Customer Reviews

Edith Piaf - A Passionate Life

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I must agree with Mr. Mahan. Edith Piaf was born December, 1915
and passed away October 10, 1963. Mr. Cashen must read more of
her life, and he will discover this.

I liked this DVD. I have it in French on VHS, and, am bi-lingual
so I was able to understand it. On the DVD the voice-overs do
change some of the french: however, this is necessary. If the
DVD was translated exactly, it would not make any sense. The
maker of this film (Marcel Blistene) made it in 1967 from film
clips available, and also from direct interviews. He did a great
job. The film clips he used were from an era when high-tech. was
not available, therefore, there were bound to be some that were
not too clear. I have other VHS videos, all in French, as well
as numerous books (all in French). I was a member of "Les Amis
d'Edith Piaf" located in Paris.(Along with a small musuem). The
musuem is located in a small apartment of the secretary of the
association which has members in the thousands. It can be visited by appointment only. The curator/secretary speaks only
French. He knew Edith Piaf and almost all of the people in the
various videos. His knowledge of her life is vast, and he him-
self has written a book which came out around 1997 or so and is
extremely informative. Marcel Blistene was a French Jew who
wanted to make a tribute to Edith - as she had helped him tre-
mendously during WWII in as much as arranging for him to be
hidden, squirreled out of Paris, plus supplying tremendous
amounts of money to do so. She did the same for many others,
including Michel Emer, who was also a French Jew and wrote many
of her hit songs, the first being L'accordeoniste, which is
still popular today in France. (It first came out in 1939).
I strongly suggest that if anyone is interested in her life,
they read as much as is available, and if possible watch other
VHS and/or DVD's that may be available. The only book that is
not accurate, is the one written by Simone Bertault, who claimed-to be her half-sister - which was a wishful fabrication on her
part and it extremely scathing in many of the chapters, so much
so as to be very questionable as to the authenticity. Simone's
book has been challenged and debunked in numerous other books.

All in all, I say BRAVO to this DVD and Marcel Blistene, who is
now deceased.

I've bought this DVD in Brussels, Belgium in the european version, which is region2. There is no dubbing in it, so if you care for that and understand French, that's a possibility.
It's title in french is "UNE VIE DE PASSIONS"and even has an hour extra footage.There is NO english talking in it at all !
Also : nowadays it's not too strange to buy a dvd-player which is region FREE! If you have on , than buy a GRRREAT Piaf DVD , titled "L'HYMNE À LA MOME " on EMI:7243 599030-9(5) , which has
20 (!) songs by Piaf, from all parts of her career,including some very rare film clips in which she sings too. Even some of the clips are in color! Now THIS is worth buying for any fan, it's beautifully made and a real treasure.This DVD also has lots of extra's ,like over one hour private home movies and 10 minutes film-news clips. Hope to have been of any help for the fans here!

Just wanted to straighten out a couple things. Edith Piaf DID die on Oct. 10, 1963, not 2 months later as Michael J. Cashen claims so indignantly. I think he's thinking of her birth date which was in December.

I agree the quality of the footage was poor, but having seen just about every video available on Edith Piaf, there is nothing of better quality available - unfortunately. Being knowledgeable about her life, I found this film interesting because it contained footage I hadn't seen. And the footage I had seen in other films was in French, so it was actually very helpful to have the English voiceover, even if it may be distracting to some.

I have to agree that if you don't know anything about her life, you won't learn anything here. In the filmmakers' defense though, it's a French film and most French people know about her life. The footage of the boxer that they showed so much of was Marcel Cerdan who was the love of Edith's life. He died in a plane crash on his way to see her. She never really recovered from that tragedy. Unfortunately, the film didn't explain that for us Americans who don't know this. But to explain that in this film, which was made by the French, for a French audience, would have been redundant. They all know who Marcel Cerdan was and what he was to Edith. So, I guess this is really more of an homage than a documentary.

I'm not defending this fil, because it really isn't very informative, or even very good. I really just wanted to clear up a couple questions people had that I happened to know the answer to.

Edith Piaf was a fabulous singer and performer,
but this DVD is not the place to start your
appreciation of this legend. It is a transfer
of an old 1967 documentary originally shown on
French television, 4 years after her death. The
French language dialogue is "overdubbed" in
English throughout, in other words you can hear
the faint original French underneath the new
English narration. That is distracting, but
bearable. The documentary itself is nothing to
write home about. If you don't know anything
about Piaf, you will be lost in places. For
example, there is a photo montage of her lover
Marcel Cerdan, the boxer who was killed in a
plane crash, and who was the inspiration for her
classic "Hymne A L'Amour". But aside from photos
of French newspaper headlines about the crash,
no other explanation is made as to who this man
is. There are lots of clips of people riding
on merry-go-rounds, views of French countryside,
etc. while you hear Edith singing in the background
with very bad video quality. Of course, the actual
clips of Piaf performing are worth the price you'll
pay for the DVD. She is just sublime, even as you
can see she's approaching the last years of her
life. But again, the visual quality is abysmal in
spots. I'm sure it's hard to come up with pristine
footage of someone from another continent who died
over 40 years ago, but one wishes that the producers
had dug a little deeper. That said, the Little Sparrow

was one-of-a-kind, so if you're a big fan, you'll
probably want to pick this up. But for novices, I'd
say skip this and just buy a remastered CD of her
classics, many of which are available on Amazon.

this dvd was extremely disappointing. as the other reviews have noted - there is virtually no structure or narrative whatsoever. if my girlfriend wasn't sitting next to me telling me edith's life story - i would have had no absolutely idea what was going on. clips are shown with zero context. they are not identified and they don't seem to be in any particular order.

all of that would be bad enough but to make matters even worse - they use mediocre dubbing for the interviews with edith as well as with the interviews with her famous friends and admirers. so instead of hearing the speaker's real emotional inflections - you just hear an overly earnest american actor speaking for them.

the low point comes when they show a clip of edith clowning around with her piano player (he could be someone famous in his own right but then again - how would i know? this film certainly isn't going to tell me.) anyway - they dub in a woman's voice so edith "speaks" in english. then when she starts to sing they cut back to her actually singing in french. then when she stops to make an aside - they cut back to the dubbing. it's like a saturday night live parody.

there is also some english narration - not enough to clarify anything mind you - but even here - the producers didn't bother to take out the french narration so you have this muffled french speaker talking underneath the american speaker.

if it's not already obvious - this english version was done about as cheaply and as incompetently as possible. the people who made this should be ashamed. too bad. my girlfriend is french and she was so excited not just to see the dvd herself, but also to introduce me to the great edith piaf.

needless to say - it was a failure on both counts.

by the way - i think it would be possible and certainly appropriate to make a far more satisfying film from the same footage by simply adding some basic narrative and using subtitles instead of dubbing. it would still need major overhaul to be a great film but with just these two changes - you would certainly be up to three stars.

NOW, NOW, NOW! In this age of hi-tech and instant gratification it is not proper to restore [retouch] everything to pristine quality [imagine tampering with the Mona Lisa because it looks too drab!]. Sure this DVD has flaws [the horrid Anglo dubbing should go - keep the original French and give us subtitles]. However, this is pure nostalgia, the flavor and essence of Piaf and her amours [the breathtaking Marcel, cut in his prime] - then Theo.

Marlene Dietrich, Josephine Baker, Jean Marais, Cocteau, Romy Schneider, Alain Delon, Jean Paul Belmondo, etc. we get glimpses of the not so distant past - this is a perfect mood piece, instead of an 'in your face' documentary.

A must have for the serious collector.

For those of us in N. America who have to use "Zone 1" DVD's and long to see Edith Piaf singing, this single DVD is the slop available to us. Even the translation of the very poorly made French documentary is itself poor: the documentary's English over-dubbing begins by saying that the deceased Piaf was being remembered on Oct. 10 1963 - which is amazing since she didn't die until two months later! Most professional over-dubbing allows the listener to hear a few words spoken in the original language before the translation begins but not in this DVD: you'll have to listen closely to catch a few non-sung French words of Piaf.

What makes the DVD worth buying is the 5 extended clips where she sings all or most of a song - even though the video quality is very poor. The unique way she used her arms when singing - developed when she was a child street singer trying to hold her audiences' attentions - are shown well in "Milord" and "L'Accordioniste". Fortunately there is a clip of her singing "La Vie En Rose" (one verse) which includes some nice closeups, but "Mon Dieu" ("My God") shows only her hands held in prayer. Two other major songs: "L'Hymne A L'Amour" and "Padam...Padam..." are played while viewing things associated with Piaf's life.

Although the performance sequences are sublime, there are far too few of them to make this DVD worth purchasing. This documentary provides only the sketchiest of biographical details, leaving the viewer with far more questions than answers about what made the famous Parisian singer's life so remarkable and yet so short. Skip this and go directly to the A&E Biography's show on Piaf.

Edith Piaf's contributions to the arts and the details of her life can never be dealt with seriously in any 44 minute video--although this video attempts to do just that. The video, here on DVD, was a 1967 retrospective of Edith Piaf and her life. Unfortunately, while they tried their best to make something worthwhile about Edith Piaf, they did not fully succeed. Huge amounts of details are left out and major issues and triumphs are completely ignored.

Nevertheless, this movie does try. We do get rare footage of Edith performing in concert; this rare footage has value because in the 1950s and early 1960s people simply did not record concerts on film. It just wasn't done. There are many beautiful audio tracks of Edith singing in the background while friends are interviewed about her. We also get a brief interview with Theo Serapo; he was married to Edith at the time that she died. It's touching to see and hear these people speak so fondly of Edith. In addition, the funeral footage demonstrates even more the emotional impact Edith had on so many people.

The sound quality is rather good; but the image quality varies. The interviews from 1967, filmed in black and white, are high quality images with proper lighting and sound equipment being used. The concert footage and a few clips of Edith made by friends unfortunately lack this quality; the images are often rather fuzzy and this frustrates me.

The worst blow to Edith and her fans is that this could have been an excellent springboard for a much more in-depth look at the life and times of Edith Piaf. So much remains unsaid--we see pictures of the boxer she loved so much with newspaper headlines about his death in a plane crash--but heaven forbid we should even be told his name! There is no time devoted to Edith's childhood; and the movie keeps returning to focus on the very last months of Piaf's life when she was remarkably frail. Sigh.

Overall, this documentary runs on the cheap and that makes me feel very sad. It has quality--but only as far as it goes; and that's just not very far at all. I agree with reviewers who write that this is for die-hard fans who already know the details of Piaf's life. If you wish to begin to know about Edith Piaf I would then recommend the recent biopic out in theaters as well as CDs of her wonderful performances.

the description of this dvd is so misleading. when i watched it, i couldn't figure out what was going on, who the man she loved was, what she died from and whatever happened in her life, early and late. there was just no information at all. what was great was her performances --- but i was hoping for a real biographical film. this made no sense at all. and the english overdubbing was horrible; subtitles would have worked much better. although the whole production was haphazard and uninformative and confusing. i was so disappointed. but i liked the songs at the end, even without any visuals. this did not do the great piaf any justice at all and someone who knew nothing about her would come away still knowing nothing about her.