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Weekend
Description by Mark Deming

Arguably Jean-Luc Godard's greatest film, and certainly the most powerful and influential of his polemic works of the 1960s, Weekend is a film that still rewards careful study nearly 40 years after it premiered, and thankfully New Yorker Films has finally given it a long-overdue domestic release on DVD. Weekend was been given a letterboxed transfer to disc in the widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1, and has also been enhanced for anamorphic playback on 16 x 9 monitors. The transfer is superb, and reproduces the depth of detail and carefully plotted color schemes of Raoul Coutard's cinematography with commendable accuracy. The audio has been mastered in Dolby Digital Stereo, faithfully reproducing the picture's original single-channel sound mix; the dialogue is in French, with optional English-language subtitles, which are easy to read but sometimes translate the French slang into British vernacular, adding a bit of disconnect to the experience for American viewers. As a bonus, this edition of Weekend includes a lively and enthusiastic commentary track from film writer David Sterritt, as well as a short interview with Raoul Coutard on the production of the movie, and a talk with Mike Figgis who shares his thoughts about Weekend and Godard's body of work. If this isn't the ideal video edition of Weekend (if ever there was a film that would benefit from a director's audio commentary, this is it), it does offer a fine DVD rendition of the film, and makes this trail-blazing work readily available -- anyone with an interest in the French New Wave owes it to themselves to see this picture, and this is the strongest home-video release of Weekend to date.

Features
  • Audio commentary by critic David Sterritt
  • Interview with Raoul Coutard
  • Mike Figgis on Weekend
See Also
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