La Ronde

There are four main special features, an interview with Daniel Gélin who played the role of The Young Man, an analysis of the film by Alan Williams, a commentary by Susan White and a stills gallery.

Gélin's interview is a fairly short piece, taken from a longer documentary. While it contains nothing too surprising or unusual it is quite charming and informative, if a little on the short side.

Alan William's assessment is much more informative and a much more useful introduction to the film. Williams clearly loves this film and he places it in historical context. He discusses the various aspects of the film which are special and explains how the original play was interpreted for the Cinema screen. Well worth watching. I now feel I know more about French Cinema than ever before and it was delivered painlessly.

I generally detest commentaries but few of them are more intrusive and irritating than this one – it totally cuts off the original soundtrack so that all you get is a rather unattractive nasal voice telling you exactly the same stuff Williams covered but does so at the expense of being able to hear the film.

If you are really desperately keen to hear Ms White ramble on for 90 minutes then by all means switch on the commentary or – and this is favourite for me – why not listen to the film, make up your own mind and then watch the other two features that actually have something interesting to say.

The photo gallery is a well-assembled set of stills from the film.

In general, the features while being fairly standard collection, were at least mildly interesting and in the case of Circles Of Desire, genuinely informative.