Product Description

Director Jean-Jacques Beineix launched the Cinema Du Look movement with this stylish cult thriller that remains as innovative today as when it premiered in 1981. Jules (FREDERIC ANDREI), a young postal carrier, illegally tapes a concert of a reclusive opera singer (American soprano WILHELMENA WIGGINS FERNANDEZ). Jules' attempts to woo the diva are interrupted when Taiwanese bootleggers come after the recording. His problems become worse when a prostitute slips another tape, one that incriminates a police chief, into his bag. Jules must escape the police chief, the cop's henchmen and the bootleggers to keep both precious tapes safe - and to stay alive. Featuring critically acclaimed cinematography and a celebrated chase through the Paris Metro, DIVA earned Cesar Awards for Best Music, Best Cinematography and Best Directorial Debut.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10689 in DVD
• Brand: Lions Gate
• Released on: 2008-06-03
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, Original recording remastered, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 123 minutes

Amazon.com
Jean-Jacques Beineix (Betty Blue) made a catchy debut as a director with this slick, defiantly superficial 1982 movie about a young mail carrier who illegally records a performance by an opera singer, then gets the tape mixed up with evidence that could incriminate gangsters. Wearing flashy commercialism like a badge, Beineix fills the screen with explosions of disposable pop kitsch. Yet he also tells a fairly compelling story in the process, a story that only seems to get more interesting the closer one gets to the end. An unusual experience, Diva should be seen also for the influence it had on the look and feel of movies and music videos in the '80s. --Tom Keogh

On the DVD
The release of Diva on the new Meridian imprint comes with a "director approved" transfer of the 1981 arthouse hit. Considering the somewhat grainy quality of the image (and a barely-perceptible amount of horizontal "stretching" to fit the 16x9 shape, which crops out a sliver of visual information from previous DVD releases), this will have to stand as Beineix's vision of the movie, at least for now. The sound is monaural, as was the original release, so the synth-heavy score by Vladimir Cosma, as influential in its was as Flashdance, sounds a bit tinny on modern machines. The supporting features are extensive: the notoriously cranky Beineix contributes about 20 minutes' worth of scene-specific commentary (his voice audible but dubbed into English) for some of the film, and he sits down for another 20-minute, two-part video interview, which is in English. All the interviews, which vary between English-language and French-dubbed-into-English, can be played in a row, following an annoying 6-minute "postmodern" introduction in which the interviewers tell you what you're about to see. Cosma speaks for 11 minutes about the music, cinematographer Philippe Rousselot for 6 minutes, and designer Hilton McConnico for 7 minutes. The actors are heard from: Dominique Pinon and Anny Romand speak together, Frederic Andrei and Richard Bohringer are interviewed separately (the latter describes Beineix as a "sweet schizophrenic"). Surprisingly, the best anecdotes come from a 7-minute talk with casting director Dominique Besnehard, who recalls the worrisome gap in opera star Wilhelmina Wiggins Fernandez's front teeth. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

Stylish, hip thriller marred by poor transfer
This stylish, hip thriller of the early 80's is a cult classic. Featuring Wilhelmenia Wiggins-Fernandez, a real-life Diva. In the film she plays Cynthia Hawkins, an opera singer who refuses to record her music.

Frédéric Andréi (Jules) is a loner messenger boy, who makes a beautiful bootleg recording of one of her recitals. He also becomes the unknowing recipient of a tape containing evidence about the Paris underworld, setting off a chain of events where everyone's motives are misunderstood.

Sad to say, this good film is seriously marred by the worst sound transfer I have ever heard on a DVD. It is muddy and indistinct, much worse than most VHS tapes. Because the voice of Wilhelmenia Wiggins-Fernandez is central to the plot, the poor audio quality makes it hard to understand why anyone would make such a fuss about recording her.

The video transfer is not great, but passable, however the audio quality seriously dimishes the impact of a good film. If you listen to the compact disk soundtrack, you'll know what you're missing. This DVD looks like it was rushed to market with very little thought or care. The film deserves a better fate.

Thank you, Anchor Bay
Bravo. Anchor Bay understands why many of us are buying DVDs of films we never would have considered purchasing on video: not merely because they are available, but because of the QUALITY. Their "Diva" release is a prime example of this, and I won't bother extolling the virtues of the movie *as* a movie since the Amazon.com review and the other reviewers have done that so well.

I haven't seen the earlier Fox Lorber issue of "Diva", but from the reviews I read here, and from the Fox Lorber titles I unfortunately own, I can only imagine that they (Fox Lorber) did their usual criminally indifferent - or is it agressively incompetent? - job, making no attempt to clean up the image and sound on a poor-quality master, but rather doing a quick-and-dirty transfer in order to be first to market, before the public wises up.

With that as the background, then, the new Anchor Bay release of "Diva" was well worth waiting for. The image quality is simply beautiful - clean, clear and crisp, with no discernable noise, dirt, or other undesireable visual artifacts. It's comparable in quality to Paramount's superb work on the "Chinatown" DVD, or most anything in The Criterion Collection's excellent series. Another very pleasant surprise is the restored and updated sound which, on the Fox Lorber release, was rated even below the poor quality of the image. Fans of "Diva" know that it has one of the most unique and memorable soundtracks of the many memorable 1980s movie soundtracks, and I cannot remember it ever sounding better than it does on the new Anchor Bay release.

So again, thank you, Anchor Bay, for doing justice to one of my favorite films on DVD. And as for you, Fox Lorber, isn't there a better business model out there than doing violence to art for money?

A wonderful relief from the prior awful Fox-Lorber disk
This version of Diva is remastered from the original elements and does credit to a great movie. Beware the former Fox-Lorber disk, which is one of the worst transfers of any film out on DVD. Come to think of it, beware Fox-Lorber. They generally tend to take great Criterion Collection releases like The 400 Blows or Hardboiled and force them out of circulation only to replace them with bad versions and junky transfers.