Product Description

Handsome and ambitious, Julien Sorel is determined to rise above his humble peasant origins and make something of his life-by adopting the code of hypocrisy by which his society operates. Julien ultimately commits a crime-out of passion, principle, or insanity-that will bring about his downfall. The Red and the Black is a lively, satirical picture of French Restoration society after Waterloo, riddled with corruption, greed, and ennui.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51054 in DVD
• Brand: Koch International
• Released on: 2006-02-07
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: .35 pounds
• Running time: 200 minutes

Customer Reviews

a wonderfully adapted classic
a beautiful yet very sad movie in that tumult era before the french revolution. passion, jealousy, love, ambition, poverty, richness....whatever. beautifully performed and directed. the sadness of this movie won't make you shed tears. a french movie that rarely has the integrity from the very beginning to the very end. the tall and hansome young actor was really a very good and appropriate cast. nothing short of a 5-star rating.

Kim Rossi Stuart Shines!
i found this movie to be exquisitely photographed and whom ever was in charge of selecting the actresses and actors truly had an amazing sensitivity to the story line and characters portrayed by the author. Even though I sensed from the very begining of this story line that the journey ultimately would lead this fasinating cast of characters to a dooms day conclusion I still enjoyed every scene. Rarely do costumers location people sound technicians work so seamlessly on a project. I challenge anyone who enjoys a tragic love story to say pass on this one. I attribute much of this movies magic to the wonderful acting of the Italian actor Kim Rossi Stuart he was fabulous in the movie THE KEYS TO THE HOUSE but he really out does him self in THE RED AND THE BLACK buy your self a copy and a box of tissue and enjoy.

enjoyable period drama
Made for TV adaptation of the famous Stendhal two-volume book, captured on two DVDs (more or less). If the movie makes people want to read the book (I hope so), so much the better. There are many insights in the book that are hard to capture in a movie, no matter how talented the director, though a visual medium does have a number of advantages, in this case to showcase some inspired acting by a talented cast that includes former "Bond girl" and Chanel #5 model, Carole Bouquet, as beautiful at 40 as ever.

The title stands for army uniforms (red), on the one hand, and priestly robes (black) on the other, the only paths to social advancement in the France of 1830 during the Bourbon Restauration, unless one happened to be "in" as a member of the nobility. Julien Sorel, the protagonist, is of humble birth, the son of a carpenter. Though intelligent, hard working, talented, and ambitious, getting into the army is not an option for him and the priesthood isn't in his blood either, despite an earnest effort to make a go of it.

The movie's first part follows Sorel, in his 20s, as he manages to escape the stifling atmosphere of his childhood home to become tutor to the young son of the town mayor. No longer will he have to do back-breaking manual labor and get beat up by his ruffian brothers for being smarter than they are. Things are definitely looking up also because the mayor has a beautiful wife (Bouquet) who married him while still a teenager and missed out on the youthful delights of girls at that age. Julien suitably obliges -- no mere servant girls for him, thank you very much. However, the affair gets tongues wagging before long, anonymous letters arrive, the mayor and his wife are in a quandary how to extricate themselves from this embarrassing situation, so Julien gets the boot. End of part I.

Thanks to a well-connected priest, Julien lands a job as secretary to a wealthy nobleman living in Paris. This is definitely the big leagues and our hero, a quick study, must scramble to get with the program in short order, i.e., the right clothes, the opera, and dancing and fencing lessons. As luck would have it (ahem), his new employer has a beautiful young daughter, the apple of his eye, but she is every bit as spoiled as she is willful and headstrong. Julien must figure out how to land in her good graces, and he succeeds. She becomes pregnant and marriage is not too far off, bringing with it the wealth and status Julien had been craving for years. Happy ending, right? A letter arrives from Julien's former lover, the mayor's wife, exposing him for the cad he is.

I don't want to spoil the rest of the story, so I'll stop here. Enjoy!