Product Details

• Actors: Jean Gabin, Simone Simon, Danielle Darrieux
• Directors: Max Ophuls
• Format: Black & White, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
• Language: French
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Criterion Collection
• DVD Release Date: September 16, 2008
• Run Time: 97 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001BEK8BU
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #76,598 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Le Plaisir" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

LE PLAISIR - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Max Ophuls' marvelous film of pleasure and, perhaps, love, June 23, 2008

By 

C. O. DeRiemer (San Antonio, Texas, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Le Plaisir (DVD)

The screen is pitch black and we hear a voice..."I'm so happy to be talking in the dark as if I were beside you, and maybe I am." The speaker is Guy de Maupassant (voiced by Jean Marais), and Le Plaisir is three of his stories filmed by the great director Max Ophuls. The connecting thread? That pleasure, or even love, lies in how people intermingle their lives, with a shrug, assumptions, an apology, a thank you. Le Plaisir is not so much a sophisticated film of attraction and hope as it is a film of rueful wisdom. It's best to keep in mind while watching this movie that while life can be enjoyed, there are times when hope can disappear.

The three stories consist of, first, La Masque. We are in 19th Century Paris at the Palais de la Dance, where great, swirling balls are held. This is a place where young women hope to find pleasure and rich men; where old women chase memories and young suitors; where prostitutes and their pimps gather, where the men are young bucks and old goats, where "rough cotton to the finest cambric" can combine. One slender man in full dinner dress rushes into the palace and begins to dance with a beautiful young woman. He prances and kicks, yet his face is like a frozen mask of youth. He collapses on the dance floor and a doctor is called. When the doctor loosens the man's clothes, he finds...well, let's say that when the man is delivered home to his wife by the doctor, she tells him a story of the battle between pleasure and love.

In La Maison Tellier, we learn all about a cozy, friendly and long established brothel in a small town on the Channel coast. The bourgeois men of the town are as well-known there as they are to their wives. Then Madame decides to close her establishment for a night so that she and her girls can travel into the countryside to attend her niece's first communion. They have one or two adventures on the train. In the small village they spend the night with Madame's brother and meet the young girl. They attend the communion in the village church. They collect flowers on the way back, and are met with genuine affection and with great gaiety when Madame reopens her place of business the following night. We witness a touching story, as de Maupassant tells us, when pleasure and purity come together.

Le Modele gives us a story where pleasure struggles with moral decay, where "happiness is not a joyful thing." We witness a painter and his model meet, rapturously embrace lust and, as lust tires, recrimination grows. The love which endures as the story plays out may not be most people's idea of happiness.

This is a marvelously told series of stories. La Masque and Le Modele are relatively short bookends to the major tale of La Maison Tellier. With this one, it would be difficult not to become delighted and engaged with Madame and her girls and her brother. Even the puffed up townsmen are not without a sympathetic side; which man among us wouldn't mind being flattered, even for a price, by Madame's girls?

In the cast are some of France's best known actors, including Claude Dauphin, Danielle Darrieux, Jean Gabin, Daniel Gelin, Simon Simon, Madeleine Renaud and Pierre Brasseur.

Please note that the Criterion release is not scheduled until September 16, 2008. My comments are based on the Region 2 release which I own. I like this film so well I plan to buy the Criterion Region 1 version when it comes out. After I have a chance to look at Criterion's extras, I'll post an extra paragraph here about them.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another classic from Ophüls, October 19, 2008

By 

Ted "Ted" (Pennsylvania, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Le Plaisir (DVD)

This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

Le Plaisir, meaning "pleasure" is a film based on three stories by Guy de Maupassant. Le Masque, La Maison Tellier, and Le Modèle.

In the first story, Le Masque, an elderly man hides his age with a mask and goes to a ball and dances energetically with a woman and he later falls down in exaustion. In the second story, La Maison Tellie, the women and madam of a brother go on a field trip. In the third story, Le Modèle, a woman falls in love with a male artist whom she poses for.

I found the film to be entertaining and liked the opening sequence with the old man in the mask.

The DVD has some great supplements too which are quite good. Todd Haynes gives an introduction to the film, also is a video slideshow with narration which provides the transition of the film from its script to its production, there are also interviews with actor Daniel Gélin, and crewmembers, Tony Aboyantz, and Robert Christidès. There are also alternate language versions of the opening narration in English and German.

This is a film that you won't want to miss.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Le Plaisir DVD, April 16, 2009

By 

Pamela G. Maher (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Le Plaisir (DVD)

I love the films of Max Ophüls; he has such a way with the camera. This B&W French film from 1952 is particularly tricky because the camera is always in motion. The story is made up of 3 vingettes having to do with pleasure, and perhaps the price that is sometimes paid for pleasure. I like The Earrings of Madame de... more, but this is a good one to add to your collection.