New on Blu-ray: COUP DE TORCHON / CLEAN SLATE (1981) Starring Philippe Noiret & Isabelle Huppert - Criterion Collection

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Product Description: With this existential crime thriller, legend of French cinema Bertrand Tavernier transforms Jim Thompson’s hard-boiled novel Pop. 1280 into a darkly comic, philosophically provocative exploration of the brutality and absurdity of colonialism. Moving the story’s setting from the American South to 1930s French West Africa, Coup de torchon features a frighteningly enigmatic performance from Philippe Noiret as a police chief whose seeming ineptitude masks a cold-blooded pursuit of revenge and control that draws his opportunistic mistress (a fiery Isabelle Huppert) into an escalating spiral of violence. With each chilling revelation, Tavernier plunges us ever deeper into an abyss of madness and corruption, laying bare the decaying soul of empire.

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DVD & Blu-ray: 'ROUND MIDNIGHT (1986) - Criterion Collection

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Product Description: ’Round Midnight is a love letter from director Bertrand Tavernier to the heyday of bebop and to the Black American musicians who found refuge in the smoky underground jazz clubs of 1950s Paris.

In a miraculous, sui generis fusion of performer and character that was nominated for an Oscar, legendary saxophonist Dexter Gordon plays Dale Turner, a brilliant New York jazz veteran whose music aches with beauty but whose personal life is ravaged by addiction. Searching for a fresh start in Paris, Turner strikes up an unlikely friendship with a struggling single father and ardent jazz fan (François Cluzet) who finds his life transformed as he attempts to help the self-destructive musician.

Herbie Hancock’s evocative, Oscar-winning score sets the mood for this definitive jazz film, a bittersweet opus that glows with lived-in, soulful authenticity.

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DVD & Blu-ray: THE CLOCKMAKER OF ST. PAUL (1974) Starring Philippe Noiret and Jean Rochefort

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Product Description: The Clockmaker of St. Paul is the debut feature of legendary director Bertrand Tavernier (A Sunday in the Country, Journeys Through French Cinema). Adapted from Georges Simenon’s novel The Watchmaker of Everton (1954), it stars Philippe Noiret (Cinema Paradiso) as the unassuming title character, a man who begins to reexamine his life when his son is wanted for murder. Asked for help by the police inspector (Jean Rochefort, Man on the Train), he realizes how little he knew about his son, and begins to seek out the truth hidden behind his family’s walls. It’s “a work of assurance and ease” (New York Times) that was cowritten by the famed duo of Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost (Forbidden Games).

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New on Blu-ray: JOURNEYS THROUGH FRENCH CINEMA - TV Documentary Mini-Series

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Product Description: My Journey Through French Cinema (2017), Bertrand Tavernier’s César-nominated three-and-a-half-hour tour through French film history, was too short to introduce audiences to all that he wanted to share. In this new eight-part series, the acclaimed director of such films as Coup de Torchon and ‘Round Midnight guides us through a roster of filmmakers both influential and forgotten, explores how his country’s cinema was shaped by the German occupation and changed again through the New Wave, spotlights little-known female filmmakers, and more. Subjects include: René Clément, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Julien Duvivier, Henri Decoin, Claude Autant-Lara, as well as composers who made movie music an art in and of itself, far from the Hollywood spotlight.

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DVD & Blu-ray: A SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY (1984) - Golden Globe Nomination Best Foreign Film

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Product Description: A Sunday in the Country is a lovingly photographed and exquisitely acted portrait of French family life on the brink of WWI. Monsieur Ladmiral (Louis Ducreux) is a widowed painter in his twilight years who welcomes his bourgeois son Gonzague (Michel Aumont) and free-spirited daughter Irene (Sabine Azema) (and their families) to his home for a lazy afternoon lunch. Over the course of the day buried resentments come to the surface – the passage of time has left no family member unscathed. Based on the novel by Pierre Bost and directed by the great Bertrand Tavernier (Coup de Torchon, ‘Round Midnight), A Sunday in the Country is a moving picture of the hopes, disappointments, and small joys of family as a father’s life reaches its autumn season.

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