French director Alain Corneau helmed this trio of hardboiled crime dramas featuring top-tier acting talent and gritty scripts. The new Radiance box set compiles the films with a bevy of bonus features and a thick 80-page book, providing a primer into an important moment in the history of French cinema.
Buy Hardboiled: Three Pulp Thrillers by Alain Corneau Blu-ray Box SetIn Police Python 357, Yves Montand plays a tough cop who gets wrongly implicated in the death of a young woman, leading him on a high-stakes pursuit to find the real killer, who just so happens to be his boss, the police commissioner (Francois Perier). With an assist by fellow French screen legend Simone Signoret, Corneau’s neo-noir benefits from stellar performances and a foreboding sense of dread that permeates the desperate machinations of the characters. Unfortunately, the half-hour setup before the murder takes far too long, sapping the energy of what is otherwise a fairly intense cat-and-mouse thriller.
Serie Noire has the least internationally known cast of the three, with perhaps the exception of Marie Trintignant, the film industry nepo baby tragically murdered by her boyfriend in 2003. Her breakthrough performance here is outshown by the manic energy of star Patrick Dewaere, here playing a neurotic door-to-door salesman who gets caught up in a quest to rescue Trintignant’s teenage prostitute character from her controlling aunt. Another two-hour film, there’s definitely some fat that could be trimmed, but Dewaere’s fully committed and unhinged performance keeps it interesting. Interestingly, Dewaere’s troubled life also ended prematurely just a few years later, a victim of suicide.
Choice of Arms has an embarrassment of riches in acting talent, with the return of Montand and the addition of Gerard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve. The film is also enhanced by Corneau’s utilization of CinemaScope and Dolby Stereo for true big-screen spectacle, one of the earliest Dolby films in French cinema. Here it’s a generational battle of the thespians between respected elder Montand and the still fairly young renegade Depardieu, a fascinating combination that barely needs a script to make it worth watching. Thankfully, the story is also a corker, with a slow-burn setup focusing on young turk Depardieu’s escaped killer character choosing the wrong rural estate as a hideout. Montand plays a reformed criminal kingpin enjoying the fruits of his labor with his lovely wife (Deneuve) at his estate, suddenly forced to return to his criminal ways to seek revenge on Depardieu’s character. Deneuve has little to do, but it’s a treat to watch the escalating chase and showdown between the male leads over the film’s 2 ¼ hour runtime.
The films are housed in a sturdy slipcase containing a single Criterion-style Blu-ray case along with a limited edition 80-page booklet containing new and archival commentary. Each film gets a separate disc, complete with special features including archival interviews and new critical appreciations. Serie Noire contains the biggest treasure trove of bonus features, including an hour-long documentary from 2013, a half-hour look at author Jim Thompson’s film adaptations, and an especially poignant half-hour interview from 2002 with Corneau and Trintignant, one of her final appearances before her death. Each film boasts high definition digital transfers, and while no restoration notes are included, they’re all impeccably clean with stable colors and contrast. Python shows surprisingly little film grain, while the other two are in line with typical grain of the era.
With a limited edition pressing of only 2500 copies, it’s best to act quickly to secure this thrilling collection of French crime dramas.
