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Feature

Rosalie (Romy Schneider)is a beautiful vivacious young woman involved with a charming, successful businessman called Cesar (Yves Montand). He is crazy about her and his exuberant vitality satisfies Rosalie’s terrific lust for life. One day out of the blue Rosalie’s old flame David appears, desperate to win back her affections. Cesar’s intense jealousy shocks Roaslie and she ends up running into the arms of David and the pair are separated. Rosalie however begins to doubt that she’s made the right choice, until fate ends up deciding for her.

Video

Once you get out of the rather ropey looking credits sequence you'll be greeted with a film that looks every bit like the early seventies era is was made in. The HD upgrade provides a fresh and detailed appearance but colours are still relatively muted and the beige and greys of early seventies film making are all resent and correct.

There's a fair bit of subtle grain, mainly seen in wider areas of overcast sky but this Blu-ray upgrade still has a whole lot going for it. There's a hint at some DNR in some closer shots of the actors but it's never all that overbearing and the image still provides a look that very much represents the age of the film.

Darker scenes bring on the grain in bigger and badder ways and a anything not lit all that well can look pretty grubby. Additionally there are some location shots that lose their sharpness a fair bit but thankfully these scenes are few and far between and what we get is a largely naturally lit and realistic looking film that still manages to capture life in a cinematic way.

Audio

The bouncy electronic score (that sometimes sounds like a Pink Floyd experiment), forces its way into the forefront of this reliable audio track. Dialogue is always strong and despite the small dramatic scale of the film, the combination of weather, score, ambience and dialogue generates quite a full sounding stereo presentation when it's required.

There's an ever so slight hiss to recording but usually it's within louder moments rather than anything distracting. and overall this is a track that sounds like an authentic presentation of the film's original sound with an HD boost in all the right places.

Extras

'Serenade for 3' (29:59 HD) begins with the origins of the film and never really misses a beat after that. From screenplay to final product is covered in a lot of detail, providing a good complimentary piece to the film.

Overall

Cesar et Rosalie is a straight up drama about relationships and isn't afraid to show it's characters reacting when they begin to fall apart. This works wonders and makes the film feel much rawer than the usual break up movies and gives a much more realistic look at how people work out their problems. The disc does well at capturing the film's seventies looks and boosts the audio pretty well too. Despite only holding a single half an hour documentary, this is still a detailed enough  extra to recommend the disc to anyone wanting to know more about this French oldie.

* Note: The images below are taken from the Blu-ray release and resized for the page. Full-resolution captures are available by clicking individual images, but due to .jpg compression they are not necessarily representative of the quality of the transfer.