Poll

What's your favorite film by Jacques Demy?

Lola
3 (10%)
Bay of Angels
0 (0%)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
9 (30%)
The Young Girls of Rochefort
7 (23.3%)
Model Shop
0 (0%)
Donkey Skin
1 (3.3%)
The Pied Piper
0 (0%)
A Slightly Pregnant Man
0 (0%)
Lady Oscar
0 (0%)
Une chambre en ville
1 (3.3%)
Three Places for the 26th
0 (0%)
haven't seen any
7 (23.3%)
don't like any
2 (6.7%)
other
0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 29

Author Topic: Demy, Jacques  (Read 8305 times)

DarkeningHumour

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Re: Demy, Jacques - Director's Best Poll
« Reply #40 on: May 13, 2015, 10:56:33 AM »
They don't make them like that anymore. Literally. No one is making anything resembling Demy, and the world is poorer for it.

Les Demoiselles de Rochefort.
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DarkeningHumour

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Re: Demy, Jacques - Director's Best Poll
« Reply #41 on: August 27, 2015, 10:53:40 AM »
This film uses the same gimmick as The Umbrellas of Cherbourg... every line of dialogue is sung.  I must say that, musically, I found it easier to get past the sung dialogue aspect here than I did with Umbrellas.  I think it's because the music sounds more grounded and structured... it's closer to what we think of as a traditional musical.  So maybe that's just a thing I need if people are going to be singing.  The music is also, however, a bit dated.  80's production values are so distinctive that when you hear a certain kind of drum or bass sound, it immediately puts you in that time... a problem when the setting is supposed to be 1955.  On the whole, though, I enjoyed the score more this time, even if wasn't composed by the great Michael Legrand (on the other hand, just about any other Legrand score trumps this one, I just don't care for the music in Umbrellas).

This. Also, I like your review for Les Demoiselles. It is so easy to enjoy that movie without ever noticing the undertones or thinking about any of it at all that it is nice to read something that brings it to the surface.

I would like to know what goes on in the mind of the people who prefer Cherbourg to Rochefort. Is is primarily a geographical preference ?
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MartinTeller

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Re: Demy, Jacques - Director's Best Poll
« Reply #42 on: August 27, 2015, 11:41:22 AM »
I think if you have whatever gene it takes to enjoy Cherbourg's music/gimmick, then it probably comes off as the more powerful, effective piece.  It is certainly more daring and unconventional.

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Re: Demy, Jacques
« Reply #43 on: March 29, 2016, 02:36:50 PM »
1. The Young Girls of Rochefort (2.5)
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chardy999

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Re: Demy, Jacques
« Reply #44 on: April 19, 2016, 08:07:25 AM »
Lola – Jacques Demy (1961)



One thing I have learnt is that every film deserves its best chance to impress, to be seen in the right environment and in the right frame of mind. I’ve seen the first 15 minutes of Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort and Max Ophüls’ La Ronde at different times and realised I was not open to this style – playful, musical, melodramatic, where the events on the screen belie the importance of the emotional transactions. Or do they? I’m not sure. I know it’s new to me, and Lola seemed to be styled in the same vein. Fortunately, I was ready this time. And perception is reality, so where previously the characters might have been mistaken for caricatures, on this occasion they imbue the film with feeling as they fall in and out of love.

Lola is not so much the protagonist as an embodiment of the sentiment pervading this film. Loving and dream-like while still being grounded and pragmatic, she is a single mum working as a dancer in a club. Her son’s father, an American sailor, hasn’t returned for seven years but Lola still holds out hope that he will. You see, he was her first love and one’s first love is special. Incidentally Lola was Roland’s first love too. After 15 years apart they bump into each other and Roland is immediately smitten again. He’s just been fired from a job he cared little about and has agreed to a dodgy new venture that would see him deliver a briefcase to Johannesburg. But now he doesn’t know what to do – why travel when the thing he has been looking for is right under his nose?

Roland’s problem is his lack of drive. He’s the type of morose character who stands for nothing and subsequently falls for anything. It’s little wonder that he falls for Lola. He’d fall for a lot less. Lola lets him down clearly and concisely without being nasty and it’s scenes like this that are the film’s strength. Indeed, we develop empathy for a swathe of supporting characters as well – a simple but charming sailor, a substitute for Lola’s ‘true love,’ a wide-eyed bold young girl, and her widowed mother who fancies Roland. The young girl falls for the sailor as they spend an afternoon at the fair mirroring the way Lola idolised her sailor back in the day; a love that still lingers. It’s melancholic and charming like a lot of the other threads. I’m charmed too.

8/10
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Re: Demy, Jacques
« Reply #45 on: February 21, 2019, 01:23:48 PM »
Bay of Angels (1963)
★ ★ ½
Gambling movies rarely go for realism. Characters always have incredible winning and losing streaks, when the truth is playing games of chance is a grind of small wins and losses that go on for hours. The characters here win and lose small fortunes every time they enter a casino because it's not about the game, but the pull the game has on certain people. The same with movies about love. The pull is often unexplainable and unstable. Jeanne Moreau has very strong gravity with the characters on screen because she has that same pull on us watching her act. The lead character is played by Claude Mann, an age appropriate character delivery device, hardly a match for Moreau.

There's a lot of talk, perhaps if I spoke French there'd be more substance to it, but Demy's direction is a nice balance where things seem happy enough that you might not notice how somber the film really is. Even the happy ending is an unhappy one if you think about what happens to the characters after we leave.

Eric/E.T.

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Re: Demy, Jacques
« Reply #46 on: October 04, 2021, 04:37:02 AM »
My Jacques Demy score card so far, in the order in which I've seen them:

Let's give report card grades, since we just ended the first quarter at my school.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) - I do love the conceit, where every line is sung, basically making this one long jazzy musical piece, but I also buy in totally with the love story. So everything doesn't work out how you wanted it to, so what? Nothing is promised in life, but those two still did alright, and that love that is gone isn't forgotten. Introduced me to the colors of Demy, which would be on fuller display in the next one I'd watch. Grade: A

The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) - Weird reference, maybe, but it made me think of Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel in how the people were trapped in a house by an unknown force, just as so many characters in this film seem to be perhaps literally trapped in their store/cafe/studio. The idea that a woman and her long lost love are in the same town but never venture beyond their walls is strange indeed, and I'm still working on what it all means, but it sets up the most satisfying conclusion, where all these pieces you're seeing in isolation find each other. It's a lovely fairy tale, even with a bit of gallows humor at work. More colors, more song and dance, it's a feel-good art film. Grade: A

So which do I prefer, Umbrellas of Cherbourg or The Young Girls of Rochefort? - I'm leaning Umbrellas as of this moment, I think the more intimate setting works well for me, but they are certainly neck-and-neck.

Lola (1961) - His first, and you can see some of the storytelling devices from Young Girls present here as well, including different storylines where coincidence meets fate in some wonderful ways. Hard to adjust to after seeing the musicals, but this one is a lot of fun. Especially love the cuts that continue conversations in a totally different place. Fun French New Wave piece, dedicated to Max Ophuls, who maybe I should give a further chance. Grade: B+

Bay of Angels (1963) - This one communicates a lot less with me than the other three. The recent Schrader film, The Card Counter, is my kind of gambling film, showing it in all its darkness, its bleak reality. Here, it's used perhaps to communicate something with us about love and addiction, though I'd say the action in the casino is a lot more enticing than in the Schrader film, which may run counter to its ultimate purpose of exposing the rot in human character and relationships. Jacqueline is like the gambling version of Kerouac's Tristessa, an addict that will never put love above her next hit. Jean proceeds to slut shame her as well as physically abuse her for showing him a certain reality, that love does not conquer all, that your dreams do not necessarily come true. Criterion says it's Demy's most somber work, but I'd also say it's the least essential of the four here. Grade: C

Going to watch the last two in the set tomorrow.
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Eric/E.T.

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Re: Demy, Jacques
« Reply #47 on: October 06, 2021, 02:22:55 AM »
Finishing the Demy box set, two feature-length films and four shorts.

Donkey Skin (1970) - I did not feel at all transported to the world of Charles Perrault's fairy tale at all. If anything, this makes me appreciate well-made costume dramas all the more. Everything here just seems fake or sub-optimal, so there's no immersion in a new time and place, even a lot of the costumes seem like something you could pick-up at Goodwill after Halloween is over. I'm thinking especially of the king's cape and boots, as well as the lilac fairy's lavender attire. The editing trickery to make the fairy ascend and descend is also a bit silly, though I know the limits of the technology of the time have played a part. The only film of the set I had a genuinely hard time attending to. Grade: D-

Une Chambre En Ville (1982) - Demy revisits the musical format of having every line sung, as in most operas, as in the amazing The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, for the best surprise of the set. I don't normally hold out a lot of hope for a director's later works, but this oddly bloody melodrama set in Nantes circa 1955 during a workers' strike, while not perfect, hits a lot of high notes for me. We have the political overtones and a great sense of time and place with specifics that Demy visited more in the four shorts here than the other five feature films. While class struggle is the backdrop, the romantic and sexual relationships bridge members of oppositional classes in fundamental ways. In a sense, human desire transcends the battles in the streets, all the way to the bitter conclusion. The film certainly has weaknesses, especially in the uneven score that moves between classical and contemporary sounds in a clunky manner (Michel Legrand is sorely missed here), and it's far from the best ensemble Demy put together, but its dedication to its stirring story and setting make it quite a good film. Grade: B

Then there are the shorts. These are mostly graded for fun. It's hard to approach them, as, besides a few distinct types of shot that he uses in his features most prominently (which I will be asking questions about in another thread), these are pretty different from his feature lengths, and not as uniquely Demy. Not bad, though.

Les horizons morts (1951) - Wordless, 8-minute film where Demy plays a guy who just got his heartbroken and contemplates suicide. It plays more like Demy's first completed project, a sort of first contact with the art form, than anything else. It's not very good, but it's hard to hold it against him too much. I feel this was included in the set mostly for educational purposes. Grade: D

La sabotier du Val de Loire (1956) - A tale of a clog-maker that turns into a meditation on the passing of time and inevitability of death. It's a deliberate, at-times solemn thing, but has a meditative quality that isn't so readily present in the six features in the set. Upon reflection, it's probably the most meaningful of the four. The narration is a bit excessive, sometimes I wish it was less frequent and allowed us to focus on the man's actions rather than commentary. Still, rather pleasing, even life-affirming. Would've been interesting had he ever pursued such a subject for a feature (assuming he didn't; and if he did, please tell me the title). Grade: B+

Ars (1959) - I really wish I knew the name of the shot, where the camera seems to be in the back of a car, filming as the vehicle drives away. It's used fairly extensively here to establish the setting, the small town of Ars, where the Cure de Ars spent a lifetime trying to save the people's soul. Like the previous short, lots of voiceover narration as we explore the town, his chambers, and his church. Everything feels quite retrospective, trying to piece together the hard work and ascetic lifestyle of such a man of God with historical accounts and cultural artifacts only. The material itself reminds me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's asides in several books that considered the inner-world and conflict of the pious, especially Father Cayetano Delaura in Of Love and Other Demons, minus the melodrama. Interesting, but inessential. Grade: C

La luxure (1962) - A short based on Demy's childhood in Nantes and featuring a love of language and playfulness, this is the single short that really resembles the Demy from the features. He covers a lot of ground, from the streets of the city and two young girl-crazy young men, to childhood misadventures, to Hell itself, all in the service of a joke based on a childhood misunderstanding of the word "lecherous" upon which the film is built. It's quite playful in story and editing, though it also plays into the stereotype that all men just think with their...well. You know. Not a total success, as I think it gets a little carried away with its premise and indulges in lechery a little excessively, but a pretty good insight into the humor and playfulness of Demy. Grade: B+

I'm giving The Umbrellas of Cherbourg my final vote in our poll.
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MartinTeller

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Re: Demy, Jacques
« Reply #48 on: October 06, 2021, 08:43:05 AM »
Finishing the Demy box set, two feature-length films and four shorts.

Donkey Skin (1970) - I did not feel at all transported to the world of Charles Perrault's fairy tale at all. If anything, this makes me appreciate well-made costume dramas all the more. Everything here just seems fake or sub-optimal, so there's no immersion in a new time and place, even a lot of the costumes seem like something you could pick-up at Goodwill after Halloween is over. I'm thinking especially of the king's cape and boots, as well as the lilac fairy's lavender attire. The editing trickery to make the fairy ascend and descend is also a bit silly, though I know the limits of the technology of the time have played a part.

To me, this is all part of what makes the film so charming. I'm quite sure Demy had no ambitions of making a realistic "immersive" recreation of medieval times. I mean, it ends with a helicopter.

And our opinions are flipped on Chambre as well. I found all of the characters rather detestable, and the political commentary to be weightless.

We pretty much line up on the shorts, though.
« Last Edit: October 06, 2021, 02:12:50 PM by MartinTeller »

Eric/E.T.

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Re: Demy, Jacques
« Reply #49 on: October 07, 2021, 02:12:30 AM »
Finishing the Demy box set, two feature-length films and four shorts.

Donkey Skin (1970) - I did not feel at all transported to the world of Charles Perrault's fairy tale at all. If anything, this makes me appreciate well-made costume dramas all the more. Everything here just seems fake or sub-optimal, so there's no immersion in a new time and place, even a lot of the costumes seem like something you could pick-up at Goodwill after Halloween is over. I'm thinking especially of the king's cape and boots, as well as the lilac fairy's lavender attire. The editing trickery to make the fairy ascend and descend is also a bit silly, though I know the limits of the technology of the time have played a part.

To me, this is all part of what makes the film so charming. I'm quite sure Demy had no ambitions of making a realistic "immersive" recreation of medieval times. I mean, it ends with a helicopter.

And our opinions are flipped on Chambre as well. I found all of the characters rather detestable, and the political commentary to be weightless.

We pretty much line up on the shorts, though.

If Demy was not all about making a realistic/immersive universe that made you feel that you were there, then the only alternative would have been kitsch. That's a term with several connotations depending on who says it, but I think that's what you're left with. Some people can work with that and make it idiosyncratic and fun. However, that's not how I read the film. I don't think there's enough self-consciousness on behalf of the performers, the sort of "knowing" that you have a crown but you're just a ridiculous man in a cheap costume stuck in an old fairy tale. It seems too genuine, not so ironic.

It's hard to argue the characters aren't detestable in Chambre, though I don't necessarily think that makes a movie bad. While watching this, I felt like I was watching something greater than the sum of its parts, especially with that Romeo & Juliet ending. You can fight the man, but what does your heart tell you? You can fight your husband by prostituting in the streets, but what is the truth of your heart? Strange bedfellows made from the bourgeoisie and the working man or woman. 
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