On Blu-ray - David Hare welcomes Radiance editions of WHITE NIGHTS (Luchino Visconti, Italy, 1957) & UN FEMME DOUCE (Robert Bresson, France

Two new Blu-rays from the estimable Radiance label, out this month. First screen above in B&W is from Visconti's 1957 Le Notti Bianche/White Nights, itself an adaptation of Dostoievsky's novel, which Robert Bresson ironically would adapt a few years later as Four Nights of a Dreamer. The remaining screens, in color, are from Bresson's 1969 Une Femme Douce, his first film not in B&W.

Radiance's master of the Visconti is taken from a 4K restoration made a few years ago which was previously released un-subtitled on the Italian label Cristaldi. Radiance's own mastering is vastly superior in resolution, grain management and grayscale and the disc sports a couple of hours of beautifully curated extras. I am not a great fan of the picture, and after watching this again still not. But as soon as the focus is taken off the two leads the movie's completely artificial realism (down to a reconstructed city of Livorno fabricated in Cinecitta Stage 5) everything lifts to giddy heights.  

Visconti was following up after the apparent commercial failure of Senso (which is a complete masterpiece) and was trying to appease the neo-realist critics who disapproved of so much decadence . But his own far better sense of theatre and layering of style almost saves White Nights from succumbing to the maudlin charms of a totally Bambi-in-the-headlights performance from Maria Schell. Marcello Mastroianni is also directed to play a possibly impossible part as a goofy momma's boy. 

The rest of the picture's stylistic influences are fascinating, and outrageously beautiful. It further benefits from the first fully credited DOP title from Rotunno, who bends realism beyond the scale with a Cinecitta Stage 5 recreation of Livorno in high chiaroscuro, as though harking back to the late 30s and Carne's Trauner studio rebuilt Hotel du Nord/Canal St. Martin of 1938. And there is a short but devastatingly beautiful theme track from Nino Rota.

Radiance's Une Femme Douce is first time for this title in English friendly release and Radiance have given it their now expectedly classy mastering. Bresson's treatment of the Dostoyevsky story seems to fit like a glove with his direction of actors as "models" and thus he gives us, with Dominique Sanda's constantly averted gaze and relative but deceptive impassivity, the next suicidal heroine in his canon, after the earlier Mouchette. Again Radiance's disc is graced with a plethora of extras. 

These discs are literally catnip for collectors.