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Home , Bay of Angels, Danielle Darrieux, Jacques Demy, Paul Grimault, Raoul Coutard, Une chambre en ville

May 8, 2018 (XXXVI:14) LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT/THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT (1967), 125 min.

(The online version of this handout contains color images and hot URLs)

Academy Awards, USA 1969 Nominated Best Music, Score of a Musical Picture, & Jacques Demy

Director Jacques Demy Writer Jacques Demy Producers Mag Bodard, Gilbert de Goldschmidt Music Michel Legrand Cinematography Film Editing Jean Hamon

CAST …Delphine Garnier …Etienne Françoise Dorléac…Solange Garnier …Maxence momentarily, I hope—run dry.” It was so poorly received …Simon Dame commercially that Demy’s career never fully recovered, and Jacques Riberolles…Guillaume Lancien audiences had to wait 30 years to see the movie again. Demy Grover Dale…Bill died in 1990, and his widow, the famed New Wave filmmaker Geneviève Thénier…Josette Agnès Varda, began work on the restoration of her late Henri Crémieux…Subtil Dutrouz husband’s films, including tonight’s film which appeared in Pamela Hart…Judith 1996. One of the fruits of her labor in the late 1990s was a total Leslie North…Esther reversal of critical consensus on the film’s merits. The Young Patrick Jeantet …Bouboo Garnier Girls of Rochefort, once dismissed as trivial and decorative, is …Andy Miller now widely regarded as a masterpiece. Young Girls isn’t …Yvonne Garnier completely sung, as Umbrellas is, but the music by Michel Legrand and the lyrics by Demy are plentiful and wonderful. JACQUES DEMY’s (b. June 5, 1931 in Pontchâteau, Loire- Some have complained about the repetitious nature of the score, Atlantique, —d. October 27, 1990, age 59, of AIDS, in but they miss the point of the echoes. Jonathan Rosenbaum in the , France) The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les parapluies de Chicago Reader smartly noted: “The film’s chance encounters Cherbourg, 1964) is one of the most beautiful and richly and missed connections are expressed . . . in the score and in acclaimed musical films of all time. But when Demy, working Demy’s delicately crafted lyrics. Maxence’s song about his now with a much bigger budget, followed up with The Young search is reprised as Delphine’s song about her own longings; Girls of Rochefort (Les demoiselles de Rochefort, 1967), critics Simon’s account of his lost love becomes, with appropriate balked and American audiences stayed away. Pauline Kael wrote alterations in the lyrics, Yvonne’s own regrets about having in separate articles that “a movie like The Young Girls of abandoned him; Solange’s piano concerto takes on lyrics after Rochefort demonstrates how even a gifted Frenchman who Andy intercepts the score. Many other reprises are less obvious adores American musicals misunderstands their conventions” than these. The song that goes with policing the crowd, for and “it was obvious from Rochefort that [Demy] had— instance, reprises and adds lyrics to a secondary theme from the Demy—THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT—2 opening dance number in the city square. Both sequences musical. Legrand scored Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg emphasize community over individual destiny: here, as (1964), receiving three Oscar nominations including “I Will Wait elsewhere in the film, Legrand and Demy enrich the meaning of for You” which received nomination for Best Original Song. In other scenes by playing with the emotional and thematic effects 1966 Legrand decided to take his chances in Hollywood. His of rhyme.” If songs and dances represent fantasy, and everyday friendship with Quincy Jones and Hank Mancini helped him a activities reality, it can’t be said that Demy ever privileges one great deal, and by 1969 Legrand had won his first Oscar for Best over the other; he’s more concerned with how fantasy and reality Music, Original Song for “The Windmills of Your Mind” for The interact or fail to interact. Filling his film with familiar figures, Thomas Crown Affair (1968). Legrand went on to receive twelve Demy’s wife Varda makes a cameo in the film as a nun who nominations and win two more Oscars. He was also nominated visits a music shop. Demy also planned to make more extensive for a Grammy 27 times and received 5 Grammys in the 1970s for references to Umbrellas by casting as Bill. his album work. In the 1980s and 1990s Legrand continued When Castelnuovo proved unavailable, Demy had to change the giving live concerts with his own jazz trio. He also led his big script. Additionally, Demy originally thought of casting Brigitte band which he took on several international tours, accompanying Bardot and Audrey Hepburn as the twin sisters, but instead opted such stars as Ray Charles, , and Bjork. for actual sisters. Tonight’s film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Score, but lost to Oliver! GHISLAIN CLOQUET (b. April 18, 1924 in Antwerp, Belgium—d. November 2, 1981, age 57, place unknown) first established himself in the by shooting several of ’s documentaries. By the 1960s he was considered one of the world's top cinematographers of both black-and-white in such films as Arthur Penn’s Mickey One (1965) and color as in tonight’s The Young Girls of Rochefort. While, he is most often allied with director for his work on Au Hazard Balthazar (1966), Mouchette (1967) and A Gentle Woman (1969), his only Oscar and César wins were for Roman Polanski’s Tess (1979).

CATHERINE DENEUVE (b. October 22, 1943 in Paris, France) aspired early in life to be an interior designer or an archaeologist. At 13, she took her first acting job, a walk-on in The Twilight Girls (1957), because she needed pocket money. She continued to act in small parts until finally landing a meatier role in Vice and Virtue (1963). Her breakthrough came when Demy casting her in his musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les parapluies de Cherbourg, 1964). At only 19, she played the beautiful ingenue for the French director, however, her next film showed her range for drama (as well choice in directors) in Roman Polanski’s psychological thriller Repulsion (1965). Two years later she played a part-time prostitute in Luis Buñuel's masterpiece Belle de Jour (1967). She also worked with Buñuel in Tristana (1970) and gave a great performance for François Truffaut in Mississippi Mermaid (1969), a kind of apotheosis of her “frigid femme fatale” persona. In the 1970s Deneuve found limited roles until her magnificent work in Truffaut's The Last Metro (1980). In 1992, she earned her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for Indochine (1992). She also auditioned for the role of Francesca Johnson in The Bridges of MICHEL LEGRAND (b. February 24, 1932 in Paris, France) is Madison County (1995) but lost out to . It is a three times Academy Award-winning French composer, rumored that she liked Breaking the Waves (1996) by Lars von conductor and pianist who composed over 200 film and Trier so much that she wrote a personal letter to him, asking him television scores as well as recorded over a hundred albums of for a role in his next film. The result was his casting of her in jazz, popular and classical music. As a teenager, Legrand Dancer in the Dark (2000). As of 2018, she has 14 César Awards attended a concert by Dizzy Gillespie and caught a jazz bug. He nominations; 13 nominations for Best Actress and one for Best eventually collaborated with Gillespie on several albums and Supporting Actress. She’s the second-most nominated actress, film scores. In 1954 Legrand became an overnight star after his only behind , with 16 nominations. album I Love Paris became a hit, going on to sell over 8 million copies. In the late 1950s and 1960s Legrand transitioned to film GEORGE CHAKIRIS (b. September 16, 1934 in Norwood, being caught up in the . He scored seven films OH) started dancing an early age, often joining his sister in for Jean-Luc Godard, in addition to making ten films with Demy, impromptu routines in the family’s living room. It was only upon and became responsible for creating a template for the French entering college that he began to see this hobby as a career. After Demy—THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT—3 moving to Hollywood in 1949, by 1951, he was appearing as a Leos Carax (Bad Blood, 1986). He won the Best Actor Award at dancer or chorus member in numerous musicals, including his the for A Leap in the Dark (1980) and the performance as one of the tuxedoed male dancers surrounding Silver Bear in Berlin for Strange Affair (1981) in 1982. In an Marilyn Monroe for the iconic “Diamonds Are A Girl's Best inspired casting choice, Agnès Varda chose Piccoli to Friend” number in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). Most of impersonate Mr. Cinema in One Hundred and One Nights Chakiris' early appearances were uncredited, though in films like (1995). The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953) and Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956), he was billed as George Kerris. He finally rose from the chorus to the role of Bernardo, leader of the Sharks, in the celebrated film version of West Side Story (1961). His fiery turn won him an Academy Award but did not translate into lasting fame. After a sporadic career in Hollywood as heroic young men of various nationalities in Diamond Head (1963) and Kings of the Sun (1963), he made a handful of fine if little-seen European films, including tonight’s film, before settling into character turns as heels or middle-aged Lotharios on American primetime and daytime television. By the mid-1980s, Chakiris was a staple of daytime television, with recurring turns on soap operas like One Life to Live (ABC, 1968-2012) and Santa Barbara (NBC, 1984- 1993) as well as a run on Dallas (CBS, 1978-1991). After a two- season stint as Professor Peterson, who aided Superboy (1988- 1992) in fighting crime across Metropolis, Chakiris left Hollywood opting to devote most of his time to creating and designing silver jewelry.

FRANÇOISE DORLÉAC (b. March 21, 1942—June 26, 1967) GENE KELLY (b. August 23, 1912 in Pittsburgh, PA—d. is the daughter of screen actor Maurice Dorléac and Renée February 2, 1996, age 83, in Beverly Hills, CA) has the Simonot, and the elder sister of Catherine Deneuve. Slim, pale- distinction of being the only actor to be written about twice this skinned and brunette, Dorléac appeared in several movies before semester. The Goldenrod for Singin’ in the Rain (1952) hitting stardom with François Truffaut's melodrama La Peau concentrated on Kelly’s early career, this entry focuses primarily douce (1964) and the classic spy spoof L'Homme de Rio (1964) on his later cinematic output. Kelly, along with Fred Astaire, was with Jean-Paul Belmondo. She also appeared in the comedy films arguably the most famous musical dancer in Hollywood. Arsène Lupin contre Arsène Lupin (1962) opposite Jean-Claude However, by the mid-1950s, MGM was no longer producing Brialy and in Male Hunt (1964). She also was cast as the musicals. Shifting his focus, Kelly directed and starred in adulterous wife in Roman Polanski’s black comedy Cul-de-sac, Marjorie Morningstar (1958) opposite a young Natalie Wood and joined Gene Kelly and her sister Catherine Deneuve, who and The Tunnel of Love (1958), as well as helming a successful was a cinematic star by this time, in the candy-coated The Young run of Flower Drum Song (1958-60) on Broadway. In 1960 he Girls of Rochefort (1967). Other non-French movie credits turned in his strongest dramatic role in Stanley Kramer's Inherit included Genghis Khan (1965), Where the Spies Are (1965) and the Wind (1960). Demy wanted Kelly to star in Young Girls from Billion Dollar Brain (1967). Dorléac was on the brink of the outset, however he had to wait two years before Kelly was international stardom when she died on June 26, 1967. Rushing free of other commitments. Kelly choreographed all his own to make a flight, the actress lost control of a rented Renault 10 numbers for the film and a careful viewing shows the subtle and hit signpost ten kilometers from Nice. The car instantly burst difference in style. While not nearly as technical as his work in into flames. She was seen struggling to get out of the car but was Singin’ in the Rain, Kelly nonetheless brings a masculine, unable to open the door. Police later identified her body only athletic quality to his numbers far more than his costars. Given from the fragment of a check book, a diary and her driver's the extraordinary lift Gene Kelly gives the movie, it’s hardly license. She died just three months after Young Girls release in surprising that Demy wanted him from the outset. Kelly brings to France and almost a year before it was released in the U.S. the movie the kind of boundless elation musicals exist to produce, as do Chakiris and Dale, the other two American MICHEL PICCOLI (b. December 27, 1925 in Paris, France) dancers featured, though to a lesser extent. Additionally, Kelly’s spent the first fifteen years of his career appearing both on stage last dance is the same as one in An American in Paris. and on screen, mostly in supporting roles. An urbane Franco- Italian performer, he was often cast in character roles through the DANIELLE DARRIEUX (b. May 1, 1917 in , ‘50s. Piccoli gained prominence in the following decades with Gironde, France—d. October 17, 2017, age 100, in Bois-le-Roi, roles as sophisticated bourgeois types in films by Buñuel, Eure, France) began as an ingenue in the 1930s, growing into a Hitchcock and Chabrol. His breakthrough came in Jean-Luc sophisticate in the ‘40s and ‘50s and retained a dignified and Godard's Contempt (1963), after which he cemented his magical presence in films in her later career. She was studying reputation as one of France's most prolific and acclaimed the cello at the Conservatoire when her ambitious mother entered performers, working through the 1990s in films such as Bertrand the 14-year-old for an audition for an adolescent role in Le Bal Tavernier (Spoiled Children, 1977), Atlantic City (1980) and (1931), directed by the Austrian Wilhelm Thiele. Many of her Demy—THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT—4 best films were made by German or Austrian directors. In 1934, filmgoer from childhood, he bought his first cinecamera at the she appeared in Curtis Bernhardt’s L’Or dans la Rue, and in end or World War II when he was fourteen and involved his Mauvaise Graine (Bad Seed), co-directed by , his friends in his first untutored attempts at filmmaking. The first film made outside Germany. She then scored an resulting disasters provoked him to begin reading about the international hit with the historical drama Mayerling (1936) in cinema. A more serious interest in the medium was inspired by which she played opposite . In 1938, she went to Bresson’s Led Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945), “The first Hollywood to appear in (1938) but quickly film that made me understand that film was a great art.” returned to Paris before the Nazi occupation in 1940. Darrieux In 1949-1951Demy studied in Paris at the École embarked on a prestigious postwar career, which included the Technique de Photographie et de Cinématographie, where he was three Ophüls masterpieces. She starred in Claude Autant-Lara’s considered a brilliant student. After that he worked for a time on Occupe-Toi d’Amélie (Keep an Eye on Amelia, 1949) as a publicity films with the great French animator , Parisian cocotte, dividing her favors among three men. The film then served as Georges Rouquier’s assistant on Lourdes et ses incurred local bans in Britain and enraged American critics who, miracles (1954), Arthur Honegger (1955), and S.O.S. Noronha in the moralistic climate of the times, considered it lewd and (1957). In 1955, meanwhile, he secured Pathé’s backing for his immoral. In the 1950s she starred in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s own Le Sabotier du Val de Loire. This short film, which Demy witty espionage thriller 5 Fingers (1952) as well as the French wrote as well as directed, is a rather slow-paced documentary on film Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1954). She was the life and work of a family of Loire Valley clog-makers with a natural to star in Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1955) and in Pot whom he had played as a child evacuee during the war. Bouille (The House of Lovers, 1957). In between, she stood It was followed by Demy’s first short fiction film, Le around glumly as Olympias, the mother of Alexander, in Bel Indifférent (“The Indifferent Lover,” 1957), based on a Alexander the Great (1956), ’s epic starring Cocteau playlet. Demy greatly admired Cocteau, whose in a blond wig. In the next decades, Darrieux was influence is discernible in several of his films. Jean-Luc Godard more often seen on television than on the big screen but turned saw Le Bel Indifférent at the Tours Short Film Festival and was up in films from time to time—such Young Girls. She had a impressed by the beauty and deliberate slowness of the film, and career resurgence later in life, working again with Demy in Une the theatricality of the woman’s monologue to her departing and Chambre un Ville (A Room in Town, 1982), Le Lieu du Crime indifferent lover. After two shorts directed in collaboration with (Scene of the Crime, 1986), and 8 Femmes (2002). She received a , Demy made Ars (1959), an “assignment” film based Best Supporting Actress nomination at the César Awards for all on the writings of the saintly Curé d’Ars. Demy has said of that three films (she never won). Darrieux also holds the distinction his early work that “with Le Sabotier I was learning technique. of having played Catherine Deneuve's mother in five films: With Le Be Indifférent I wanted to know how one could be Ladies Man (1960), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), Scene absolute master of his camera, and with Ars I wanted to forget all of the Crime (1986), (2002) and Persepolis (2007). She these things, to obtain the greatest possible spontaneity. These is also the only actor who sings for herself in tonight’s film. three experiences helped me greatly in Lola.” Lola (1960) was Demy’s first full-length feature, and this gentle, dreamlike film is still generally considered a masterpiece. It is dedicated to Max Ophuls, to whose work it contains various visual references besides the direct reference of the title (to Ophuls’ Lola Montes), as well as allusions to Bresson and Clair. Demy had wanted to make the film in color, but budgetary restrictions made this impossible, so he set out to achieve his effects through light and shade. Lola is set in Demy’s home town of and has a marvelous performance from Anouk Aimée as a nervy, beautiful, sentimental, optimistic nightclub dancer, the archetypal Demy heroine. Lola has waited seven years for the return of her lover Michel, who had abandoned her when the time came for her to bear their child. The film opens with Michel’s return to Nantes one afternoon. It ends when he is reunited with Lola and they drive off together two days later. In between, while Michel searches for her, the story emerges of Lola’s years alone. Coincidences and parallels From World Film Directors, Vol II. Edited by John abound, and the role of chance is underlined in several incidents Wakeman. The H.W.Wilson Company, NY, 1988. Entry by in which Lola and Michel only just fail to meet again. Lola’s past Liz Heron and her first meeting with Michel are echoed in the experience of a young girl, Cecile, whose mother, Madame Demoyers, Jacques Demy was born in Pontchåteau, west of Nantes on adumbrates Lola’s future. The film’s themes of absence and France’s Atlantic coast. He is the son of Raymond Demy and the chance recur in Demy’s work, and in this and other former Marie-Louise Leduc. Demy grew up in Nantes, where his ways, as David Thomson points out, Lola “sets up signposts father owned a garage, and attended the city’s technical college leading to other films.” to train as a mechanic. His interests lay elsewhere, however, and Though not a great commercial success, Lola was he completed his education at the École des Beaux Arts. An avid received by the critics with delight and awarded the Prix de Demy—THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT—5 l’Académie du Cinema. The Cahiers de Cinema critic Eric that in the early films-with-music of René Clair. All the dialogue, Rohmer described it as “the most original film of the New however, banal, is sung, and instead of music being added after Wave,” and Jean Domarchi wrote, “Elegance is a quality that we the filming, the action was molded onto a prerecorded score. The had grown unaccustomed to and which Jacques Demy is giving film is clearly influenced by Donen and Minelli, but it is much us a taste for again.” Godard said of it, “It is like Italy, when more worldly and sophisticated than a Hollywood musical. Set in you’ve seen it once, you want to go back again,” and Georges Cherbourg, the film tells the story of Geneviève (Catherine Sadoul called it “a kind of musical without songs and dances.” Deneuve) who helps her mother in their umbrella shop, and Guy Outside France it was equally acclaimed. Penelope Gilliat (Nino Castelnuovo)—two besotted eighteen-year-olds. [Guy is commented that ”Lola works rather like an ornament in music, twenty.] When Guy is sent off to military service in Algeria they with purity but obvious restriction,” and Geoffrey Newall-Smith swear undying love and spend his last night together. Then has described it as “a magical Geneviève discovers she is film. A fable of love in a pregnant. Gradually it becomes completely natural setting. It is clear that their love cannot shot (by ) strictly survive separation, and she within naturalistic convention marries someone else. Guy is without lights, with the camera at first broken-hearted, but life normally at eye level casually goes on and so does love, and absorbing the physical in the end he marries background, following the Madeleine (Ellen Farner), who characters, never anticipating, had always adored him. moving about to pick up dialogue The film never quite as it is spoken.” This film begins abandons a pretense of Demy’s fertile collaboration with psychological realism but is the designer Bernard Evein. constantly taking off into After “La Luxure” (lust), an visual fantasy. Demy’s singing episode in the portmanteau film lovers don’t walk through Les Sept Péchés Capitaux (The Cherbourg, they glide on a Seven Deadly Sins, 1962) came Demy’s second feature, La Baie moving track, and the drab houses of the city are painted and des anges (, 1962), which he is said to have written wallpapered in gorgeous pastels to match the characters’ clothes in three days. Set in Nice, it is about a young bank employee and emotions. Evein was again in charge of design and Jean (played by Claude Mann) who becomes fascinated by gambling Rabier handled the sweeping, uninhibited camera movements, and by Jackie (), a woman he meets in the casino which reminded many critics of Ophuls. Some reviewers thought who has left her husband and child in search of excitement. At that Demy should have dispensed with realism altogether, while the end of the film, after parting and meeting again, the pair others complained that the film lacked the vitality of a decide to try to stay together, and it seems possible that Jackie Hollywood musical. But for most, as for Gary Carey, this will abandon gambling in favor of the greater excitement of love. “fragile little pop-opera is one of the most charming of screen La Baie des anges had a mixed reception. Some musicals.” It is also the most perfect expression of Demy’s reviewers dismissed it as a typical entertainment, dignified by the private world—what Thomson calls “his own domain of chivalry presence of Jeanne Moreau. Others saw a great deal more in the and love, born out of Perrault and schoolgirls’ novelettes, the film, including a subtle commentary on the similarities (and the rural sentiment of Bouquier and the Hollywood scheme of differences) between love and gambling—Jackie has to be coincidence and happily-ever-after, but as distinguished and reassured daily that her luck and her physical attractions are still ennobling, as, say, The Beautiful Hours of the Duc de Berry.” An with her, and the roulette wheel is the ultimate symbol of the enormous commercial success, the film won the grand prix at working of chance, an important element throughout Demy’s Cannes, as well as the Prix Louis Deluc and the Prix Méliès. work. The casino itself is given something of the aspect of hell Demy tried to repeat this success in Les Demoiselles de contrasted with the paradise offered (with luck) by love. In films Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort, 1967) working with the like this Demy, as David Thomson says, “is a spellbinder who same composer and designer and with a brilliant cast that brings a religious awe to rose-coloured hokum” and whose included Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Françoise apparent frivolity is of a sort “that only von Sternberg and Dorléac, Gene Kelly, George Chakiris and Michel Piccoli. Set Ophuls had risked to ameliorate sadness.” Richard Roux called it against the backdrop of a weekend fair in yet another seaport “fast-moving, supremely assured, hypnotic.” Here, as elsewhere, town, the plot intertwines three love stories, each with a happy Demy shows an extraordinary ability to convey a sense of his ending. The idea was to add dance to the elements that had won characters’ past lives—of experience gained before the events we such success for Les Parapluies, but Demy, a master of are shown. cinematic rhythm and movement, showed surprisingly little Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of talent as a director of dance. Only Gene Kelly (who did his own Cherbourg, 1964) was the first French musical in color, and the choreography) captured anything of the spirit of Demy’s model, fulfillment for Demy of a longstanding ambition. The music of Kelly and Donen’s On the Town. Michel Legrand had been important in the earlier films, but in Demy used to dream of making a great series of perhaps Les Parapluies de Cherbourg the collaboration of writer-director fifty films with shared characters who would meet and interact. and composer achieved a whimsical synthesis exceeding even In fact, though, the grand scheme now seems unlikely, e Demy—THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT—6 character from Lola reappears in Les Parapluies and certain plot confirmed both his uneven critical standing and his devotion to and character parallels can be traced from film to film. And Lola the works of his predecessors. The film retells the Orpheus myth herself reappears (again played by Anouk Aimée) in Model Shop and is a musical paean to Jean Cocteau’s 1926 film of the story. (1968), made in English in the United States. The least In Demy’s film, Francis Hunter sings his way through the role of spectacular of Demy’s films up until then, it centers on an “Orpheus” (now a contemporary pop idol) following his encounter in Los Angeles between a more tired, less optimistic Eurydice (Keiko Ito as a young sculptress) to a Hades that is Lola and George, a young unemployed architect who is broke actually an underground parking lot where the “dead” stand in and waiting to be drafted. One night of love gives them the line as though at an airline ticket counter. The devil is played by strength to face their respective realities—in Lola’s case a return Jean Marais, who had the role of one of the young lovers in to France and the child she has left there, In George’s the Cocteau’s Orphée. Despite Demy’s renewed association with problems attendant on being young and American in the late Michel Legrand for Parking’s music (Demy wrote his own 1960s. The general critical feeling was that Demy had failed to lyrics) the film was said to have “none of the wistful charm or find any point of contact between his “world of benign and ambiance of (Demy’s) earlier work” and to be “far inferior for enchanting imagination” and the very real social problems raised the dubious musical tragedy , in which in the film. Demy was at least faithful to his own conventions.” Variety’s Nor was there much critical approbation when Demy reviewer went on to summarize Parking as the filmmaker’s turned to out-and-out fantasy with Peau d’åne (The Magic attempt to “stem his commercial misfortunes with a film aimed at Donkey, 1971), a screen adaptation of Perrault’s fairy tale, a youth audience. In the process he has only compromised.” starring Catherine Deneuve, working for the first time without Roy Armes has called Demy “a born filmmaker” who the designer Bernard Evein, Demy failed to capture the lightness “sees himself less as a story-teller than as a creator of of touch this difficult project demanded. There were similar atmosphere.” Demy has been associated with the nouvelle vague criticisms of The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1972), and a British and shares their belief in improvisation—he writes the dialogue film shot on location in Germany and widely condemned for its in advance of shooting but works without a shooting script. “In a flatly realistic approach, though some viewers were impressed by very precise way I have the feeling of the film, the idea of what it Demy’s attempt to place the legend within a social and political can give,” he says. “But one must never have preconceived ideas context. The decline continued with L’Événement le plus of the details, try to draw from an actor what he cannot give, important depuis que l’homme a marché sur la lune (The Slightly from a setting what it does not contain.” David Thomson praises Pregnant Man, 1973), starring Catherine Deneuve and Marcello the “luxurious richness of [Demy’s] Imagery and his unrivalled Mastroianni in a “wildly misjudged” comedy about a couple who sense of music,” and says that he “has taken over Ophuls’ fluid discover that he is pregnant. Demy’s next film, Lady Oscar, camera, but restrained its more lavish movements. He delights which appeared after a long silence in 1979m was a Japanese- rather more in tableaux.” According to Gary Carey, the world backed project based on a popular Japanese comic-strip about Demy has created “is dominated and shaped by his movie past. adventures at the court of Louis XIV. Neither L’Événement not Demy uses wisps and conventions of movies, particularly Lady Oscar were critically successful. Gilbert Adair referred to American movies, which he had loved as a child, not as pastiche them both as “outright failures.” However, in 1979 Demy was or parody but as artifices lovingly arranged and rearranged to honored with a six-film retrospective at New York’s Public create a series of airy conceits.” The conceits are too airy for Theater, and in 1982 shared the Grand Prix des Arts et Lettres some tastes, but for Carey “Demy is a conscious primitive, a with Jean-Luc Godard, an award that must have pleased Demy miniaturist, a creator of pristine other-worlds of true because previous recipients included many of his idols, Robert enchantment.” And Gilbert Adair writes “Demy is Pierrot in Bresson among them. After directing a film for television in Harlequin’s costume. There is in the best of his work an 1981 (“La Naissance du Jour,” an adaptation of a story) underlying strain of melancholy, a unique fusion of lust and Demy embarked on his first real cinematic undertaking since wanderlust, an intensity one has no right to expect from material Lady Oscar. Une Chambre en Ville (A Room in Town) (1982), as fey as this.” was, like Les Parapluies de Cherbourg and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, the musical recounting of an ill-fated love affair, this time starring Dominique Sanda, with a score by Michel Columbien. With its them of working-class-man-meeting- bourgeois-woman, it has been called “France’s socialist musical,” and indeed, it was produced by then-President François Mitterand’s sister-in-law. The film did poorly at the box office. Despite its “passion, rigor…and delicate cinematic allusions” to the work of Ophuls, Vigo and Bresson critic Roy Armes saw Une Chambre en Ville’s characters as stereotyped, and the whole effort on Demy’s part to regain the Nantais Eden from which the unrepeatable perfection of Lola expelled him.” In 1983 Demy began the task of directing “Louisiana,” a Civil War epic for television, but left the project for “personal Caroline E. Layde: Jacques Demy (Senses of Cinema) and family reasons,” to be replaced by , I’m trying to create a world in my films.—Jacques Demy unabashedly named at that time to be the production company’s “first choice” for the job. Demy’s next film, Parking (1985), Demy—THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT—7

Prologue music. Les Parapluies, with its color, spectacle, and melodrama, Jacques Demy’s films inhabit worlds in themselves—personal featured an unknown Catherine Deneuve and opened to wide and imaginary worlds, self-contained and organic. Demy’s critical acclaim. Demy took this musical experiment further with legacy may lack consistent quality, but not consistent personal Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort, vision: while his contemporaries abandoned poetry for politics, 1967), another Legrand musical, starring Deneuve, her sister Demy remained faithful to the romanticism of his boyhood Françoise Dorléac, George Chakiris, and Gene Kelly, who also projects. His fairy tale themes, his flair with light, color and choreographed the film’s dance sequences. While Les Parapluies music, and his wistful, innocent tone comprise a powerful had ventured into new territory as a quotidian opera, Rochefort signature style, and several spectacles from his films resound alternated music and spoken dialogue, in the tradition of today as quintessentially “Demy”. His resonant personal vision American musical comedy. Critics in France and abroad should alone justify his inclusion among the “”, at least in criticised Demy for replacing substance with spectacle. its simplest sense, defined by Andrew Sarris as a director with a In 1967, Demy landed a contract with Columbia salient visual style. Yet while Demy enjoyed early critical Pictures, and he and Varda left for Hollywood. There, he filmed acclaim, he fell from fashion in the wake of May ’68, as French Model Shop (1969), completing the Lola story by following his critics increasingly berated him as apolitical and Americans like earliest heroine to Los Angeles. Perhaps clouded by his new Pauline Kael grew to label Hollywood sensibility, him a naïve idol of Demy struggled upon his American genre. These return to France. He receptions underestimate maintained some of his Demy, who deserves a earlier magic with the fairy second look towards tale Peau d’âne (Donkey inclusion in the great Skin, 1970), another directors pantheon. Deneuve vehicle and an However simplistic or homage to Jean Cocteau. kitschy his spectacles may Yet his British Pied Piper appear today, they do share (1971), met little success, layers of intertext and and his first feature nuance, and however naïve comedy, L’Événément le his stories, they do yield a plus important depuis que freshness and optimism l’homme a marché sur la that endured long after the lune (A Slightly Pregnant erosion of the New Wave. Man, 1973), bombed at the box office, despite the Career presence of Deneuve and Born in Pontchâteau, on France’s Atlantic coast, in . Demy responded by again retreating from 1931, Jacques Demy enjoyed a playful childhood in Nantes, French cinema, this time for nine years. During this period, where he directed animated and live-action shorts and studied Demy restricted himself to the Japanese Lady Oscar (1978), fine arts. After training with the famed animator Paul Grimault, filmed in English, while a proposal to film in the Soviet Union he assisted the documentarian Georges Rouquier, with whom he fell through. In 1980, Demy directed one French telefilm of a produced his first documentary short, Le Sabotier du Val de Colette novel, La Naissance du jour, but his slump continued, Loire, in 1955. His first feature, Lola (1961), captivated Jean-Luc and he and Varda parted ways. Godard in and ushered him into the fringes of When Varda returned, only the following year, Demy the New Wave. He followed with a charming chapter, “La had plunged back into French cinema for Une Chambre en ville Luxure” (“Lust”), for Les Sept péchés capitaux (The Seven (A Room in Town, 1982). This film revived the spirit of Les Deadly Sins, 1961), adding to segments by Godard, Roger Parapluies, as an opera-melodrama set against a labor strike, set Vadim, and , and his second feature, La Baie des to a score by Michel Colombier. Une Chambre en ville failed Anges (Bay of Angels, 1962), a gambling melodrama starring financially but received nearly unanimous critical acclaim and Jeanne Moreau and Claude Mann. In 1962, Demy married the led to a lifetime achievement award, the Grand Prix des Arts et filmmaker Agnès Varda, which solidified his affiliations with a Lettres, later that year. Next, Demy played tribute to Cocteau’s group of directors known as the “Left Bank”. The Left Bank— Orphée in Parking (1985), he rejoined Grimault for the animated Varda, , Alain Resnais, and Alain Robbe-Grillet— and live-action mix La Table tournante (1988), and he completed identified themselves this way for their Paris neighborhood as a final musical, Trois places pour le 26 (Three Places for the well as for their leftist persuasion. The group distinguished 26th, 1988), with . Demy contributed interviews themselves through political content from the aesthetically for Varda’s Jacquot de Nantes (Jacquot, 1991), a biographical focused New Wave. feature on his boyhood dreams and film projects, but he died of Since Lola, Demy had been cultivating a project for an leukemia in October, 1990, shortly before the film’s release. experimental musical, “a film entirely sung”. Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 1964) continued the Personal vision path of the Lola protagonist Roland Cassard, but in a completely Again, if Demy’s career lacks consistency, this results new form, all of its dialogue set to composer Michel Legrand’s more from an inconsistency of quality than from any lack of Demy—THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT—8 personal vision. In the words of critic Terrence Rafferty, Demy Parapluies, contained a jukebox tribute to Legrand’s theme. aimed “to seduce, not to challenge” or, in his own words, to Demy, for his part, referenced Truffaut in Les Desmoiselles de disguise reality, “masking pessimism”. For each film, Demy Rochefort, having sisters Delphine and Solange mock their Mutt constructed an elaborate mise-en-scène as a world into itself, and Jeff suitors as “Jules et Jim”. shooting on location but transforming the landscape into a While Lola had received critical acclaim, Les magical realm. For Lola, Demy worked with cinematographer Parapluies found enormous commercial success. Heralded “even Raoul Coutard to enhance the gleaming sunlight of Nantes’ better than heaven” by Paris Presse, the film won the Prix Louis ports; for La Baie des Anges, he used Jean Rabier’s sweeping Delluc 1963, the Cannes Palme d’Or 1964, the Prix George widescreen to exaggerate the vistas of Nice. Méliès, and an Oscar nomination for Foreign Language Film In Les Parapluies, Demy sought to create “a mixture of 1964, while its soundtrack album became a bestseller. Demy poetry, color and music”. Accordingly, he ordered his crew to remained close to the Left Bank, but he continued to direct with repaint entire blocks of houses, making over Cherbourg into a the public in mind, and his films appeared increasingly childlike symphony of vibrant primaries and pastels, depending on the in comparison to those of his peers. Interestingly, while Godard season. Color film had yet to become popular among the New had begun as an aesthete opposed to the politically focused Left Wave and the Left Bank, but Demy embraced the Eastmancolor Bank, he particularly switched gears in the mid-’60s and grew range, spilling stylised color onto Jacqueline Moreau’s costumes increasingly critical of Demy. In a 1965 interview, Godard hinted and Bernard Evein’s sets. For Rochefort, he added brilliant white that Demy conceived of cinema as in a separate world: “He has to this palette an idea of the to imitate the world he is seaside sun. trying to apply Not to the cinema or only did Demy else…an idea of construct cinema which he imaginary applies to the worlds in each world.” To film’s mise-en- Godard, this scène; he also approach of art- clung to for-art’s sake— themes of or art-for- childhood dream’s-sake— reverie, a devolved into a quality of dislocation from wistfulness. While the New Wave tended towards Brechtian the real world, yielding Demy’s work juvenile and passé. A few roughness and the Left Bank veered towards realism or years later, in the wake of the political revolts of May ’68, philosophical ambiguity, Demy, in a sense, never grew up. Even Godard lamented Demy’s departure for Hollywood as a “tragic” “La Luxure” frames its fleeting sexual images through the eyes sell-out that he himself would refuse. (13) In another Cahiers of a “pure and innocent” schoolboy. Perhaps inspired by Demy review, Godard’s colleague Michel Delahaye agreed that Demy himself, this boy confuses “lechery” with “luxury”, and not even remained a “naïf”, even while he praised Demy’s dream poetics. his parents know what the word really means. This humor of Yes, Demy’s films lack political conviction, particularly innocence, prevalent throughout his career, tempts critics to liken when compared to those of Varda, the Left Bank, and Godard of Demy to a naïf, but doing so hints that he was something of a the late ’60s. Yet Demy did not ignore international contexts and folk artist. In fact, Demy worked with a sophisticated cinematic social realities; he merely subjugated them to their imprints on literacy, even drawing his dreamy quality from Cocteau and the his characters’ personal lives. His first documentary, Le Sabotier surrealists. du Val de Loire, explores the aftermath of World War II, but in an indirect manner, through the quotidian rituals of a simple Critical reception in France seaside family. Les Parapluies frames its romance against the Demy met an uneven critical response in France. The war in Algeria, but this remains mainly a backdrop to the lives of Cahiers crowd, particularly Godard, praised the poetics of his the young lovers. In Rochefort, Demy refers to foreign locales, early films. Godard included Lola in his Top Ten List of 1961 but only insofar as its characters daydream of faraway paradises, and praised Demy’s cultural literacy, which he found rare among Paris, Hamburg, and New York. their generation of filmmakers. Indeed, Lola contains rich Likewise, Demy did address social realities, but through moments of intertextuality, from its title, evoking the heroines of his romantic, rose-colored lens, glossing over the difficult themes Max Ophüls’ Lola Montès (1955) and Josef von Sternberg’s The of prostitution in Lola, gambling in La Baie des Anges, and labor Blue Angel (1930), to its visual quotes of Robert Bresson and revolts in Une Chambre en ville. Demy persisted in innocence, Gary Cooper. Godard and the New Wave embraced such even through his ties to the Left Bank and to his and Varda’s left- intertextual reference and subjected it to endless refraction. leaning crowd in California, of which Jim Morrison was a Godard directly lifted portions of Lola‘s story and dialogue for member, remained. While Varda produced documentary Une Femme est une femme (, 1961), manifestoes Salut les Cubains (1963), Loin du Vietnam (1967) premiering six months after Demy’s film, and his Bande à part and Black Panthers (1968), Demy eschewed films with explicit (Band of Outsiders, 1964), released a few months after Les political agendas. Demy—THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT—9

noticed Demy well before his arrivals for The Pied Piper and Critical response elsewhere Lady Oscar, as did studios in the Soviet Union. Still, Demy Demy also found a fickle reception in the U.S. Andrew remains undervalued, and critics from around the globe tend to Sarris called La Baie des Anges “a piece of cinematic agree that his films have aged poorly. Upon Lola‘s restoration in vaudeville”, while 2001, Terrence Rafferty Pauline Kael called it summarised these a “magical, whirling opinions, chiding the film little film…almost an as “brazenly artificial”, emanation of “too charming, graceful Moreau.” Kael also and beautiful for its own confided that she good.”) found Les Parapluies “lovely…original and Great director, naïf, or fine…One of the sad both? things about our While Varda’s times, I think, is that celebrity has undoubtedly so many people find a aided Demy’s career, it romantic movie like may also have [Parapluies] frivolous contributed to Demy’s and negligible.” Yet critical underestimation. at Rochefort‘s release, Aside from Jacquot, Kael thumbed her nose at what she saw as clumsy imitation of an Demy and Varda always maintained “a working partnership only American tradition, demonstrating “how even a gifted in the loosest sense”. Yet they did influence each other’s working Frenchman who adores American musicals misunderstands their methods and styles. In particular, Varda’s Le Bonheur conventions.” For Kael, this film exploited the aesthetics of (Happiness, 1964) shares vibrant color with Les Parapluies, and lightness akin to Roland Barthes’ mythic “Frenchicity”, and it her campy Legrand numbers in Cléo de 5 à 7 (1961) prelude offered allure only to naïve Americans enraptured by a charm Demy’s musicals. Varda continues to shape Demy’s legacy, they considered typically French. It is true that Rochefort‘s overseeing the restorations of his films and releasing Jacquot and breeziness offered romanticised escapism in the manner of the documentaries Les Demoiselles ont eu 25 ans (The Young Hollywood spectacles set in Paris like An American in Paris Girls Turn 25, 1992) and L’Univers de Jacques Demy (The (Vincente Minnelli, 1951), Funny Face (Stanley Donen, 1957) World of Jacques Demy, 1995) . Still, might it be that Demy’s and Gigi (Vincente Minnelli, 1958). films appear more simplistic and artificial when placed alongside For his part, Varda’s? Demy insisted that he However undemanding never intended to rip and lollipop Demy’s films may off American genre. appear, they present some nuance On the contrary, he and sophisticated intertext, and argued, he had sought they share a certain charm, vivid to create a new and unified. His films inhabit musical form, one worlds in themselves that may owing “nothing to peripherally refer to social reality American musical and the real world but remain comedy” and nothing content as alternate realities of to French operetta. poetry, color, and music. His films, in fact, Demy’s consistency of suggest an vision itself justifies his inclusion ambivalence towards among the “auteurs”, defined by American culture, not unabashed adoration. Rochefort celebrates André Bazin and François Truffaut and expanded by Andrew American icons in references to Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Sarris as distinguishing themselves with their salient visual and Lionel Hampton and in the presence of Gene Kelly, but language from mere metteurs-en-scène. Demy certainly created a Kelly’s character, the musician Andrew Miller, embodies a trifle signature style of poetry and innocence and clung to it. Yet this of the ugly American. Kelly has returned to France from the quality also has a sophisticated aspect, suggesting the dream U.S., where he sought “fame and fortune” and his feeble French worlds of the surrealists and of Demy’s inspiration, Jean cannot separate him from the throngs of American tourists, who Cocteau. It is fitting that the American critic Gary Carey has are, as Delphine notes, the only foreigners in town. described Demy as “the Joseph Cornell of French cinema.” For all their insularity, Demy’s films have traveled well. Besides his recognition in the U.S., British and Japanese critics

Demy—THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT—10

PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE FOR FALL 2018 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS, SERIES 37 Aug 28 King Vidor, The Big Parade, 1925 Sept 4 Howard Hawks and Robert Rossen, Scarface, 1932 Sept 11 Dorothy Arzner, Christopher Strong, 1933 Sept 18 Otto Preminger Laura, 1944 Sept 25 Giuseppe De Santis, Bitter Rice, 1949 Oct 2 Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon, 1950 Oct 9 Pier Paolo Pasolini, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, 1964 Oct 16 Robert Bresson, Mouchette, 1967 Oct 23 Mike Higgins, Get Carter, 1971 Oct 30 9 David Lynch, The Elephant Man, 1980 Nov 6 Krzysztof Kieslowski, Three Colors: Blue, 1983 Nov 13 Alan Mak and Wai-keung Lau, Infernal Affairs, 2002 Nov 20 , The Departed. 2006 Nov 27 Tom McCarthy, Spotlight, 2015 Dec 4 John Huston, The Man Who Would be King, 1975

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