|
|
|
The Story of Adele H.
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - Radiance Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (6th December 2024). |
|
The Film
 Oscar (Best Actress in a Leading Role): Isabelle Adjani (nominee) - Academy Awards, 1976 Bambi (Film - International): Isabelle Adjani (winner) - Bambi Awards, 1978 Golden India Catalina (Best Actress): Isabelle Adjani (winner) and Best Film: François Truffaut (nominee), Special Critics Award: : François Truffaut (winner) - Cartagena Film Festival, 1976 César (Best Actress): Isabelle Adjani (nominee), Best Director: François Truffaut (nominee), and Best Production Design: Jean-Pierre Kohut-Svelko (nominee) - César Awards, 1976 David (Best Foreign Actress): Isabelle Adjani (winner) - David di Donatello Awards, 1975 Critics Award (Best Film): François Truffaut (winner) - French Syndicate of Cinema Critics, 1977 NBR Award (Best Actress): Isabelle Adjani (winner), Best Foreign Language Film: France (winner), and Top Foreign Films: The Story of Adele H. (winner) - National Board of Review, 1975 NSFC Award (Best Actress): Isabelle Adjani (winner) - National Society of Film Critics Awards, 1975 NYFCC Award (Best Actress): Isabelle Adjani (winner) and Best Screenplay: François Truffaut, Jean Gruault, and Suzanne Schiffman (winner) - New York Film Critics Circle Awards, 1975 ""This incredible thing, that a young girl should step over the ocean, leave the old world for the new world to join her lover: this thing will I accomplish." 1863: Despite their neutral stance on the American Civil War, Britain has stationed troops in the Canadian town of Halifax. Adèle Hugo (Possession's Isabelle Adjani), daughter of the great French poet Victor Hugo living in exile on the Channel Island of Guernsey after opposing the Second Empire of Napoleon III, arrives in search of British army Lieutenant Albert Pinson (The Music Lovers' Bruce Robinson) of the 16th Hussars. Making inquiries in town under the alias Adèle Lewly, she claims to have taken an interest in the happiness of a nieces being courted by Pinson; however, she tells her boarders the Saunders (Empire of the Sun's Sylvia Marriott and Ruben Dorey) that Pinson was a childhood friend who was in love with her. Both are far from the truth as Adèle at first conceals herself from him and spies on his activities, and then he refuses to acknowledge her when she does try to see him. It appears that the barrier to their relationship has been her parents' reluctance to give their consent due to Pinson's vice for gambling; however, Pinson repeatedly rejects her despite her claims that her father has given his consent. This is no mere infatuation of a sheltered young woman; and, as Adèle continues to pursue Pinson while trying to placate her father's concerns by letter, her all-consuming obsession takes a toll on her physical and mental health. "What kind of woman would wait her whole life for one man...? And what kind of man would deny her...?, or so says the American advertising tagline but The Story of Adèle H. is a story especially suited to director François Truffaut (Two English Girls), carrying over themes that have dominated the more romantic, escapist, and tragic side of the director's filmography, particularly the darker entries like The Green Room. While Adèle Hugo has been posthumously diagnosed with schizophrenia and erotomania, Truffaut and fellow scenarists Jean Gruault (Jules and Jim) and co-writer/assistant director Suzanne Schiffman (The Last Metro) are not interested in observing a pathology but in depicting the world as experienced by Adèle through her extensive diaries from her account of her stay in Halifax until her mind was too far deteriorated to continue writing; whereupon Truffaut turns to other firsthand accounts and then the framing narrator from the opening. As scripted and played by twenty-year-old Adjani, Adèle is no mere madwoman stalker; even in Truffaut's filmography of obsessively-consumed protagonists she actually has less in common with the "destroying angel" of The Bride Wore Black and more with Truffaut's own cinematic avatar Antoine Doinel; but, whereas Doinel could fully commit to his romantic obsessions but walk away from the wreckage to new adventures, Adèle's love from her perspective is not obsession but religion and it is the only path left for her ("I have the religion of love. I don't give my body without my soul nor my soul without my body. I'm still young and yet it sometimes seems to me that I've reached the autumn of my life").  Both haunted by the great love of her older sister – who drowned in an accident in which she claims that her sister's husband also chose to die rather than live without her rather than merely failing to rescue her – and having repressed her resentment that her sister's memory has overshadowed herself in the eyes of her parents from a young age, Adèle is not unlike the children the teacher speaks of in the final scene of Truffaut's Small Change who will transfer their affections to other people or things if they do not feel loved, this compounded with her possibly-hereditary mental illness. Truffaut neither glorifies Adèle's actions nor makes Pinson anything more than a run-of-the-mill cad whose actions towards her are not so cut-and-dried to refute a potential charge of "seduction" (once a civil action in the U.K. and British-occupied Canada). The fourth of nine collaborations with cinematographer Néstor Almendros (The Marquise of O) and the third of eleven with production designer Jean-Pierre Kohut-Svelko (That Most Important Thing: Love) ground the drama in its period with an emphasis on the color temperatures of light and their emotional register and the contrast between the bustling Halifax – recreated in Guernsey – and Adèle's boardinghouse room as a reflection of her inner world spilling over with the written word as she tries to express her thoughts outwardly (an emphasis on books, letters, newspapers, and diaries being another recurring motif in Truffaut's filmography). If Two English Girls' male protagonist played by Truffaut's other avatar Jean-Pierre Léaud ended up lonely, and Adèle ends up mad – she actually outlived her entire family and died at age eighty-five in an institution for the affluent that allowed her visits to plays and the opera as well as expressing herself in painting and gardening when she could no longer express her thoughts in writing – then it is perhaps appropriate that Truffaut himself pursue's his own character's obsession in The Green Room all the way to death. 
Video
Although partially funded by United Artists and ultimately winding up through MGM via UA's distribution of the film in some territories by future MGM acquisition Hemdale in the U.K., The Story of Adèle H. was distributed theatrically in the United States by Roger Corman's New World Pictures back when it was more adventurous balancing its exploitation output with the likes of Dersu Uzala, Cries and Whispers, Fantastic Planet, Amarcord, and Fitzcarraldo among others, and it was through Warner Bros. New World deal that the film ended up with them on VHS in the early days of the format. Owing to MGM's early physical media policy of not 16:9-enhancing 1.66:1 films, their U.S. DVD and U.K. DVD repurposed their 1992 non-anamorphic laserdisc master, and the film would not get a 16:9 upgrade until Twilight Time's limited edition Blu-ray, the master of which was more recently utilized for both Kino Lorber's 2023 Blu-ray and Radiance Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen Blu-ray. Whereas the standard definition master capably rendered Almendros' low-lit cinematography, the HD master more effectively conveys the chilly Halifax winter atmosphere from skintones that are more pink than orange even under candlelight which may have been a weakness of the NTSC format on DVD than inherent in the master (and Almendros' flickering electric bulb lanterns that required running a power cable through the sleeves of the actors). There are limits to shadow detail inherent in the photography but the HD master also looks a bit flat in the darkest areas of the frame. Evident more so here than in SD is Truffaut's optical enlargement of some shots into closer angles, a practice Almendros disliked. 
Audio
The sole audio option is the original mix of French and English dialogue in LPCM 2.0 mono – U.S. theatrical prints included English subtitles for the French dialogue – which features some sync-sound recording by Jean-Pierre Ruh (The Tenant) who was one of the go-to guys in French cinema for production sound – in which dialogue is the primary focus with some sparse sound design and an unobtrusive score featuring arrangements of music by silent era composer Maurice Jaubert who wasw prominently credited in the trailer. While the Twilight Time Blu-ray had burnt-in English subtitles for the French dialogue and optional SDH subtitles for the English dialogue, and the Kino Lorber edition has both an optional subtitle track for the French dialogue and an SDH track for the entire track, Radiance Films includes only optional subtitles for the French dialogue.
Extras
Radiance Films has not carried over the Twilight Time/Kino Lorber commentary track but they have included a handful of extras from the 1080i French Blu-ray along with the brand new interview with critic Phuong Le (17:00) who looks at the film not only in the context of Adèle Hugo's life as a nineteenth century unmarried woman under the thumb of her family and oppressive social controls – an unescorted woman walking around at night could be mistaken for a prostitute and entering a restaurant alone could cause a scene – as well as in her "performance" and weaponization of female stereotypes to her ends. She also discusses the way the film inverts conventions with Adèle characterized by movement and Pinson fixed in hers and the camera's gazes, as well as narratives following her death that robbed not only her of her agency but also that of her illiterate black female Barbados rescuer. Also new to this set is an interview with cinematographer Nestor Almendros (30:01) in which he recalls his beginnings as a critic and documentarian in Cuba, coming to France and starting to make films, and being contacted by Truffaut to shoot The Wild Child in black and white, taking inspiration from the cinema of Louis Feuillade (Fantômas), and their decision to make Two English Girls in color, working out the visual inspirations as well as the methods of lighting that they continued to perfect in The Story of Adèle H. and The Green Room (which he regards as his "calligraphic trilogy"). He also discusses recurring Truffaut motifs as well as his disagreements with Truffaut over his use of freeze frames to extend coverage and optical reframing to fix errors or just get closer to the performers.  From the French Blu-ray come an interview with director François Truffaut (2:21) from 1975 in which he reveals that while some of his films were written for actors, The Story of Adèle H. was not – although it is rumored he intended to offer the lead to Catherine Deneuve – and he was awed by Adjani's performance in The Slap but had difficulty with the Comédie-Française where she was under contract. An interview with actress Isabelle Adjani (5:16) from 1980 has her discussing what drew her to the character, as well as her uncertainty of the impact such a story would have on modern perspectives on love and passion. The piece is clip-heavy drawing from the trailer. The disc also featuers footage from the 1975 premiere in Lyon (2:56) with Truffaut and Adjani along with the French theatrical trailer (2:50) which feautres exclusive footage – not outtakes – emphasizing the multiplicity of "roles" she plays in the film. 
Packaging
This limited edition of 3,000 copies is presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings and comes with a reversible cover featuring designs based on original posters as well as a 24-page booklet featuring archival writing by François Truffaut (not provided for review).
Overall
Easy to dismiss as another Truffaut period piece, The Story of Adèle H. not only brought Isabelle Adjani international recognition and awards but also set the story right about a woman whose life and death were trivialized historically.
|
|||||
|