Plaisir is not so much a sophisticated film of attraction and hope as it is a film of rueful wisdom. It's best to keep in mind while watching this movie that while life can be enjoyed, there are times when hope can disappear.
The three stories consist of, first, La Masque. We are in 19th Century Paris at the Palais de la Dance, where great, swirling balls are held. This is a place where young women hope to find pleasure and rich men; where old women chase memories and young suitors; where prostitutes and their pimps gather, where the men are young bucks and old goats, where "rough cotton to the finest cambric" can combine. One slender man in full dinner dress rushes into the palace and begins to dance with a beautiful young woman. He prances and kicks, yet his face is like a frozen mask of youth. He collapses on the dance floor and a doctor is called. When the doctor loosens the man's clothes, he finds...well, let's say that when the man is delivered home to his wife by the doctor, she tells him a story of the battle between pleasure and love.
In La Maison Tellier, we learn all about a cozy, friendly and long established brothel in a small town on the Channel coast. The bourgeois men of the town are as well-known there as they are to their wives. Then Madame decides to close her establishment for a night so that she and her girls can travel into the countryside to attend her niece's first communion. They have one or two adventures on the train. In the small village they spend the night with Madame's brother and meet the young girl. They attend the communion in the village church. They collect flowers on the way back, and are met with genuine affection and with great gaiety when Madame reopens her place of business the following night. We witness a touching story, as de Maupassant tells us, when pleasure and purity come together.
Le Modele gives us a story where pleasure struggles with moral decay, where "happiness is not a joyful thing." We witness a painter and his model meet, rapturously embrace lust and, as lust tires, recrimination grows. The love which endures as the story plays out may not be most people's idea of happiness.
This is a marvelously told series of stories. La Masque and Le Modele are relatively short bookends to the major tale of La Maison Tellier. With this one, it would be difficult not to become delighted and engaged with Madame and her girls and her brother. Even the puffed up townsmen are not without a sympathetic side; which man among us wouldn't mind being flattered, even for a price, by Madame's girls?
In the cast are some of France's best known actors, including Claude Dauphin, Danielle Darrieux, Jean Gabin, Daniel Gelin, Simon Simon, Madeleine Renaud and Pierre Brasseur.
Please note that the Criterion release is not scheduled until September 16, 2008. My comments are based on the Region 2 release which I own. I like this film so well I plan to buy the Criterion Region 1 version when it comes out. After I have a chance to look at Criterion's extras, I'll post an extra paragraph here about them.
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