The Blood of Others

Claude Chabrol cast Micheline Presle in The Blood of Others (1984), one of the many projects he had accepted against the grain and chosen to handle in the most superficial way as possible. When Micheline asked him if he had any ideas about how she should have played her character, he replied that he didn't. The actress eventually played the role to good reviews, leading the director to tell her with self-irony that she had been much more praised than the film itself.

The original version was a 175 minute made-for-tv movie filmed in English, in open-matte format, titled "The Blood of Others", produced by the USA tv cable network HBO. It was formatted to a 1.33 aspect ratio and first broadcast in a full 3-hour time slot beginning at 8:00 PM on August 25, 1984. At the request and instigation of director Claude Chabrol, it was afterwards cut by 40 minutes to 135', reformatted to a 1.78 aspect ratio, dubbed into French, retitled "Le sang des autres", and shown theatrically in France and other European countries beginning on May 2, 1985. This cut version then had its dubbing removed and the original sound (and language) restored, the aspect ratio was reformatted back to 1.33, and released on VHS in the USA under both the English and French titles (still in the 135' cut version). Much later it was released on DVD in Europe in PAL format for Region 2, using the same version as the USA VHS (the cut version in the restored original English sound and 1.33 ratio), but with added subtitles for the DVD and cut by an additional 5 minutes to 130' (125' on the DVD due to PAL speedup), and retitled "Blood of Others" (without the preceding word "the").

Referenced in Parole de cinéaste: Jean-Charles Tacchella: une vie de cinéma (2014)