594 - The World of Jacques Demy, France, 1995. Dir. Agnes Varda.

Monday, February 2, 2019

594 - The World of Jacques Demy, France, 1995.  Dir. Agnes Varda.

Cinema is an act of great patience. - Jacques Demy.

Meeting Jacques so young was a formative event for me.  He was the first real filmmaker I met. - Catherine Deneuve.

With his films we reclaim our childhood. - Caroline Bongrand.

I get high on your films.  Excuse my tipsiness. - Camille Taboulay.


Jacques Demy died on October 27, 1990, at the age of 59.  From 1993 to 1995 his wife filmed, interviewed people, and edited footage together to make a 90 minute documentary in his honor.

His wife just happened to be herself a film director of renown.  Agnes Varda.

Agnes Varda is alive today, and at age 90 she is still working.  Which means Clint Eastwood at 88 has a couple years to go still.  And counting.

Ms. Varda wrote and directed her first film, La Pointe Courte, in 1955.  Seven years later she wrote and directed her famous film Cleo from 5 to 9 (1962).  She wrote the theme song to Demy's Lola (1961).  She appeared in a cameo as a nun in The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967).  She wrote the French dialogue for Bernardo Bertolucci's film Last Tango in Paris (1972).  She played a role in the 2002 Jonathan Demme movie The Truth About Charlie, starring Mark Wahlberg, Thandie Newton, Tim Robbins, Stephen Dillane, and LisaGay Hamilton.  And to date, she has made 13 feature films, nearly 30 short films, and 10 feature-length documentaries.  Including this one.

In watching it, one senses the love that Jacques Demy and Agnes Varda had for each other.  And the love that she has for him still.

Ms. Varda interviews people who worked with Jacques Demy over the years.

Including actors Anouk Aimee, Richard Berry, Nino Castelnuovo, Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Annie Duperoux, Francoise Fabian, Claude Mann, Marc Michel, Jeanne Moreau, Jacques Perrin, Michel Piccoli, Dominique Sanda, and Anne Vernon.

And collaborators Michel Legrand, Michel Columbier, filmmaker Claude Berri, Anne-Marie Cotret, Bernard Evein, Emmanuel Machuel, Annie Maurel, Bernard Toublanc-Michel, son Mathieu Demy, and daughter Rosalie Varda.

And his sister, Helene Demy,

And the great French film director Bertrand Tavernier.

We saw Tavernier's 1981 film Coup de Torchon.

Coup de Torchon
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/05/137-coup-de-torchon-1981-france-dir.html

In 2016 Bertrand Tavernier himself released a documentary feature called My Journey Through French Cinema (2016).

We have also seen two of Claude Berri's movies:

Jean de Florette (1986)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2018/03/434-jean-de-florette-france-1986-dir.html

Manon of the Spring (1986)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2018/03/435-manon-of-spring-france-1986-dir.html


Among other things, we learn:

It took them twenty years to make their first musical.

Jacques Demy grew up loving cinema.  As a boy, he took film stock and hand painted each frame.

He filmed his own short films upstairs above a small barn.

He wanted his first film to be a full-color musical with singing and dancing.  But his producer said he did not have enough money, so he encouraged him to make a black-and-white film first.  He made Lola and began to make money.

Actors describe him as kind but firm.  He was precise in his choices and expected adherence to them.  But he was good with people and doted on his actors.

He says his deepest influence was Bresson.  We have seen six Robert Bresson films.

After the war Demy saw my first Americn musicals.  And he wanted to make one.  He wanted an opera.  He wanted it to be clear and simle, a kind of song throughout the film.

With The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, he wanted people to cry.  He and composer Michel Legrand planned the places in the film when people would cry.

First hanky, page 38.

"We had a score full of hanky markings."

He said The Umbrellas of Cherbourg opened up doors all over the world.

He was excited about going to Hollywood.  But he acted cool about it.

"I wanted to live in the U.S.  Everything excited me."

He rented a white convertible.

"It's like a dream."

"I was really happy for two years."

Jacques Demy believed in the dream of discovering an unknown actor and making him a star.

He met an unknown actor named Harrison Ford.

In 1969.  Four years before American Graffiti (1973).  Eight years before Star Wars (1977).

He made screen tests of him.  Agnas Varda shows us the screen tests.  Including footage of Ford's holding the clapper and slating himself.  Harrison Ford looks so young.  He stares ahead calmly.  Then he slowly breaks into that now-iconic half-smile.

Varda revisits Harrison Ford in Wyoming in 1995, and Harrison tells us the story.

The film was called Model Shop.

Because I was supposed to be in the film, Jacques and I went to visit the model shop on Santa Monica Blvd.  Painted with Da-Glo paint.

We had to rent one of these little cameras and buy 12 exposures of of film for $35.

We chose the bedroom set.  It's just like it was in the movie there.  Long corridor.  Painted black.  Both of us very shy.  Neither of us knew what to do, so the girl said I'll pose like this, and I'll pose like this.

The bed or the armchair?  It doesn't matter.

Demy and Ford learn from the girl what to do.  Demy likes Ford.  He decides to cast him in the movie.

To which you ask, Wait a second: if Harrison Ford made a movie with Jacques Demy, how have I never heard of it?

Jacques Demy did make the movie Model Shop in 1969.  Starring Gary Lockwood.

Who?

You know, the man who played himself last year in a movie called Unbelievable!!!!!.  With five exclamation points.  So that you will know how unbelievable it is.

You have not heard of it?  It starred Snoop Dogg.

OK.  How about Gary Lockwood, the man who appeared in a 2004 short film called Missing Sock.

Don't know that one?  His daughter Samantha was in it.  She has done some things.

All right.  How about the 1990 film Terror in Paradise.

Well, at least he is still working.  And he may very well be a great actor.  We cannot all control what offers we get.  Or what the directors do with them.

So why did Jacques Demy want Harrison Ford but go with Gary Lockwood?

We are told that Gary Lockwood just came off 2001: A Space Odyssey, where he played Dr. Frank Poole, and he was hot.

And then Harrison Ford looks directly at us in the camera and says,

"I'm told that the head of the studio said to forget me, that I had no future in this business."

After which he makes a classic Harrison Ford face.  Which is worth the entire documentary.

By 1995 when this documentary came out, Harrison Ford had been in American Graffiti , The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now.  He had been Han Solo and Indiana Jones and Rick Deckard and Jack Ryan and Richard Kimble.  And he had just played Linus Larrabee in the remake of Sabrina.  How many men do you know who can redo a Humphrey Bogart character?

One imagines Agnas Varda smiling with delight as she was editing this section.

Model Shop was to have been the Lola sequel, with Lola in Los Angeles, California, instead of Nantes, France.  Anouk Aimee came back to reprise her role.  But this time the war was Vietnam.  It was unpopular.  The movie did not work.

Jacques Demy calls Model Shop a Model Flop.

Agnas Varda wonders what having Harrison Ford in it would have done for the movie.


Helene, Jacques' younger sister talks about how he kept learning and growing throughout his life.  He learned English.  He studied color processing.  He took still photographs and blew up pictures using a new process.  He did tests.

Varda shows his still photography, and it is incredible.  It shows the touch of a professional eye.  After the landscapes we see "the many faces" of his son Mathieu.  And Mathieu has many.

At 50 he took up painting.  He learned to fly.  He went back to math.

Then they continue with the movies.

There is an informative section on The Pied Piper (1972).

It was a fairy tale Demy loved.

They hired hundreds trained rats.  They were trained in England and shipped to Germany.  And had to arrive 40 days early to spend 40 days in quarantene.

His biographer discusses how the film is gloomy and harsh yet "passing through all that was a magical grace."

Bertrand Tavernier says the shots are lyrical and that the camera movements are meshed with the sets and costumes.  He feels Demy achieved his goals with that movie.

Then Demy is compared to the Pied Piper himself.

"He can lead anyone out of the city, whether it's into their dreams or away from their troubles."

"If I were a child, I'd want Jacques Demy as my father."

One artist made a replica of Jacques Demy out of flowers.  A school is named for him.  A street is named for him.  RUE Jacques Remy.

It takes  long time to become young. - Picasso

"Jacques is a child who grew up without forgetting his childhood."

There are several more great sections covering several more movies, with delicious insights from people who were either there or who appreciate the films.

Then we go to three girls on a bench.  Including the middle one who opened our film with her letter.  They were two young to have known him.

One imagines them singing an Elton John variant, "Goodbye Jacques Demy":

"And I would have liked to have known you
But I was just a kid."

They speak of his movies in the way that they have touched their hearts.  They are not critics.  They are fans.  They are people for whom filmmakers make films.  They do not speak objectively but subjectively.  About how his films have touched their lives.  They appreciate what he has accomplished.  They appreciate him.

We pull back and pan over and see that they are sitting next to his grave, his wife returning to where she laid him to rest, sharing a moment with three people whom she would otherwise have never known.  But for his bringing them together with his art.  From his heart.  To theirs.


*                              *                              *                              *


Sir, I've put off writing this letter for years.  I wanted to grow up first so it wouldn't seem too childish.  Yet writing now, I know it will still come out that way.  Renoir wrote that the public is grateful to a director who shows how our front doorstep can lead to Sleeping Beauty's castle.  Your films taught me so much that I write this to show my gratitude.  They taught me to look at life by placing a magic screen over the bitter lucidity.  They exhort us to run out to repaint the street with our gaze.  Your films taught me to love life.  In them it is both exalted and laid bare, both cruel and alluring.  They give us a taste for joy and the strength to wait, while being heedful of everything.  'The thrill is in the anticipation,' could be the epigraph to Lola.

You are a truly original filmmaker.  Only you can mix  harmonious cocktail of varying predilections for painting, music, poetry, cafe philosophy, fairy tales, social critique, opera, American musicals, exotic and spiritual travels.  ou give expression to a world both true and reinvented.  I get high on your films.  Excuse my tipsiness.  I just wanted ot say thank you.

--Camille Taboulay.

593 - A Room in Town (Une Chambre en Ville), France, 1982. Dir. Jacques Demy.

Sunday, February 3, 2019

593 - A Room in Town (Une Chambre en Ville), France, 1982.  Dir. Jacques Demy.

Nantes, 1955.

Francois Guilbaud has a room in town.

He rents the room from the former Baronness, Madame Margot Langlois.  She has him stay in her daughter Edith's room, because she has refused to unlock her son's room since he died in a car crash while driving 110.  (If that is kph, it would be the equivalent of 68 mph.)  She says she does not have the courage to face all those memories again.

Francois is a pipefitter on strike.  He and his friend Dambiel have joined the team in solidarity to protest.  They have standoffs in the street, where they shout epithets at the police, who in turn use teargas to break them up.

Francois is dating Violette Peletier, who blushes like a violet when he holds her.  She is making plans for their future, but he is on hold since he has no income and cannot afford to provide for them.  He shares his frustrations with his friend Dambiel, while Violette shares her frustrations with her mother Madame Pelletier.  She also carries a secret.

Mme. Langlois' daughter Edith got married a month ago, to TV repair store owner Edmond Leroyer.  He has already proved to be jealous, paranoid, and possessive.  He will not give her money; he demands to know her every move; and he threatens to hurt her if she does anything he does not like.  We see him push her and run into her wrist with a soldering iron.

Edith sees a fortuneteller, who tells her that the cards tell her that she will have a great love affair with a metalworker.  Edith has taken to the old profession as a means of retaliating against her husband.  She walks the street in a long fur coat.

She has a room in town because she no longer has her room at home.


Something is going to happen in each of those rooms.  And in the room outside of one of those rooms.  Because of what happened in the street, and in the street, and in the street.  And because of what happened in another room.

And it might turn out very well for everybody.  Or at least for a few people.  Or one or two.

Or it might turn out poorly for one or two.  Or for a few.  Or for everybody.

But it will turn out.  The train has left the station and it will not stop until it arrives at its final destination.  In the unity of time.  All the action takes place in about a twenty-four-hour period.

With Une Chambre en Ville, Jacques Demy has made another singing musical, like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), where all the dialogue is sung.  No song lyrics.  And no spoken dialogue.  Just sung dialogue from start to finish.

He has a new composer, though.  He uses Michel Colombier rather than longtime collaborator Michel Legrand, who was working on Barbra Streisand's Yentl (1983).  And the musical tone is different.

Likewise, the production design.  Bernard Evein does return, but his highly coordinated, beautifully rich colors are darker and more muted to fit the subject matter.

The iconic transporter bridge in Nantes no longer existed, so Demy had it painted on glass and filmed through the glass to show the bridge as being there again.

In The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), Maxence the sailor/painter/poet make a reference to this film which will come out 15 years later.  First, he praises painting.  "Braque, Picasso, Klee, Miro, Matisse--that's life!"  A gentleman sitting at a table reading a newspaper joins the conversation to ask, "Don't tell me you paint in the barracks," to which Mexence replies, "I have a room in town.  It's my studio.  Every night I go AWOL, and I go home and paint."

592 - Donkey Skin, France, 1970. Dir. Jacques Demy.

Saturday, February 2, 2019

592 - Donkey Skin, France, 1970.  Dir. Jacques Demy.

Who wrote fairy tales?

Or rewrote them?

The Brothers Grimm.  Jacob (1785-1863).  Wilhelm (1786-1859).

They wrote or popularized, among other things, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Rapunzel, and Hansel and Gretel.

Hans Christian Anderson (1805-1875).

He wrote or popularized, among other things, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Princess and the Pea, The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, The Snow Queen, and Thumbelina.

Before either of them was Charles Perrault (1608-1703).

Charles Perrault wrote fairy tales.

He wrote, among other things, Cinderella, The Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, Bluebeard.

And the Tales of Mother Goose.

That's right.  Mother Goose may have written Mother Goose's fairy tales, but if she did, she did it in a fairy tale land of her own.  Because Mother Goose is a fictional character created by Charles Perrault.

Or rather, not a fictional character at all.  But a tradition of storytelling.  That he adapted.  With a phrase that he created.

Charles Perrault also wrote Donkeyskin.  Peau d'Ane.

The Brothers Grimm are German.  Hans Christian Anderson is Danish.  Charles Perrault is French.  So Jacques Demy is telling a story of his own heritage.

In this story the Blue King is married to the most beautiful woman in the world and has a daughter just as beautiful.  We know she is just as beautiful because both roles are played by the same woman, the beloved Catherine Deneuve. 

The Blue King has everything he could ever want, including a donkey that poops out money.

I guess if a goose can lay golden eggs, a donkey can poop out money.

But one day his wife is stricken ill and is on her deathbed.  The Blue King offers never to marry again, as a gesture of his undying love and affection for the Blue Queen.

But she is more reasonable.  They need a male heir.  So he must remarry.  Or else the kingdom will be unstable.

So she makes him make an oath to her that he will never marry anyone except someone more beautiful than she is.

He agrees.

One of his counselors calls it a vanity oath.

He needs a new queen who can provide him with a son.  A queen's beauty is unimportant as long as she is virtuous and fertile.

There's some advice.

But the king adheres to his oath.  He scours the land for a woman more beautiful than his late wife.

Finally, he finds her.  His daughter.

Of course, only his daughter could be more beautiful than his wife, because he was already married to the most beautiful woman in the world.

The Blue King is stuck in his head.  His is so married to his oath that he is not thinking clearly.  So he pursues his daughter.

His daughter knows that it is wrong but does not know what to do.  She has always adored her father, and now he is behaving strangely.  So she turns to her Fairy Godmother.

The Fairy Godmother tries to give her four outs.  First, tell him to make you a dress the color of the weather.  He does.  OK, then, second, tell him to make you a dress the color of the moon.  He does.  OK, then, third, tell him to make you a dress the color of the sun.  He does.  OK, then, fourth, tell him to make you a dress out of donkey skin.  Out of your prized donkey's skin.

He does.  Even though it immediately stops his positive steady free cash flow.

Talk about a poor business decision.

OK, then.  Now what?

RUN!

The Fairy Godmother gives the Princess her own magic wand, which the Princess will be able to use to produce her trunk and other pieces of furniture that she may require later.

The Princess finds refuge in the land of the Red King.  But she is wearing donkey skin, so people think she is the most hideous looking and foul smelling person in the land.

She gets a job as a scullery maid slopping pigs.

So she goes from potentially being one of Lot's daughters to being the Prodigal Daughter all in one day.

But as fate would have it, the Red Prince stumbles upon her when she is alone in her cottage.  She only wears the donkey skin in public.  When she is home alone she wears her dress the color of the sun.  And the Red Prince sees her through the window.  He returns to his castle and pines over her with true love.

His birthday arrives.

He may ask for anything.

He asks that Donkey Skin bake him a birthday cake with her hands.

The request is sent to the Princess, as Donkey Skin, who gladly bakes the cake, using the magic cookbook, and her magic wand, with her separated spirit reading her the instructions out loud as she bakes.

The Princess puts her ring in the cake for him to find.

When it is delivered to him, he eats the cake and finds the ring, and this launches a Cinderella-like search throughout the kingdom.

But instead of finding the right foot to fit the glass slipper, this prince must find the right finger to fit the ring.  The most slender finger in all the land.

All maidens are called to come to the castle to try on the ring.  Many of them beforehand use methods to try to make their fingers more slender.

Who will fit the ring?

You may finish the story now.

And wonder why he goes to the trouble of trying the ring on every finger when he already knows who baked him the cake.  Perhaps this is a PR move.

When you think of a filmer of fairy tales, you might think of, besides Walt Disney (1901-1966), Tim Burton (1958-) or Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975).  There are several others.  But you might not think of Jacques Demy.

But Demy does it.

It might be a fun film for young folks.  It is a departure for Jacques Demy, coming off of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967).  He did direct a film in between, Model Shop (1969), reunited with Anouk Aimee.

And good for him to be trying something new.

But it seemed underbudgeted for what it was.  Leaving us with simple sets and poor paint jobs.  With some of the people, for example, painted fully, both skin and clothes, red or blue.

Catherine Deneuve is delightful.  However, the Red Prince does not seem up to her standards.  Which is too bad, as he is played by Jacques Perrin, who worked all the time and appears 18 years later in our beloved film Cinema Paradiso (1988).

But the film as a whole is lightweight.  A lark.

I suppose if you stick to your morals and do not marry your father, you can still have Prince Charming as your husband.

And that is why it is a Fairy Tale.

591 - The Young Girls of Rochefort, France, 1968. Dir. Jacques Demy.

Friday, February 1, 2019

591 - The Young Girls of Rochefort, France, 1968.  Dir. Jacques Demy.

Every frame a Dufy.


Will the right people ever find each other?

Yvonne and Delphine and Solange and Simon and Maxence and Andy are all looking for their ideal love.

And over the course of the story the viewer sees who should go with whom.  But they keep missing each other.

Sometimes by a few minutes.  Sometimes by a few meters.

If only they could adjust their timing.


Yvonne Garnier runs the cafe.  She has two young-adult daughters, Delphine and Solange.  Delphine is a dancer, and Solange is a singer.  Though they are both both.  Delphine teaches girls ballet, and Solange teaches music and vocal.

Delphine and Solange have a song they sing about being sisters.  Think about the Irving Berlin song "Sisters," sung by Rosemary Clooney and Rosemary Clooney in the 1954 Michael Curtiz film White Christmas.  Delphine and Solange have their own sister song, which is witty and playful.

All three ladies long for true love.  What they call their ideal.

Etienne and Bill are carnies come to town to set up the fair.  Perhaps they will be Delphine's and Solange's ideals.

Or perhaps they are merely players passing through.

Yvonne also has a 10-year old son Booboo.  Delphine is supposed to pick him up from school, but the carnies offer to get him on behalf of Yvonne.

Delphine has been seeing a man named Guillaume Lancien.  He owns an art gallery she likes to frequent.  But he is not her ideal love.

He has recently hung a drawing on the wall that looks just like her.  She is amazed by the similarity.

Maxence is a sailor stationed in Rochefort.  In his heart he is a painter and poet.  And he is searching for his ideal love.  He has painted what she will look like from his own imagination.

Simon Dame owns a music store in town.  His misses is ex-wife, who left him ten years ago, telling him she was going with a man to Mexico, with children she had from a previous marriage, and pregnant with Simon's child.

She found his name to be unfortunate.  And comical.  Monsieur Dame.  Making her Madame Dame.

Andy is a musician and dancer who went to conservatory with Simon and has now become widely successful.  He comes to Rochefort to visit.

We are watching Jacques Demy's next film after The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), and it is another richly colorful singing and dancing event.

It is not the same kind of musical as Umbrellas, where all of the dialogue is sung.  This is a more typical musical, with spoken dialogue interspersed with sung songs.

We open on the wharf.  In vibrant colors.  The dockworkers are working.

And a song and dance routine breaks out.

With movements similar to the dance routine in Michael Jackson's Beat It video.  It feels as he may have been influenced by this film.

The song-and-dance numbers are alive and joyful.

And the casting is rich with surprises.

We know who the perky blonde, Catherine Deneuve, is.  But who is that actress playing her red-headed sister Solange?

And who is that playing Etienne?

And forty-five minutes into the picture, look who is playing Andy.

Talk about an American in Paris!

This film is a visual and aural feast.

And maybe, just maybe, everyone can find his ideal.


*                              *                              *                              *


GEORGE CHAKRIS began as a singer or dancer in the chorus of several Hollywood musicals, including Song of Love (1947), The Great Caruso (1951), Stars and Stripes Forever (1952), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Brigadoon (1954), White Christmas (1954), and There's No Business Like Show Business (1954).

Then he achieved stardom as Bernardo the head of the Sharks in West Side Story (1961).

Now he is Etienne, one of the carnies.


GROVER DALE also played in West Side Story, but in 1957 on Broadway.  He was a Jet.  Snowboy.  Dale did most of his work in the theater.  He was a stage man.

Now he is Bill, the other carny.


FRANCOISE  DORLEAC was the first of two sisters to gain fame.  Think of Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine.  Two sisters who each achieved acclaim.  Fontaine lived to be 96.  De Havilland is alive today, at 102.  Dorleac's sister was none other than Catherine Deneuve herself.  Sisters playing sisters.  Catherine Deneuve is alive today.  And still working.  She has three films scheduled to come out in 2019.  However, Dorleac died in a car crash when she was only 25 years old.  Yet in those 25 years she was able to make 17 movies.  We have seen one of them already:  Francois Truffaut's The Soft Skin (1964).  We will be seeing her in Roman Polanski's Cul-de-Sac (1966) soon.  She also starred in Roger Vadim's version of La Ronde (1964), from Arthur Schnitzler's 1900 play.  We have seen Max Ophuls' 1950 film version of the play.

The Soft Skin (1964)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/05/123-soft-skin-1964-france-dir-francois.html

La Ronde (1950)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/04/091-la-ronde-1950-france-dir-max-ophuls.html


MICHEL PICCOLI plays Simon Dame.  We know him as Paul Javal, the leading man, a film director, in Contempt (1963).

French Cancan (1955)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/03/066-french-cancan-1955-france-dir-jean.html

Le Doulos (1963)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/03/086-le-doulos-hat-1963-france-dir-jean.html

Contempt (1963)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/04/111-contempt-1963-franceitaly-dir-jean.html

Heartbeat (La Chamade) (1968)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2018/03/426-heartbeat-la-chamade-france-1968.html

That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/05/145-that-obscure-object-of-desire-1977.html


We already know and love CATHERINE DENEUVE.  By now we have seen her quite a few times.

And then there is Andy Miller, played by the American in Paris himself.  It is most satisfying to see him appear on screen without knowing he is coming.

590 - The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, France, 1964. Dir. Jacques Demy.

Thursday, January 31, 2019

590 - The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, France, 1964.  Dir. Jacques Demy.

Why is absence so heavy to bear?

Genevieve Emery is asking the question, as the weight of time lies heavily upon her heart.

And the whole film, the entire direction of their lives, will turn upon that question.

Genevieve is waiting for her beloved, Guy Foucher, the man who worked at the local garage, whose baby she is carrying, who is away on military duty, serving in Algeria, doing his time.

They write.  He describes his experience.  He tells her loves her, that he misses her, and that he will be home as soon as he can.  Even if his stay is extended.

Genevieve's mother Madame Emery is putting pressure on her.  Mme. Emery never liked Guy.  He worked at the local garage.  The Emerys own a store, an umbrella stored, named The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.  The shop around the corner.

And as far as Madame is concerned, Genevieve is too young and too impulsive to make important life decisions.  What can she possibly know about love?

Mme. remembers when she was young and a man wooed her, before she later met Genevieve's father and married him.  This is somehow presented as evidence that a girl should marry her second love.

Genevieve says her mother should have married the first man.

Despite the fact that she herself would have never been born.  Implying that her mother probably truly loved the first one.  And settled.  A tough thing to suggest about one's own dead father.  But they are in the heat of the moment.  A battle of wills.  Over Genevieve's future.

The Emerys are in financial trouble.  Their debtor has called their debt.  If they do not pay by a certain date, they will be foreclosed upon.  And lose everything.

Mme. Emery humiliates herself to go to the jewelry store to pawn her prized necklace.  The jeweler is a business man.  He buys low.  He sells high.  He pays below market.  He refrains from allowing emotion to cloud his judgment.

So when she reveals her dire straits and her hope that he will be her savior, he lowballs even more.  Offers her consignment.  No cash up front.  Take a cut of what the public offers.

What will Mme. do?

Roland Cassard steps in.  He is a travelling jewelry merchant selling wholesale.  Here to show the jeweler the rubies, sapphires, and emeralds of Ali Baba's cave, the jewels of Sleeping Beauty.  Himself a shrewd businessman.

So when the Emerys come in to seek Mr. Dubourg's financial assistance, Roland Cassard is standing there with him.  And for some reason no one requests privacy.  So the visiting vendor listens in on a personal customer's private affairs.

A deus ex machina in the First Act.

For Mme. Emery anyway.  Cassard will be her savior.  He will buy the necklace.  Rescue them from ruin.  And perhaps provide a suitable suitor for her daughter in the exchange.

Everything that Genevieve does not want.

They have him over for dinner.

And sure enough, he invites her to the country.  And begins to woo her.

But Genevieve does not give in.  She has her love.  Guy Foucher.  The beautiful boy at the Garage du Port Aubin.  The boy who loves the theater.  And rides a bicycle.  And who dreams with her of a future together.  Either selling umbrellas or owning their own garage.  Either naming their baby Francois or Francoise.  Living in everlasting bliss.

If only Guy did not have his military service.  For two years.  In the Algerian War.

If only her mother were not pressuring her so hard.

If only Roland Cassard were not bearing down upon her with money and his own promises of future happiness.

Cassard leaves their lives for a time.  Just as Guy has.  But Guy has been taken away by the military.  A choice he has not made.  And Cassard, not yet in the throes of love for Genevieve, has a life to live and jewelry to sell.

He goes to America.  Genevieve forgets about him.  Her mother does not.

But when Guy goes off to war, Genevieve worries.

Fear.

Vain imagination.

An idle mind.  The devil's workshop.

Genevieve worries:

Guy left two months ago, and he has only written me once.  If I knew where he was, I could write him.  They have sent him, I am sure, to a dangerous place where he is risking his life.

Mother compounds it:

He has forgotten you.  He does not think about you.  If he did, he would write.  One can write, however far away one is.

Mother has her motives.

Genevieve faints.

I suddenly saw Guy laughing with another woman.

Cassard returns and Madame invites him over for dinner.

The first test comes when the ladies reveal to Cassard that she is pregnant.  With another man's baby.  A man whom she truly loves.  And Cassard does not flinch.  He eagerly says they will raise it together.

Cassard's absence is nowhere near the same absence as Guy's absence.

And his presence fills the void that Genevieve's heart can hardly endure.

Why is absence so heavy to bear?

She gives in.

A man on hand is worth two at the front.

And their lives take their permanent turn.

Jacques Demy has divided his film into three acts.

Part One - The Departure

Part Two - The Absence
Part Three - The Return

And each act gauges the status of the heart, of Genevieve's and Guy's heart.  The first act focuses on them as a couple.  The second act focuses on her without him.  (He is away in Algeria.)  The third act focuses on him without her.  (She is away in Paris.)

If you are paying attention, then you will remember that we watched this film together last year.  As a one-off.  A stand-alone.

But now we are working through a Jacques Demy box set.  So why not watch it again?

I chose not to go back and read what I wrote last time.  I think I said something about La La Land, but other than that, I do not really remember what I wrote.  So we are starting fresh again.

To add a new element, I watched it this time around with the sound turned off, so that I would see it in a different way.  A musical that is all musical, seen without any music.  Or, heard without any music.  Or, not heard at all.

My apologies to Michel Legrand, the grand composer of the film.

But let us see how watching it silently might change things for us.

We shall be reading the subtitles.

When watching this film this way, immediately one notices the colors.  Not just the umbrellas, but the water on the wharf, the sky, the brick, the clothing, the wallpaper, the paint, the furniture.

The colors.

The pink walls.  Her pink suit.  His blue suit.  The red garage.  The black windows and drawers.  The red gas pumps with orange sides.  His brown jacket.  Her khaki coat.  The yellow raincoats.  The red drapes.  Vertically striped wallpaper in many rooms--dark and light green, dark and light blue, blue and green, all blue.  His yellow lampshade.  The exterior wall painted like a 1980s music video in hot purple.  Mme. in the pink and white bathroom.  Genevieve in the blue cardigan with the lighter blue patterned shirt over a blue skirt.  The brown cabinet.  The white porcelain.  Mom's red hair.  Genevieve's blonde hair with the black bow.  Her room with blue wallpaper with pink flowers and green leaves.  The orange oranges and yellow bananas.  Aunt Elise in the boxed bed with the crimson curtains.  Madeleine in pink.  Aunt Elise in a purple sweater.  His blue shirt, brown tie, and brown jacket.  The green stairwell with white chipped paint.  The silver briefcase.  The hunter green train.  The pale red and white train.  The psychedelic walls with pink and purple and floral vines.  The coral sweater with the great skirt.  Mom in a red jacket and skirt.  Her in a sleeveless salmon dress.  Mom in a black dress.  Roland in a white shirt, blue tie, and blue suit.  The pink and green stripes above the chair rail.  The gray panels below the chair rail.  The crystal chandelier.  The brown antique tables, clocks, and lamps.  The brown grandfather clock.  The golden crown.  The gray maternity dress.  The yellow sweater.  The blue dress with floral prints and the cream coat.  Black and white at the wedding.  The white dress in the black car.  The empty red table.  The white walls.  Earth tones at the funeral.  The brown suit with a white shirt and black tie.  His Mr. Rogers tan sweater over a white casual shirt.

Etc.

If we were to watch the film again, we could be more precise with the specific shades of color.  Today I was able to fit in hunter and coral and crimson and salmon.  And maybe tan and khaki for brown.  But otherwise, I have given you primary and secondary and tertiary colors for a world that goes far beyond.

The background.

The dockworkers.

The pedestrians.

The customers.

The bartender washing the glasses and putting them away.  T

The sailor sitting at a table.  The other sailors standing oddly facing the wall.

Perspective at the train station.

All the lines--the tracks, the train, the edges of the buildings and sidewalks--leading off to a single vanishing point.

The faces.

Catherine Deneuve stepping into frame as fresh as life itself.  She seems so young and alive and innocent, one can hardly believe it is her ninth film.  She was about twenty when this film was made.

I noticed the make-up more.  And I thought about the difference a face looks from the master shot to the close-up.  And how ideally one would want to adjust the make-up down as the camera pushes in.

Here in the master she is heavily made up with bright pink rouge that makes her face to shine.  But in the close-ups one notices it.  And imagines what if we were to back it off a little bit.  Particularly in the umbrella store on a particular day.

She is beautiful either way.  It is a technical thought.

Genegvieve enters looking like Sandy in Grease.  And there are even scenes where she wears her hair up with a cardigan over a blouse and skirt.

The film begins with the two of them already in love.  And it is sweet.

Another thing one notices in watching the film silently is the language.

Of course the words are not written as song lyrics but as actual speech, so that the music has to fit the dialogue.

Love is on parade.

My love.
Oh, my love.
Genevieve, my little Genevieve.
Guy, I love you.  You smell of gasoline.
It's just another perfume.
Guy, I love you.  Oh, Guy, I love you.

And--

Don't go.  I will die.
I will hide you.  And I will have you.
But my love, do not leave me.
You know it is not possible.  I will not leave you.

And--

I will love you until the end of my life.
Guy, I love you.  Do not leave me.  My love, don't leave me.
Come, my love.  O, my love!

Then there is this:

In The Princess Bride (1987), the phrase "As you wish" means "I love you."

Here the phrase "If you wish" means "I love you."  At least as it is presented in English.

Guy only ever says it to Genevieve.  This Genevieve.

See you at 8:00 in front of the theater.
I've thought of you all day!
Would you like to go dancing later?
If you wish.

When the other Genevieve, the prostitute, speaks to him, she says "If you want."

"Come with me, if you want."

And--

"You can call me Genevieve, if you want."

Then when Guy speaks to his own wife, Madeleine, during Christmas of 1963, he says, "If you want."

Your hands are cold.
I will go out now.
If you want.

Yes, I am referring to the English subtitles and not the original French script.  And since I was not listening, I did not hear what they actually said.  So I do not know if they used tu veux or vous voulez, or tu voudras or vous voudrez, or tu souhaites or vous souhaitez, or tu souhaiteras or vous souhaiterez.  But I am speaking of my experience watching this movie on this day with these English subtitles.

There is a moment when they are moving forward as if gliding above the street.  One remembers Belle gliding down the hallway in La Belle et le Bete (1946).  As we pull back we see him with his bicycle.  Were they coasting by standing on the side of it?

Here is another thought:  The mother is the one in love.  What if she marries Cassard.

When watching the film the first time (last time was my second time; today is my third), one imagines this film is about two people who are in love but who are unable to marry due to circumstances beyond their control--such as her mother, and his having to go to war, and the other man stepping in.

But watching it today, it feels more as if Demy was showing her as having made a decision.  Choosing to give in to an immediate certainty over a preferred unknown.  He puts the onus on her.

And we feel it this time in the final scene.  Genevieve tells Guy that she took a detour on her way back to Paris to swing by Cherbourg.  She says she never thought she would meet him here.  It is pure chance.  But she went out of her way to come here.  And she pulled up to the garage on the highway.  One believes she came hoping to see him, to see how he is doing.

But he does not share the same desire to revisit an old thing.  He has his wife now, and his son.  And this wife stayed with him.  She never left.  She was there all the time, even when he could not see her, even when she blended into the striped wallpaper.  And he has moved on.

So people remember the movie as a sad story, because we see it through the eyes of Genevieve.

But what if we were to see the movie through the eyes of Madeleine?  She has found the love of her life.

Or what if we were to see the movie through the eyes of Roland?  He has found the love of his life.  He lost Lola but found Genevieve.

Through everything Guy was faithful to Genevieve, until she went and married another man.

One imagines him asking her the question Billy Joel asks, "What will it take till you believe in me / The way that I believe in you?"

But she did not.  She flinched.

So yes, it is sad.  These two people do not end up together.  But maybe what they each have with other people is also OK.  And loving.  And stable.  And good.

She gets back into her snow covered car and drives away.  With her daughter Francoise.  Who reminds her of Guy.

He kisses his wife and plays with his boy Francois.

This time around you see it differently.


*                                        *                                        *                                        *


I'm not alone.  I have my books.

Happiness makes me sad.

Oh, my love.  You haven't told your mother?

You think you're in love, but love is different.  You don't just fall in love with some face you see on the street.

I'm flabbergasted.

Wonderful!  You lied to me.

You're just a little girl.  You know nothing.

The young lady has become a beautiful young woman.

Roland Cassard, diamond merchant.

I suddenly saw Guy laughing with another woman.

I'm pregnant, mother.

We have to welcome him and put on a good front.

Go upstairs and lie down.
I feel just fine.
Don't argue.  Obey me.

Virgin with Child I saw in Antwerp.

My cheeks are burning.

Genevieve is still a child in my eyes.

She's only spoken of you in friendly terms.

I wouldn't want to pressure her in any way.

Her name was Lola.  Long ago.  I was disappointed and tried to forget her.  I left France traveled the ends of the earth.  I had no more taste for life.  Then by chance our paths crossed.  As soon as I saw Genevieve, I knew that I had been waiting for her.  Since I met her, life has a new meaning.  All the time she is in front of my eyes.  I live only for her.

Roland Cassard asked for your hand.
You didn't tell him I was pregnant?
I didn't dare.

I'd be a little more pleased if the child had a father and you had a husband

It's all I have left of him.

You mustn't smoke.  Be responsible.

A man comes along who's rich.  He's not a womanizer or smooth talker on the prowl, but a man who has lived and suffered.
I know mother, but don't give me a sales talk.  You praise him as you praise your umbrellas.

I was wooed once by a young man who was not your father.
You'd have done better to marry him.
You are right, but understand that I want you to be happy and not to ruin your life as I ruined mine.
Don't worry, Mother.  I have no intention whatsoever of wasting my life.

Do you think Cassard will want to marry me when he sees that I have been knocked up?
Watch your language!

If he refuses me as I am, it means he doesn't love me.

We will raise the child together.  He will be our child.

The last few months her letters weren't the same.  She did not answer my questions.  She wrote without conviction.  But to marry another man!

Nothing's changed here.
I have.

Does your leg hurt?
I limp a bit now.  It's like having a barometer in my leg.

And Madeleine?
She's coming.  She's been very good to me.
She's not married yet?
You know how sensible she is.

Are you happy?
Very.
And I owe it all to you.
If you wanted to share my life, if I weren't too much of  burden . . . Did I say the wrong thing?
Not at all.  It makes me so happy.  And at the same time, it scares me.
You're scared of me?
No.  Well, a little.  Have you given up thinking about Genevieve?  Are you sure you really love me?  I am not scared, but I wonder if you are acting out of despair.
I don't want to think of Genevieve anymore. . . . I want to be happy with you. . . . I do not have much ambition, but if I could make my dream come true of being happy with a woman in a life we've chosen together. . . .

Francoise, stop that.  The horn is not a toy

It's cold.
Come in the office.

It's better in here.
This is my first time back in Cherbourg since I got married

On my way back to Paris I decided to take a detour.

Super or regular?
It doesn't matter. . . . It's a pretty tree.  Did you decorate it?
No, my wife did.
Mother died last autumn.

She's so much like you.  Do you want to see her?
I think you can go.
Are you doing well?
Yes, very well.