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Retour de Flamme (6 Volume Early Cinema Anthology) [6 DVD9s] [2006]

Posted By: mook45

Date: 10 Sep 2009 18:47:09

For 12 years now, archivist-restorers Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange of Lobster Films have organised screenings in original venues throughout France to share their latest discoveries and restorations from the world of early film. The programmes are completely unclassifiable and delightfully varied with newsreels, slapstick comedies, animation, serials, promotional reels, documentary-dramas and more. Many of the films have lain unseen for years and all are restored as completely as they can be from the original nitrate film (hence the name of the series, nitrate film being highly flammable).

Bromberg and Lange's philosophy is refreshing - they favour pleasure and entertainment in their presentations rather than an archivistic approach to the films based on rarity. Instead of hoarding the jewels of their collection, they enjoy sharing their tastes, their pleasure and their passion for films.
Five of these wonderfully mixed programmes are now available on DVD. The first collection alone contains films from the Lumière brothers, a newsreel filmed on the Titanic in 1912, a documentary about a summer's day on Coney Island in 1932, two realist mime-dramas from Germaine Dulac, a Technicolor wartime animated cartoon, a great-looking print of Pudovkin's Chess Fever, a madcap 1935 comedy in which a man assaults the Parisian public with an outsize set of bull's horns, and a risqué comedy with Josephine Baker dancing in a metro station and a drunken fireman fantasising that the public are nude dancers from the Folies Bergère. And six more films too, including the first part of a silent serial from 1920s Germany, The Flight around the World, further episodes from which appear on subsequent volumes of the series.

The DVDs are dotted with surprises that wrongfoot you as soon as you think you have their measure. Other notable highlights include appearances in 1930s advertisements by Jacques Tati (for furniture) and Michel Simon (for tobacco), the only extant footage of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli playing live with the Quintette du Hot Club de France, footage of 'living torso' Kobelkoff from 1900, a film showing Paris underwater after the 1910 flood and one of Jack (John) Ford's earliest westerns, By Indian Post from 1919. Bromberg and Lange also see these collections as a way of rescuing films from the self-censoring impulses of major companies who suppress old cartoons that might spoil their image. One of Tex Avery's Bugs Bunny cartoons with a black boy as its main character isn't going to be appearing anywhere else anytime soon.

Distinguished by their sense of exuberant fun, these collections are also valuable guides to the changing of tastes regarding acceptable humour and representation. It's impossible for example to watch In the Land of Giants and Pygmies - a stencil-coloured documentary of exploration in the Congo from 1925 - without a distinct sense of unease at its sense of superiority and casual mockery of the 'natives'. For a sense of perspective however, it's good that visual records of such attitudes exist.

Frankly, these collections are great. As Bromberg says, ‘You don't have to be a film buff or have any knowledge of cinema heritage here. On the contrary, I think that those who immersed themselves everyday in this universe are less surprised and less enthusiastic. To take the best of the shows, you just have to become a child again, with a fresh eye and a fresh ear.'

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Volume 4

Volume 5

Volume 6

Volumes 1-6
DVD release 2006
Label: Lobster/Quantum Leap
System: Pal
Screen: 4:3
Colour: Black and white/Tinted/Colour
Audio: Stereo
Language: French/English/Silent
Intertitles: French/English
Runtime (movies): 135-160 minutes
Runtime (extras): about 30 minutes per DVD

Extraction
Engine: DVD Decrypter
DVD: 6 Full Dual-Layer DVD
File Extension: .ISO (Image)
File Size: 7.3 / 8.4 / 8.2 / 8.2 / 7.5 / 8.3GBs (200 MB RARs)
Scans: (400 dpi png) 210MB
Total file size: 48 GBs

These DVDs are French in origin and are dual language. On the first menu you can choose between all further menus and intertitles being in French or English. This does make navigating the DVDs slightly sluggish though, so don't question your extraction or burn if you feel getting through to the film you want to watch takes a little time.
Also the DVD covers seem almost home made - my scanner isn't to blame for what you find in the scans!

Scans

http://www.filesonic.com/file/26339963/RF.Scans.part1.rar
http://www.filesonic.com/file/26339761/RF.Scans.part2.rar

Disc 1

http://netfolder.in/uDK1Whm/RDF1

http://www.filesonic.com/folder/496945

Disc 2

http://netfolder.in/TJpm0y7/RDF2

http://www.filesonic.com/folder/496947

Disc 3

http://netfolder.in/P2RmRR8/RDF3

http://www.filesonic.com/folder/496949

Disc 4

http://netfolder.in/P3ZD1Ee/RDF4

http://www.filesonic.com/folder/496953

Disc 5

http://netfolder.in/0MQ5R0R/RDF5

http://www.filesonic.com/folder/496955

Disc 6

http://netfolder.in/p0z7yoc/RDF6

http://www.filesonic.com/folder/496957

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DVD Classics 2006