The Queer Cinema of Jacques Demy

A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick Permanent WRAP URL: http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/107760 Copyright and reuse: This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: [email protected] warwick.ac.uk/lib-publications The Queer Cinema of Jacques Demy Georgia Mulligan A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Television Studies Department of Film and Television Studies University of Warwick September 2017 1 Table of contents Acknowledgements 5 Abstract 6 List of illustrations 7 Note about references 14 Introduction 15 Chapter 1: New critical approaches to the Demy problem 26 Authorship 28 Genre 32 Stardom 34 Emotion and style 37 Queer and feminist methodologies 40 Feminism against the canon 40 Queer studies 45 Chapter 2: Demy and the New Wave 52 What is the New Wave? 55 Demy disappears from the New Wave canon 59 Is Demy New Wave? 63 La Luxure 65 Lola 69 Emotional realism and subjective time 71 The wrong kind of cinephilia 75 Queering the New Wave gaze and the New Wave man 81 La Baie des Anges 86 2 Paratext and publicity 87 The heterosexual couple 90 Denauralising Jeanne Moreau 96 Conclusion 101 Chapter 3: Demy’s failed films 103 Model Shop 108 New Hollywood and queer narrative time 112 Gendered work 118 The space of the city 122 Parking 127 Parking as bisexual cinema 131 Parking as AIDS cinema 138 A failed representation of success 148 Conclusion 152 Chapter 4: Demy and the politics of camp 154 Les Demoiselles de Rochefort 157 Aestheticism and theatricality 160 Camping the heterosexual couple 163 Stardom and the song-and-dance man 170 Camp and utopia 175 L’Evénement le plus important depuis que l’homme a 181 marché sur la lune Gender panic 184 Mass media and reproduction 193 Stardom and the star couple 199 3 Conclusion 205 Chapter 5: Demy and Hollywood 206 Melodrama 209 Les Parapluies de Cherbourg 213 Sentimental colours, sentimental music 220 ‘Why will all women cry at the Umbrellas of Cherbourg?” 229 Melodramatic time 233 Conclusion 238 Une chambre en ville 239 ‘The popular’ 244 Melodrama and the bourgeois family home 251 Conclusion 261 Trois places pour le 26 262 Demy remembers Montand 265 ‘Mass art as folk art’ 272 Mourning and melancholy for musicals 277 Conclusion 283 Conclusion 284 Bibliography 293 Filmography 309 Teleography 320 4 Acknowledgements I must first thank my supervisor, Alastair Phillips. I started this PhD with a patchy, self- taught knowledge of the discipline, and Alastair’s supervision helped me grow in confidence and take the thesis in an unexpected direction. I would also like to thank Laura McMahon, who encouraged me to pursue graduate study when she supervised me as an undergraduate, and Emma Wilson, who was a thoughtful and challenging dissertation supervisor during my MPhil. I was able to write this thesis thanks to the generous support of the Wolfson Foundation. My parents and sisters have always been patient, encouraging and supportive. I’m grateful for everything they’ve done for me. I couldn’t have made it to the end of this PhD without the love and support of my friends. Thanks to Sophie Barnes, Natalie Wright, Kate Whaite, Dan Strange, David Hobbs, Ray Filar, Annette Behrens and JR Martin, who have been there for me with emotional and practical support through three difficult years. Thanks to Felix and Greygory of Open Barbers for providing a calm, beautiful place to work where I always felt welcome. I am grateful to Daniel Benjamin, who helped me apply for this PhD in very difficult circumstances. I would like to thank the departmental librarian, Richard Perkins, and the staff at the BFI Reuben Library, for helping me get my hands on anything I needed. I’m lucky to have made wonderful friends in the Warwick Film and TV Studies Department. In particular, Zoë Shacklock’s friendship has been a treat and an adventure, and I’m glad to have gone through this experience alongside her. Declaration I hereby declare that this work is my own and has not been submitted for a degree at any other university. 5 Abstract This thesis examines the cinema of Jacques Demy through a variety of queer and feminist lenses. It aims to investigate and politicise Demy’s marginalisation in French film culture, and place his cinema in its social and cinematic context in a way that few previous studies have done. Demy’s films trouble hierarchies of cultural value and binary oppositions, and they often include multiple cultural registers and modes of address, and draw from diverse cinematic traditions. In order to account for the films’ hybridity, the thesis uses several methodologies. It performs close analysis on ten of Demy’s thirteen feature films, in order to make arguments informed by theoretical frameworks such as camp, feminist writing on the women’s film, and recent queer theory on failure. Through an engagement with the contemporary reception of Demy’s films, the thesis also investigates the reasons for his marginalisation. The case study of Demy’s cinema is thereby used to challenge and complicate the canons and narratives of French cinema, with the understanding that canon formation reflects the values of dominant groups. The first chapter outlines where the thesis fits in a fairly sparse body of scholarly writing about Demy, and highlights key theoretical and methodological texts. Next, the thesis turns to Demy’s place in the French New Wave canon. This chapter analyses Lola (1961), La Luxure (1962) and La Baie des Anges (1963), and draws out issues of genre and address. Chapter three, on Demy’s ‘failed’ films, acknowledges that most of Demy’s films were critical and box-office failures. It analyses two of these films, Model Shop (1968) and Parking (1985). Chapter four, on camp, uncovers the political project of Demy’s camp aesthetics, by reading Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967) and L’Evénement le plus important depuis que l’homme a marché sur la lune (1973) through the lens of camp. Finally, chapter five argues that Demy’s use of Hollywood genres place these films in a specific and historicised emotional register. The case studies in this chapter are the sung melodramas Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964) and Une chambre en ville (1982), and the musical Trois places pour le 26 (1988). This thesis is among the first scholarly works to consistently approach Demy as a queer filmmaker, informed by extensive archival research into his films’ reception. It therefore represents a significant contribution to an emerging body of work on a heretofore neglected filmmaker. 6 List of illustrations Chapter 2 Fig. 1a: Jacques looks at passing women, La Luxure. Fig. 1b: The young woman crosses the road away from Jacques, La Luxure. Fig. 2a: Bernard’s mother looks into the camera, La Luxure. Fig. 2b: Bernard’s father looks into the camera, La Luxure. Fig. 3a: Cécile is centred, Franky’s face is obscured, Lola. Fig. 3b: Cécile is centred, Franky is too tall to fit in the frame, Lola. Fig. 4a: Michel enters through a pair of curtains, Lola. Fig. 4b: Lola steps forwards into focus and smiles, Lola. Fig. 4c: The dancers form a diegetic audience, Lola. Fig. 4d: Dolly looks into the camera and weeps, Lola. Fig. 5a: Sailors look at a poster of Lola before entering L’Eldorado, Lola. Fig. 5b: The first glimpse of Lola, in long shot in a crowded frame, Lola. Fig. 6a: A sailor’s perspective on a dancer, Lola. Fig. 6b: A dancer’s perspective on a sailor, Lola. Fig. 7a: Roland and Jeanne discuss Roland’s misfortunes, Lola. Fig. 7b: Jeanne suggests a job for Roland, Lola. Fig. 8a: Jean wakes up in the hotel room, La Baie des Anges. Fig. 8b: Jean lounges on the beach, La Baie des Anges. Fig. 9a: Jackie and Jean are framed as a couple, La Baie des Anges. Fig. 9b: A dissolve superimposes Jackie and Jean’s faces on the roulette wheel, La Baie des Anges. Fig. 10a: Jackie asks Jean which dress she should wear to dinner, La Baie des Anges. Fig. 10b: Jackie tries on a Pierre Cardin gown, La Baie des Anges. 7 Fig. 10c: Jackie poses against the skyline, La Baie des Anges. Fig. 10d: Jackie affects a quizzical gesture, La Baie des Anges. Chapter 3 Fig. 1a: The opening shot, Model Shop. Fig. 1b: George and Gloria’s house, Model Shop. Fig. 2a: Mark’s hidden videocamera, Peeping Tom. Fig. 2b: Mark’s victim seen through the viewfinder, Peeping Tom. Fig. 2c: Lola seen through the viewfinder, Model Shop. Fig. 2d: George’s camera, Model Shop. Fig. 3a: Wide shot of George and Lola, Model Shop. Fig. 3a: Closer shot of Lola’s face, Model Shop. Fig. 3c: Closer shot of George’s face, Model Shop. Fig. 3d: Wider shot after George has taken a photo, Model Shop. Fig. 4a: George’s perspective on the drill, Model Shop. Fig. 4b: The drill’s perspective on George, Model Shop. Fig. 4c: Shot of George from outside the house, Model Shop. Fig. 4d: George’s perspective on the men from the finance company, Model Shop. Fig. 5a: George hidden by a column, Model Shop. Fig. 5d: Gloria in an improbable morning outfit, Model Shop.

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