I watched Delicatessen many years ago and loved it. When I saw the 4K/Blu-ray two-disc set released by Severin, I was excited to re-watch it. The first thing I noticed were the innovative opening credits. The objects that the names appear on represent the role they had on the film. For example, the music credit appears on a broken record and the director of photography is engraved on a dusty camera. The plot is dark. In a post-apocalyptic world where food is scarce, a small apartment building regularly recruits new handymen who eventually become food for the tenants. A butcher on the first floor murders the handyman and distributes the meat. The butcher’s daughter, Julie, falls for the new handyman, Louison, who charms many other tenants as well. The movie dips and dives between a rom-com and a black comedy. Between the blossoming romance of Julie and Louison, there are scenes like a woman building a Rube-Goldberg device to help her commit suicide. Eventually, the situation with the butcher and the handyman comes to a head, forcing Julie to choose between her lover or her father.

The 4K disc comes with the original trailer, which is one of the strangest trailers that I have ever seen. It reveals nothing of the plot, only hinting at the off-beat humor of the film. This disc also has an audio commentary with the co-director Jean-Pierre Juenet. The commentary is full of anecdotes and behind-the-scenes information. For instance, back when Delicatessen was filmed, French films did not have an established sound library like Hollywood and some basic sounds were very hard to find or create. Juenet brings up how this movie was made because the budget would be low, with one isolated location and a cast limited to the tenants of the apartments. In the scene where the two lovebirds have tea together, Dominique Pinon intentionally altered the scene from the way it was rehearsed, forcing Marie-Laure Dougnac to improvise. Her awkwardness in the scene is genuine. Another humorous story was that Delicatessen won an award in Tokyo, but the two directors didn’t realize it because they spoke French, and the announcement was made in Japanese and then in broken English.

The film was restored from the original negatives by StudioCanal with supervision from co-director Juenet. The 4k picture quality is amazingly crisp in all of the interior scenes. I remember seeing some film grain during a dimly lit exterior shot, but that was the only part that jumped out at me. The picture quality on the Blu-ray version is also very good. So, either version will provide a quality experience.

The Blu-ray disc contains the film and same commentary track. There is also the original trailer on both discs. Additionally, the Blu-ray has a 26-minute interview with both directors, Caro and Juenet. Many of the stories are repeated from the commentary but now have Caro’s perspective as well. There is a 14-minute making of documentary, with no accompanying commentary. It is just raw footage of the filming and in-between takes. There is a forty-minute interview with Marc Caro. He started out as a comic book artist before moving to animation and then to film. The final extra is a “Terry Gilliam presents” featurette. Gilliam gives an interview about his film making and how his name came to be on the American release of Delicatessen. It is a good tale from a master storyteller.

The movie holds up and is great. It would be worth it even without the special features. Luckily, the special features are plentiful and contain some good quality content. This is two thumbs up and a must own in my opinion.