Black Tulip, The (1964) (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Mar 24, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Christian-JaqueRelease Date(s)
1964 (March 18, 2025)Studio(s)
Flora Film/Mizar Films/Méditerranée Cinéma/Ágata Films S.A. (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)- Film/Program Grade: A-
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
This is a major home video release for connoisseurs of big-format cinema. The Black Tulip (La Tulipe noire, 1964) was one of a handful of ‘60s foreign language European productions photographed in 65/70mm, this French-Italian-Spanish co-production starring Alain Delon also exhibited in 70mm Super Cinerama in some markets.
Restored in 4K by TF1, the Blu-ray presentation is staggeringly good. The 2.20:1 widescreen image is razor-sharp with (mostly) excellent color. While watching it on my 4K projector, I wondered how a 4K disc (apparently released in France) could look any better. More on the video transfer below.
The film was prompted by the success of Philippe de Broca’s Cartouche, the 1962 swashbuckler starring Jean-Paul Belmondo that’s also available on Blu-ray. Friend and rival Alain Delon wanted to make something similar, and in many respects The Black Tulip is even better. Taking its name but not its story from Alexandre Dumas’s novel, the film nevertheless captures Dumas’s rollicking spirit; I suspect director Richard Lester must have seen it, for it has much the same cocky, not-quite spoofish approach to its material, if not the visual style, of Lester’s The Three Musketeers/The Four Musketeers.
In June 1789 in the town of Roussillon, on the eve of the French Revolution, aristocrat Guillaume de Saint Preux (Alain Delon) leads a double life as the Black Tulip, a notorious masked bandit who robs only fellow aristocrats. Unlike Robin Hood, he doesn’t give his booty to the poor, though the hoi polloi admires him just the same. The Marquis de Vigogne (Akim Tamiroff), unaware that Guillaume is having an affair with his wife, the Marquise Catherine de Vigogne (Dawn Addams), dispatches the Baron La Mouche (Adolfo Marsillach), who correctly theorizes Guillaume is the Black Tulip, to capture him.
Early in the story, the Baron manages to unmask Guillaume and deeply scar his left cheek. As Guillaume is expected at a ball soon after, he asks his identical twin brother, Julien (also Delon), to impersonate him until the scar heals. Naïve and idealistic, and fiercely on the side of the oppressed citizenry, Julien agrees. He quickly falls in love with peasant girl “Caro” (Virna Lisi), the daughter of prominent revolutionary Plantin (Francis Blanche). Most of the film revolves around a visit by Prince Alexandre de Grassillac de Morvan-Le-Breau (Robert Manuel), and hapless La Mouche’s efforts to capture the Black Tulip.
Delon’s performance as Julien/Guillaume, the astonishingly good special effects putting both characters on the screen at the same time, and the lusty, action-filled approach to the material make The Black Tulip enormous fun. Delon’s Guillaume is an amorous rogue in the tradition of Errol Flynn (and earlier Delon parts), but it’s his Julien that most impresses. He plays Julien as gentle and empathetic in ways Guillaume is not, sometimes foolish but not stupid, inexperienced masquerading as the Black Tulip but brave, even brash, and no slouch with a sabre. Guillaume is a movie hero, but Julien is a human being. They’re easily accepted as two different people.
Scenes showing two Delons within the same shot are mostly achieved with stationary mattes, but the staging is so naturalistic, Delon so distinctive in each role, and technically it’s so well done it’s easy for audience to forget they’re looking at trick shots. I can’t think of another 65/70mm feature that incorporated so many effects shots; in 70mm the slightest imperfection would have been glaringly obvious on big Cinerama screens but director of photography Henri Decaë’s (Purple Noon, Le Samouraï) work is flawless. One shot in particular has Guillaume seated in a big, wooden chair as Julien walks around behind him.
Though some of the subtler, witty French dialogue will be lost on English-only speakers, as will the many historical and literary references (e.g., “Caro” is related to one of the legendary Musketeers), Christian-Jaque, the husband of actress Martine Carol and known for past French swashbucklers such as Fanfan la Tulipe (1952) provides the film with just the right balance of humor, melodrama, and tragedy. No wonder the film was a huge success across Europe, the Soviet Union, and Japan, among other places.
The cast is excellent, too. Beautiful Virna Lisi’s heroine is spunky and active, handy with a sabre herself. Spanish actor Adolfo Marsillach is both a believable adversary presenting a real threat but also amusingly inept; it’s fun to see busy Akim Tamiroff (he appeared in Topkapi that same year) and Dawn Addams. Both appear to be speaking French, though their voices are dubbed by others. (The one doing Tamiroff speaks at a much higher pitch, but otherwise gets his voice right.) Sharp-eyed viewers will also spot Argentinian actor Georges Rigaud (There’s No Tomorrow, Grand Slam, Horror Express) as the Chief of Police.
The Black Tulip was shot in Superpanorama 70, also known as MCS-70, a format virtually identical to Todd-AO and Super Panavision 70. (MCS-70 was used for aerial shots in both The Sound of Music and 2001: A Space Odyssey). Kino’s Blu-ray looks stupendous; everything is razor-sharp and the colors and contrast look great. However, one minor complaint is that the day-for-night photography has been adjusted digitally, apparently to make it look more modern and believably night-like. It’s overly dark, and in draining most of the color whites and blues have been rendered far too purplish in some shots.
No mention is made on the packaging, but the film is offered in both DTS-HD 5.1 and 2.0 mixes. For some reason the disc defaults to the 2.0 track. One assumes the original 70mm presentations were in 6-track magnetic stereo; on the disc, both the 2.0 and 5.1 tracks sound like true stereo, at least as far as the music track is concerned, but not any of the dialogue or sound effects, and nothing is channeled to the surround speakers from what I could tell. In French only, the English subtitles are optional on this Region “A” encoded disc.
Extra features are limited to a new audio commentary track by film critic Simon Abrams and an original French trailer. Credit is due to Kino for admitting on the packaging that the trailer is “low-res” but that proves a grotesque understatement. It’s virtually unwatchable, a blurry and blocky mess of digital artifacting, maybe the worst-looking trailer in the history of home video—all formats!
Nevertheless, the release of The Black Tulip in a splendiferous approximation of its 70mm glory is wonderful news. I had wanted to see it for decades for its MCS-70 photography alone, yet the movie doesn’t disappoint, either. Highly recommended.
- Stuart Galbraith IV