Why So Blu?

Hardboiled: Serie Noire (Blu-ray Review)

Step into a squalid Parisian suburb where desperation sweats through cheap polyester, and every neon flicker spells doom. Serie Noire (1979) isn’t just noir — it’s scorched earth cinema. Patrick Dewaere practically disintegrates on screen as Frank Poupart, a door-to-door hustler unraveling in a world with no escape hatch. Directed by Alain Corneau and adapted from Jim Thompson’s A Hell of a Woman, this film is a fever dream of exploitation, existential dread, and twisted romance. With Radiance Films bringing Serie Noire to Blu-ray as part of their Hardboiled: Three Pulp Thrillers by Alain Corneau box set, the question is: how does this murky descent look and sound in HD? Let’s dig into why this Serie Noire Blu-ray release might be one of the grimiest treasures on your shelf.

Film 

In Serie Noire (1979), nothing is clean — least of all the souls on display. Set in the crumbling outskirts of Paris, Alain Corneau’s brutal noir isn’t here to flirt with genre tropes. It’s here to burn them down. Based on Jim Thompson’s A Hell of a Woman, this French adaptation keeps the American pulp intact while coating everything in cigarette ash, sleet, and sexual desperation.

At the center of the chaos is Patrick Dewaere, unleashing one of the most deranged performances in 1970s French cinema. His Frank Poupart doesn’t spiral — he plummets. Constantly muttering, twitching, pacing like a caged dog in the rain, Dewaere gives us a man already past the point of redemption. You don’t watch his performance so much as survive it.

Corneau directs with razor-sharp precision, fusing gritty realism with surreal flourishes. The film’s sense of place is suffocating: motel rooms that smell of mold, neon signs buzzing like dying insects, endless rows of bleak industrial streets. It’s noir stripped of glamor, soaked in despair. And yet, somehow, still magnetic.

The pacing never drags, the dialogue crackles, and the bleakness — god, the bleakness — feels earned, not performed. There’s not a whiff of nostalgia here. Just hard-boiled fatalism, cooked to a crisp.

Video 

NOTE: Stills are provided for promotional use only and are not from the Blu-ray.

Encoding: MPEG-4 AVC

Resolution: 1080p

Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1

Region: A,B

HDR: N/A

Layers: BD-50

Clarity and Detail: Radiance’s presentation doesn’t aim to sterilize the grit — it leans into it. Skin textures are sharp, especially on Dewaere’s twitchy, sweat-slicked face. From peeling wallpaper to chipped concrete, every grimy detail is intact and alive.

Depth: Urban decay stretches into the frame with real visual weight. Narrow alleyways and tight motel rooms have dimensionality, with mid-ground clutter standing out clearly from background haze.

Black Levels: Strong and immersive without crushing the shadows. Nighttime sequences retain shape and form, especially in street scenes and dim interiors.

Color: Muted and cold, fitting the film’s mood perfectly. The palette avoids artificial vibrancy, instead pulling subtle blues, grays, and sickly yellows from the bleak surroundings.

Flesh Tones: Natural but unforgiving. Faces often look pallid under fluorescent lighting, yet still show nuance — no waxy DNR here.

Noise and Artifacts: Film grain is ever-present and stable, never intrusive. No digital noise reduction, no edge enhancement, and not a trace of macroblocking. A clean, faithful presentation.

Audio 

Audio Format(s): French LPCM Mono 2.0

Subtitles: English

Dynamics: Minimalist but effective. Dialogue, background noise, and music are cleanly separated with no harsh peaks or dips. It’s raw, but never muffled.

Height: N/A

Low Frequency Extension: N/A

Surround Sound: N/A

Dialogue: Crisp and prominent. Dewaere’s muttering monologues and outbursts are clearly captured, with no distortion or hiss. The subtitled translation walks a tightrope — colloquial enough to carry the bite, refined enough to make sense.

Extras 

Radiance Films assembles a strong suite of extras that dig into the film’s creation and legacy. The highlight is a retrospective featurette, Série noire: The Darkness of the Soul, which blends new and archival interviews to explore the film’s origins and production with surprising emotional weight. An archival interview with Alain Corneau and Marie Trintignant adds further depth, especially in light of Trintignant’s tragic death the year after it was recorded. On-set interviews from 1981 capture candid moments with Corneau, Patrick Dewaere, and Miriam Boyer, offering a time-capsule view of the shoot. Also included is A Hollyhock in a Cornfield, a lively visual essay that dives into the wild, often controversial history of Jim Thompson adaptations. The HD trailer closes things out, gritty and unfiltered.

 

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Série noire: The Darkness of the Soul
• Interview with Alain Corneau and Marie Trintignant
• On Set Interviews
• A Hollyhock in a Cornfield: Jim Thompson On Screen
• Trailer

 

Summary 

Serie Noire Blu-ray is a jolt to the system. Between Patrick Dewaere’s raw, unhinged performance and Alain Corneau’s tight, fatalistic direction, it earns its place as one of France’s most unsparing noirs. Radiance Films nails the overall presentation, giving this 1979 slow-burn the visual grit it deserves without sanding off the edges. It’s a grand addition to the Hardboiled: Three Pulp Thrillers by Alain Corneau collection. If you’ve got a taste for noir where hope is a punchline, this Serie Noire Blu-ray belongs in your collection — preferably filed somewhere between Le Samouraï and a pack of Gauloises. Alain Corneau’s Hardboiled trilogy begins with the taut suspense of Police Python 357 Blu-ray, a thriller where the hunter becomes the hunted. The final entry, Choice of Arms Blu-ray, trades grit for grief in a somber, rural showdown.

 

Hardboiled: Three Pulp Thrillers by Alain Corneau is available on Blu-ray!

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