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Released by: Blue Underground
Released on: February 21st, 2022.
Director: Jess Franco
Cast: Romina Power, Maria Rohm, Jack Palance, Mercedes McCambridge, Klaus Kinski
Year: 1969
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Marquis de Sade’s Justine – Movie Review:
Directed by Jess Franco, adapting source material written by the Marquis de Sade, 1969's Justine opens with a scene in which the Marquis himself (played by Klaus Kinski) is marched up to the Bastille where he is to be imprisoned for the audacity of his writings. Even prison can't stop him from putting pen to paper, however, as he sets out to write the story of Justine (Romina Power) and Juliette (Maria Rohm), two sisters orphaned and sent to a convent some time ago. When the funding that was paying for their Catholic education runs dry, the two sisters are sent out into the world at large where the naíve Justine and the more worldly Juliette run afoul of all kinds of miscreants and scoundrels.
Before too long, Juliette is hanging out at a brothel where she falls into a torrid affair with a lesbian named Claudine (Rosemary Dexter) while Justine finds work as a maid at a local inn. Unfortunately for her, she's fired after being wrongfully accused of stealing valuables from one of the guests and left to her own devices. From here she winds up falling in with another lesbian, a criminal named Madame Dusbois (Mercedes McCambridge) and gang of rowdy hooligans and, after they've had their fun, she winds up with an affluent gay man named Marquis de Bressac (Horst Frank) who plans to coerce the poor girl into murdering his wife.
Before it's all over with, however, Justine will wind up in the sinister clutches of a sex cult lorded over by the nefarious Antonin (a completely sloshed Jack Palance)!
It's a bit long the long side but Franco's take on de Sade's Justine is an interesting and generally well made movie. The cinematography is consistently impressive and it adds a certain elegance to the decadence portrayed in many of the film's set pieces. While the movie never goes as far as you might expect it to, often pulling back just as you think it's going to go over the edge, but it goes far enough to work. Franco's direction here is quite a bit more restrained and traditional than what we'd see only a few short years down the road, but there are enough of his trademark flourishes evident throughout the picture (including a brief cameo from the man himself) that you're never going to mistake the film for someone else's work.
In terms of the casting, Kinski's really just here to sort of bookend the main event so he isn't given that much to do outside of skulking around looking intense, but if you're going to have someone in your movie skulking around and looking intense, Kinski is a good choice and he does it well. Palance is on another planet here, clearly drunk off his nuts and just going for it while Mercedes McCambridge steals a few scenes as the salacious lesbian predator. Rosemary Dexter is also good as… another lesbian while horst Frank is amusing in his role as Bressac. It is, however, Romina Power and Maria Rohm that do the bulk of the heavy lifting here. Power is quite good as the more innocent of the two sisters, she just looks naive and vulnerable and as such she has the right appearance to make the role work. She's also quite beautiful and as such, you can see why someone with both her physical traits and her charming innocence might be a magnet of sorts for the sort of person she seems to attract in the film. Maria Rohm as her more worldly sister is also very good here and they make quite an interesting duo in this picture. Add to all of this a fantastic score from composer Bruno Nicolai and it's easy to see why this one remains a fairly popular in Franco's massive filmography.
Marquis de Sade’s Justine – UHD/Blu-ray Review:
Marquis de Sade’s Justine arrives on UHD from Blue Underground in an HVEC encoded 2160p transfer taken from a new 4k remastered framed at 1.66.1 widescreen with HDR10 and Dolby Vision enhancement. Picture quality is rock solid here. There are, of course, some scenes that are shot in soft focus, but those sequences notwithstanding the rest of the movie shows very strong depth, detail and texture throughout. Color reproduction looks fantastic and skin tones, which are plentiful, appear nice and natural. The picture retains the natural film grain that it should but shows virtually no print damage at all, the image is remarkably crisp and clean looking. Black levels are nice and deep and the transfer shows no noticeable problems with noise reduction, edge enhancement or compression artifact problems.
The in a 16-bit English language DTS-HD Mono, which comes with optional subtitles available in English SDH, French and Spanish, sounds sound quite good. The score has nice depth and range to it while the dialogue is clean, clear, nicely balanced and easy to follow. There are no problems with any hiss or distortion.
Extras on the UHD include a trailer for the feature and a commentary track from Nathanial Thompson and Troy Howarth. Lots of talk here about the source material, the film's score, who did what behind the scenes, the film's lack of a U.S. theatrical release, censorship issues, the film's larger scale and budget, details on The Marquis de Sade's life and work, the quality of the cinematography and lighting in the movie, why Power was cast in the lead and her age when the movie was shot as well as thoughts on her performance, Franco's thoughts on her performance, where Sadeian influences creep up in other Franco movies and how they compare to this one, the Spanish shooting locations and how they conflict with the French setting and the various different accents you can hear in the movie. They also cover Franco's relationship with Harry Alan Towers and how the films they made together got the most international exposure, how and why so many Franco movies - including this one- have different versions and cuts, Palance's "full tilt" performance in the movie, Howard Vernon's work as a still photographer under an alias on quite a few Franco movies, Kinski's work in the picture and his general aversion to doing dubbing, the film's compromised ending and thoughts on why the movie turned out the way it did and quite a bit more.
That same commentary is also found on the included Blu-ray disc, which also contains a new featurette called On Set With Jess which is an interview with actress Rosalba Neri running eight minutes. She speaks about how Franco was pleasant to work with and a "kind of genius in his genre." She talks about shooting 99 Women, taking direction from Franco, being at ease around him on set, some of the other actresses she worked with, working on Justine, Romina Powers and Jack Palance's presence on set, how her role was quite small and how she looks back on her career as having been a lot of fun.
Carried over from the past DVD release is the twenty -minute featurette The Perils And Pleasures Of Justine which interviews Franco and producer Harry Alan Towers. This is an interesting look back at the making of the film, with some amusing stories about Palance's drinking, Kinski's difficulties, the locations, the storyline and more.
Carried over from the last Blu-ray release is Stephen Thrower On Justine in which the man who wrote Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema Of Jesus Franco spends roughly seventeen minutes on camera talking about the film's history, how it fits in with some of the other films that Franco was working on during this period, his thoughts on the performances and some of the visuals and quite a bit more.
Blue Underground also provides a high definition presentation of Deadly Sanctuary, the ninety-six minute alternate U.S. cut of the film with 16-bit DTS-HD English language mono audio. There are no subtitles or alternate language options provided for this cut. Oddly enough, the alternate title looks to be video generated, rather than a standard optically printed title, though the rest of the movie is film sourced and looks very good.
Aside from that, the disc also contains a French theatrical trailer, a pretty extensive still gallery of photos, stills and artwork, menus and chapter selection.
Note that the booklet and CD soundtrack that were included on the previous limited edition Blu-ray are not included with this UHD/Blu-ray combo pack, but we do get a slipcover that uses that alternate Philosophy In The Boudoir title on it.
Marquis de Sade’s Justine - The Final Word:
Justine is, even with some obvious flaws, a pretty well made take on the Marquis de Sade's work and while it's on the tame side by today's standards, it's still got enough spice to work. It's also very elegantly shot and benefits from a great score. Blue Underground’s UHD/Blu-ray combo reissue looks and sounds great and carries over the existing extras from past releases and adds some excellent new supplements to the package as well. Highly recommended!