For the discerning film-lover

[Belle]

I've posted some vintage films elsewhere, 2 directed by Jean Renoir.  But I've decided to dedicate a separate thread to these films as they're all special - some will be in a foreign language - and all have been restored.  Surely restoration is manna from heaven for film aficionados!!   

This is another spectacular Technicolor production from Jean Renoir, photographed by his brother Claude.  It's a 1952 production, "The Golden Coach".  The music of Vivaldi is heard throughout the film.  Truly Jean Renoir was an international film-maker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaKDw_Xbq_g

Jean Renoir's greatest film was "Le Grande Illusion" from 1937 - a total masterpiece, every frame from start to finish, which I'll post when it is uploaded in full on YT.

Some notes from Wiki about the film, though how accurate it is I cannot say:

Production
The film was shot at Cinecittà in Rome, with cinematography by Claude Renoir.[2] It was the first Italian film shot in Technicolor.[3]

A French-Italian co-production, The Golden Coach was filmed in English. A simultaneous shoot in French was planned, but had to be abandoned due to financial problems.[4] Renoir had his assistant director Marc Maurette direct the sessions to dub the finished film into French, and an Italian dub was also made. The French dub of the film was the first to appear in theaters, but Renoir repeatedly stated that he preferred the undubbed English-language version of the film,[5] and that was the only one to be restored in 2012.

Reception
In an essay included with the film's 2004 Criterion Collection DVD release, film critic Andrew Sarris wrote that "The Golden Coach was an international failure in all three language versions with both the critics and the public" at the time of its initial release, but that it is "Seen today by the international community of cinephiles as a truly 'beauteous' and 'ravishing' comic fantasy from Jean Renoir's late period".[5]

In a 1954 review of the film in Sight and Sound, Tony Richardson was scathing about many elements of the film, criticizing its construction, narrative, presentation, dialogue, and acting (about which he said: "it ranges, with one exception, from the inadequate to the atrocious"), but he wrote that "the creative personality revealed by the film, for all its flaws, is so utterly charming. Visually the film (photographed by Claude Renoir) is breath-taking". Richardson also described the scene in which the comedians convert the courtyard of the inn into a theatre as "miraculous", writing: "It is an old man's vision smoothing away all difficulties of the wonder of artistic creation itself."[6]

François Truffaut reportedly referred to The Golden Coach as "the noblest and most refined film ever made".[2] Film critic Pauline Kael acknowledge that "it died at the box office" but says that she sat through it several times and still was unable to catch everything in it.[7] Kael goes on to describe it as a wonderful blend of "color, wit, and Vivaldi".

[Belle]

George Cukor's "Camille" from 1936.  Starring Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor - I never saw either of them better in any other film.  Photographed by William Daniels (Garbo's cinematographer) and the great Karl Freund, the film is magnificently restored and superbly directed and acted.  Of course it's a classic and the music of Herbert Stothart is the only let-down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBiRa2baJLk

Garbo was something else and the camera, of course, loved her.  She's magnificent in Camille for her 'wanton-ness', as Cukor later described it in a 1980 interview. 

[Peter Power Pop]

Thanks for the recommendations (and links), folks. I'm looking forward to watching both those movies.

[Belle]

Thanks for the recommendations (and links), folks. I'm looking forward to watching both those movies.

Just to mention that "The Golden Coach" seems to me a companion piece to Marcel Carne's 1943 film "Les Enfants du Paradis" (an absolute masterpiece) which was about life surrounding a troop of mime artists in 19th century Paris!!