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List Price: $29.95Amazon.com's Price: $17.99 You Save: $11.96 (40%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
Brand: Image Entertainment
EAN: 9780780023314
Format: Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0780023315
Label: Criterion
Manufacturer: Criterion
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Criterion
Region Code: 1
Release Date: March 13, 2001
Running Time: 128 minutes
Sales Rank: 13795
Studio: Criterion
Theatrical Release Date: 1981
Editorial Review:
Description:
An inspired rendering of Jim Thompson's pulp novel Pop. 1280, Bertrand Tavernier's Coup de torchon (Clean Slate) deftly transplants the story of an inept police chief- turned-heartless killer and his scrappy mistress from the American South to French West Africa. Featuring pitch-perfect performances by Philippe Noiret and Isabelle Huppert, this striking neo-noir straddles the line between violence and lyricism with dark humor and visual elegance, perfectly captured by Criterion's glorious new anamorphic transfer.
Amazon.com:
Bertrand Tavernier tranforms Jim Thompson's pulp novel Pop. 1280 into an engrossing and unsettling meditation on moral collapse. Arguably his best thriller, the French director transposes the story from the American South of the 1910s to colonial West Africa of the 1930s, where the very first black slaves entered the New World. Philippe Noiret plays a bumbling police chief who's the butt of ridicule in the corrupt town, with an abusive wife (Isabelle Huppert) who cheats on him and laughs in his face. But Noiret reaches a point of quiet madness, slowly getting his revenge by going on a killing spree. The subdued actor is at his best here, adopting a goofy attitude that works to his benefit when no one suspects him of the diabolical murders. A great subversive film enhanced by Philippe Sarde's jazzy score and wild camera movements intended to be out of sync with the action. --Bill Desowitz
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Sun-drenched film noir . . .
For my money, this is one of French director Bertrand Tavernier's best and most imaginative films, based on a Jim Thompson novel and filmed entirely in Senegal - transported there from the American South. A 2-hour film, shot in muted colors and to a great extent with a Steadicam, it has a look and feel that studiously avoids the exotic and any of the cliches and stereotypes that Western audiences might have about Africa. While technically a film noir in its subject matter and its focus on crime and ... Read More
Rating:  - Failed product from France
This is a typical strange film from French director Bertrand Tavernier, with Isabelle Huppert as female star. It happens in French West Africa. You have the black natives and the white French, as the 2 opposite races that play a big part in the story. You have also the bad guys, vicious, racist, stupid, against the main character, to whom everything is related.
There is a transformation in this character along the film. And this transformation seems to be the "story" of the film. ... Read More
Rating: - The law of the jungle!
A bureaucrat,a man good for nothing is a credited police in Bourkassa, Western Africa, 1936. The corruption in its several faces rides on him, laughs of him and mocks about him. His marriage is a mess; his wife is lover of her own brother a stupid pimp.
This is the dramatic stage chosen by Tavernier to make an ambitious film where the predator concept will surround the screen thanks to a perfect script. Three out of this world stars of cinema such as Noiret, Audran and Huppert are overwhelming. ... Read More
Rating:  - Black Comedy Noir
Coup de Torchon is an extremely well-made film. Noiret's acting as the lead is stellar. I haven't read the Jim Thompson novel on which the film is based (in fact it's one of the few Thompson novels I haven't read), so I honestly can't say how similar or dissimilar the film is from its source material. Standing on its own, however, Coup de Torchon is extremely effective and very unsettling.
The main character, brilliantly played by Noiret, is bullied by everyone around him. He is bumbling, passive, ... Read More
Rating: - A magnificent, murderous black comedy with Philippe Noiret and Isabelle Huppert
Lucien Cordier (Philippe Noiret) is the overweight, lazy, unshaven chief of police in Bourkassa, Senegal. It's 1938, and this French colony is a backwater of dust, flies and dysentery. Cordier can't talk his wife, Huguette (Stephane Audran), into sharing his bed, but she is very solicitous of her "brother" who lives with them. He takes bribes from two pimps who humiliate him in public. He's the butt of jokes among his superiors. He has hot eyes for Rose Marcaillou (Isabelle Huppert), who is a sexy young woman with ... Read More
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