Borsalino

[yoloswegmaster]

Two years before The Godfather and three years before The Sting, there was Borsalino, a wildly entertaining period-set gangster movie that brought together two icons of French cinema, Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless) and Alain Delon (Le Samourai).

Marseille, 1930: small-time gangster Roch Siffredi (Delon) is released from prison and finds his former girlfriend Lola (Catherine Rouvel, Picnic on the Grass) has moved on and is now with Francois Capella (Belmondo), another petty crook. Initially at odds, the two men form a partnership that will see them rise through the ranks of organised crime in Marseille. But how far will they go in their pursuit of power and what price will they be forced to pay?

Directed by Jacques Deray (La Piscine), written by Jean-Claude Carriere (Belle Du Jour), with a score by French Jazz pianist Claude Bolling, and costumes by Jacques Fonteray (Barbarella), Borsalino is a gallic gangster classic!

LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS
- High definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation
- Original lossless mono French and English audio options
- Optional English subtitles
- New audio commentary by film scholar Josh Nelson
- The Music of Borsalino, a new interview with composer and film historian Neil Brand on Claude Bolling’s score
- Dressing Down, a new interview with film scholar Elizabeth Castaldo Lundén on Jacques Fonteray’s costume designs for Borsalino
- Le Magnifique Belmondo, an archive extra celebrating the unique talent and career of the beloved French actor
- Theatrical trailer
- Image gallery
- Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by Ginette Vincendeau and an archival piece by Elisa Fulco
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella
- Double-sided poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella
- Six postcard-sized reproduction artcards

[colinr0380]

Only just noted this. Is this a US only Arrow release?

I am not too familiar with the film itself, though it is a title that has stuck in my brain since it was notoriously the film showing on BBC1 (in an English dubbed version it seems) the night of Princess Diana's fatal Paris car crash in 1997 (And was the film I had to ignore for the more pressing engagements of Reds on BBC2 followed by The Abominable Dr Phibes on ITV!).

It (along with the other two films, as far as I am aware) has not appeared on UK television since then.

[dwk]

Yes, it is US only as have been all the Paramount titles.

[domino harvey]

- Le Magnifique Belmondo, an archive extra celebrating the unique talent and career of the beloved French actor

This is a wild extra: an Belmondo-focused installment from what appears to be a French YouTube or some other online video service series about “bad ass” action stars with clips from something around 40 different movies, the program argues that Belmondo is basically the original Tom Cruise via his stunt work, and even traces his influence into mangas and animes! Extremely entertaining, but… there is no possible way Arrow could have afforded to clear all these clips. They are really rolling the dice on “fair use” here!

As for the film itself, well, I’m not a big Deray fan and this doesn’t change much, as I found it entertaining but not particularly intelligent or creative beyond doing the bare minimum with its component parts

[colinr0380]

- Le Magnifique Belmondo, an archive extra celebrating the unique talent and career of the beloved French actor

This is a wild extra: an Belmondo-focused installment from what appears to be a French YouTube or some other online video service series about “bad ass” action stars with clips from something around 40 different movies, the program argues that Belmondo is basically the original Tom Cruise via his stunt work, and even traces his influence into mangas and animes! Extremely entertaining, but… there is no possible way Arrow could have afforded to clear all these clips. They are really rolling the dice on “fair use” here!

In particular the late Buichi Terasawa modelled his space-faring hero character Cobra in the manga and subsequent film and TV series Space Adventure Cobra on Belmondo in a world inspired by Barbarella! Which perhaps explains why it achieved its greatest Western success in France.

[domino harvey]

As for the film itself, well, I’m not a big Deray fan and this doesn’t change much, as I found it entertaining but not particularly intelligent or creative beyond doing the bare minimum with its component parts

I dutifully caught up with the sequel, Borsalino and Co. (mercifully not included in this package) and you can CC all this but remove "entertaining". This is a total zero of a film, with no compelling reason to exist and nothing to offer. I will say, if this can possibly be construed as praise, that the film anticipates the plotline of the French Connection II by a year... which means the filmmakers for that had fair warning that their addiction foray wouldn't work! This sequel also ramps up the gunplay and violence by what seems like a factor of 100, but it's all completely boring-- which is really a feat in a film in which the main villain is finally offed by

SpoilerShow

being fed, face-first, into a train's fiery combustion engine

[tenia]

Pathé has released plenty Delon movies in France, and most of them are just like this, like Le gang, Mort d'un pourri, Le toubib, Borsalino and Co, Flic Story, and I was coming to them thinking "well, let's see" as they have some reputation in France (except Le toubib), and always ended up thinking "my god, that's so mediocre". I thought Trois hommes à abattre (and Pour la peau d'un flic) was slightly better, but in the end, there's pretty much only Deux hommes dans la ville that felt like a genuinely good movie (not taking into account Le Professeur).

[tenia]

Following Delon's passing, I rewatched the French BD (sourced from a recent restoration for Paramount, most likely the same used here), and welp, the movie remains quite tedious. It's clearly overlong at 125 minutes, with big pacing issues, and it's quite amazing considering its premises (gangsters war in Marseille) and cast to end up with something so flat. There probably is a fine 80 minutes movie in this.

As for the restoration, it's even worse than in my memories. The grading is all over the place, at times showing Ritrovata's trademark yellow-green-ish veil and other times having such a bright overly neutralised white balance, creating in some cases several color continuity errors in the lapse of a few seconds. It's batcrap crazy in this aspect, but it's also often degrained to death, leaving every sweaty face a waxy mess.