David Reviews Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore [Criterion 4K/Blu-ray Review]

Earlier this week, the Criterion Collection released a film that I and many others have been curiously interested but frustratingly thwarted to see for well over a decade now, if not longer. Speaking on my own behalf, but safely assuming that others share my perspective, home video availability of The Mother and the Whore is an Event, one of those major acquisitions that have established the reputation of Criterion/Janus as a preeminent curator of classic art house cinema. Here’s a short video I made just after I received a preview copy in the mail, along with another title that I’ll review later this month.

Now available in 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD editions, this 1973 film directed by Jean Eustache became something of a grail fetish for many of us who became aware of the movie’s significance when it landed in a surprisingly high spot (tied for #59) in the 2012 edition of Sight and Sound magazine’s “100 Greatest Films of All Time”, probably the most highly respected and frequently referenced movie poll out there because of its longevity (beginning in 1952) and the refined taste and exclusivity of its voting pool. Survey participants are by invitation only, and include highly accomplished directors and published critics with well-informed opinions.

So with such a strong degree of support from credible highbrow students of the cinematic arts, many of us have been curious to see for ourselves what it was about The Mother and the Whore that allowed the film to rank so highly. What qualities placed this obscure relic above such widely popular and respected titles such as Wild Strawberries, Sunset Boulevard, Blade Runner, Blue Velvet (RIP David Lynch), The Third Man, Chinatown, Lawrence of Arabia, Casablanca, The Wild Bunch, and a few dozen other equally impressive movies that would easily register high in the opinions of us average shmoes who lack the connections and credentials to ever be consulted by Sight and Sound?

Due to a severe lack of convenient availability over the past two decades, answers to those questions have been difficult to obtain. While it hasn’t been entirely impossible to find (there’s a VHS edition out there from 1998, occasional repertory screenings occurred in a few of the bigger markets, and online piracy served as a last resort for some), it wasn’t until just recently that The Mother and the Whore was made available via streaming media. Now with a definitive physical media presentation, home viewers have all the opportunity they could hope for to arrive at their own conclusions. And that’s what I’m here to celebrate.

Other than a brief sampling of the film’s first 15 minutes or so to satisfy my pent-up curiosity shortly after The Criterion Channel dropped it on its platform in April 2024, I waited until I had that disc in hand before sitting down to commit myself to watching The Mother and the Whore from start to finish in one straight 218-minute viewing experience. I’m glad I did. There’s something about dropping a disc in the player that focuses up my concentration in a way that I haven’t been able to fully replicate when I push Play on my streaming device. That Pause button seems so much more easily accessible and is therefore more frequently used, leading to significant gaps in my viewing, especially when the films are of greater-than-average length. This video gives you my unscripted first impression of the movie, even though I wasn’t entirely “blind” going in, having read the essay and watched a few of the supplements ahead of time. (Since the video is a YouTube Short, I’m unable to embed it into the post – please click the link to view it!)

After I got through that first watch, I continued to ponder the film, did some online reading, rewatched some of the supplements and revisited a few scenes to keep the performances and screenplays active in my consciousness. Here’s a longer 16 minute video review I posted on the evening of 1/14/25, the disc’s release date here in the USA. I think it was delayed by a week for distribution in the UK.

I know I reiterated in the paragraphs above several of the same points I made in that video, so let’s just move on to other aspects of the film and overall package that I admire but weren’t covered sufficiently in my previous comments.

First, let’s talk about the length of the film and The Mother and the Whore‘s semi-legendary reputation. Are they justified by what we’re finally able to see, now that it’s in such (relatively) wide distribution? I think the answer is Yes. Clearly this is a passion project – for the director, first and foremost, but also for the cast, who poured their hearts and souls into their character portrayals. Jean Eustache wrote each of the primary roles with their respective actors in mind, and they all pull off outstanding performances.

Beatrice LaFont (Marie, the “mother” character) actually gets top billing here, over the (more famous in 2025) Jean-Pierre Leaud, though that may be due to the actors’ names being listed in alphabetical order, perhaps as an expression of the egalitarian nature of this project and an implicit disregard of Leaud’s star power, which was probably at its zenith at this time. LaFont is one of a very select group of actors who can claim seniority over Leaud as a key performer in France’s nouvelle vague, as she was cast by Francois Truffaut in his 1957 short Les Mistons, which he shot prior to casting Leaud in his next film, The 400 Blows, which premiered in 1959.

Rounding out the cast is Francoise Lebrun, who along with Leaud is sadly the only major contributor to the project still alive to witness the film’s return to prominence. She agreed to contribute an interview to the disc as a supplemental feature which I appreciate very much. (Whether he was approached and refused, or not, I do wish that we were privy to hearing Leaud’s recollections on the making of this film). Though she was cast more due to her previous romantic relationship with the director, which had already terminated by the time filming started, her incredibly intense and riveting rendering of Veronika (the “whore”), a sexually liberated Polish nurse whose crisis of conscience at the film’s conclusion catapults the proceedings to stratospheric heights, is probably the single most important ingredient in making this movie a genuine cinematic classic beyond its inarguable status as a cool relic of an intriguing social scene and cultural era. Lebrun didn’t consider herself a professional actor at that time, though she had appeared in very brief minor roles in two earlier short films. But this experience got her started in earnest on an acting career in film, television, and theater that still continues, with no less than five performances released in 2024.

I could go into further excursions about the relational complexities that unfold as Alexandre, Marie, and Veronika go through their various configurations, but I’ll save my thoughts on all that for a podcast episode that I’ll try to convene in the near future, as my Criterion Reflections series is currently surveying films of 1973.

Another supplement that I enjoyed covered the film’s restoration, an effort that began in 2022 after the resolution of whatever complications had prevented The Mother and the Whore‘s much-needed preservation. I’m always impressed by the dedication and attention to detail that goes into this process. Some of this segment is strictly technical, showing off the array of equipment used by technicians who walk us through their tasks. A few minutes dedicated to the process of color grading a black and white film that was shot on 16mm and blown up to 35mm demonstrates that home viewers now have an opportunity to see the film in a more optimal presentation than was available when it originally screened in 1973. I can’t speak for all viewers, but these peeks behind the scenes have a way of enhancing my respect for the work and gratitude for the fact that we can have such great art so readily available for our consumption.

All in all, this is as outstanding a release of a long-awaited masterpiece as I could have hoped for. The overall package provides ample material to give a sense of The Mother and the Whore‘s historic context, the personalities involved in its making, and the influence it had on subsequent generations of filmmakers who followed in its wake. The only thing I might consider “missing” would be one or more of Eustache’s earlier short films (Robinson’s Place (1964) seems like it could be a great fit here). His other work is currently available on the Criterion Channel, and perhaps they’re saving those films for a future box set release. If that’s a possibility, then I hope this edition does well enough to make another Eustache collection happen soon!

While I’m not quite ready to enshrine it among my personal “Top 60 Films of All Time” list, what we see here genuinely makes a compelling case for why it registered so highly among the select coterie of cinema aficionados who ranked it in their Top 10 in previous iterations of the Sight and Sound poll. In 2022, the film dropped out of the Top 100, landing in spot #104. With this disc likely to be in broad circulation over the next seven years, we’ll see if the increased exposure proves to be persuasive enough to give The Mother and the Whore a shot at returning to that upper tier.

Here are some links that I’ll recommend:

The Criterion Collection (read Lucy Sante’s insightful essay and watch the trailer!)

Sight and Sound (a review written in 1997. a fascinating perspective and detailed analysis from nearly 30 years ago)

Josh Brunsting’s Review (published on CriterionCast back in 2016, when we saw the first flicker of hope that this film and other works by Jean Eustache would finally make their way out of the archives of memory and general inaccesibility)

FlixWise (a podcast recorded in 2017 featuring a few friends of mine who engaged in a lively conversation about the film, back when it was still pretty challenging to track down)