Jacques Demy on DVD

[Yojimbo]

Further reports:

I forgot to mention La Luxure last time, Demy's episode of Les sept peches capitaux. A charming, discursive film (with a great pre-psychedelic vision of Hell) in a sharp transfer.

Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, probably my favourite Demy, looks great at a glance. As Lino noted, Varda's fine hour-long documentary has English subs and a good transfer, considering some of it was shot on video.

Model Shop: I'd been wanting to see this for some time, but it's a bit of a debacle. It has some of the qualities of Zabriskie Point, but it's both not as bad as Antonioni's film and not as good. Demy offers a great outsider's vision of LA (but not as visionary as Antonioni's America) with a nice modish soundtrack (by Spirit, who also appear in the film, but apart from Jay Ferguson they can't seem to get off the screen fast enough), but the film is scuppered by a mediocre script (that never reaches the depths of Zabriskie Point) and poor performances (ditto, but squared).

Gary Lockwood isn't particularly bad - not in a Mark Frechette way, certainly - but he isn't particularly good either, and the film hangs on his every bland gesture and line-reading. Anouk Aimee is similarly okay, but a rather thin approximation of her previous turn as Lola, and there's nil chemistry with Lockwood. The film is filled with cliches. Lockwood is that icon of sixties alienation, the disaffected architect, and is completely unconvincing as such, and the film is full of other cookie-cutter symbols of contemporary malaise, trotted out on cue but then just lying there limply: the paradise-paving parking lot, the aspirational colour television. At least the pounding derrick on the front steps has some visual interest.

Lockwood's girlfriend is the character most shamelessly abused by the film's callow politics. She has some truly unholy mouthfuls to deliver and is utterly inadequate to the cruel challenge.

The transfer is sharp, and comes from a flawless print, but it's very red. That's clearly intended to some degree - Demy places fire-engine red objects in many frames - but the skin-tones seem unfortunate, with Lockwood looking sunburnt rather than tanned throughout.

your review of 'Model Shop' is in at least one extent reassuring for me, zedz, in that I was already considering, at the very least, postponing purchase of this box-set, at least until the price drops somewhat.

Although I'm a huge fan of the director I already have DVDs of what are generally considered all of his best films: 'Lola'; 'Baie Des Anges'; 'Demoiselles...'; 'Parapluies',....and even 'Donkey'
Equally I'm aware that even at various points he skirts dangerously close to tweeness and being deluged by saccharine, so any investment' in other films could perhaps only best be justified by 'completeness' or the possibility of discovering some underappreciated gems.

'Model Shop' was one film which I have long been keen on buying, perhaps on the basis that it may prove to be as perceptive an outsider's view of (an aspect of) America as Malle's 'Atlantic City', or even Antonioni's 'Zabriskie Point'.

Evidently not.

[zedz]

Another one down: The Pied Piper

I wasn't holding out much hope for this film, since I'm no great fan of Peau d'ane, but I was very pleasantly surprised. It's quite different from the arch Cocteau pastiche of the previous film (which is, for me, immediately sunk by the Cocteau comparison).

It's a really interesting kid's film, perhaps most interesting for remaining steadfastly a kid's film despite all the other colours Demy brings to it. They make it an extraordinarily dark kid's film, even darker than its literary antecedents, which are hardly sentimental, and it's amazingly, explicitly cynical about religion. This particular aspect made me realise just how much pallid piety is routinely shovelled into films for children. Demy, however, climaxes his little fantasy with

Spoiler

the gleeful, appalling incineration of a Jew - the Holocaust associations aren't overplayed, but they're hard to avoid.

The English cast embodies their characters as types - this is one of the aspects of the film that clearly aims it at children: it's refreshingly free of knowing winks at a secondary adult audience - and the film has the rich dark colours of a well-preserved tapestry. Many scenes are presented as complex, luxuriously tracked sequence shots, seemingly indebted to Ophuls. A very nice transfer.

When I was talking about original versions above, I was misled by the way this film was described on the packaging. Although the disc provides both English and French audio tracks (and French subtitles for the English version), English is unambiguously the version originale.

[Dylan]

Any screengrabs online? I would especially love to see some images from Model Shop.

[zedz]

Two more down.

L'evenement le plus important depuis que. . . - Well it's telling that I lose interest before I even finish writing the title. This film has possibly the cheesiest title sequence I've ever seen. It looks like it belongs with a lame mid-70s sitcom. Which turns out to be completely appropriate.

Marcello Mastroianni stars as the world's first pregnant man. Hilarity ensues. Or not, depending on how intrinsically hilarious you find the sight of Marcello with a prosthetic tummy, because that's it, folks.

Demy's decision to play this comparatively straight - everybody simply accepts that now, in the 'modern world' (cue extremely feeble satire), men can get pregnant - is the most interesting decision in the film, but it renders the goings on listless and bland. Mastroianni and Deneuve are sort of charming, but it's all doomed from the start. It aspires to 30s screwball, but it's actually like an unfunny 70s sitcom stripped of its laughtrack and played at half-speed. For completists only.

Decent transfer, but the only English option is a dub, which is particularly egregious at servicing Mastroianni, who gets a ridiculous semi-Noo Yoik accent that lapses into an ersatz Italian accent only when the character's Italianness is mentioned. Deneuve's relatively colourless performance is blanded out further by stapling on a perky TV housewife voice.

La naissance du jour - Much more satisfying. A smart adaptation of Colette, gentle and relaxed, dominated by multiple layers of narration (Colette on the soundtrack and in person, sometimes interrupting herself as the 'voice' shifts on- and off-screen; her mother's letters).

It's the most Varda-esque film of Demy's that I've seen, reflective and intimate, with associative camera movements and montage reflecting the character's flitting consciousness. The film's observational, impressionistic visual style (rather than the dramatic, presentational style of much of Demy's work) and playful structure seem to me much closer to Varda's films.

Although the film is predicated on heterosexual romance, there's some blatant directorial ogling of the male lead going on, particularly in the scenes in which Vial is parading around in only a pair of extrordinarily tight and revealing (and anachronistic?)swimming trunks (which makes it quite unbelievable that Colette doesn't realise his true feelings for her - are you blind, woman?).

It's an OK transfer, given its source as a TV film shot on 16mm, though there are a couple of brief damaged sections (tramlines and missing frames).

[Perkins Cobb]

Well, the US DVD of A Slightly Pregnant Man has the French language track + English subtitles, so if you're really a completist, there's that option.

What do you guys think, will I ever be able to acquire copies of just the films in this set that I haven't already seen on their US DVDs? Because I'm not a Demy fan particularly, but I'd like to see the rarities once, especially Model Shop.

[zedz]

Two more down, neither of which I had high hopes for, but I was pleasantly surprised in both cases.

Lady Oscar - A very strange film: a French subject, adapted from a Japanese manga, made in English with Japanese money. Even stranger is imagining who its target audience could have been. Initially it seems to be pitched at ten-year-old girls - a shallow, rollicking romantic adventure - but there's bad language, exposed breasts and it's all steeped in remarkably perverse gender politics.

The manga influence gives the film very flat characterizations and a cute but limiting breathlessness to its exposition, but the real interest for me lies in the gender play. Lady Oscar is a girl who has been raised as a boy so that she can succeed her father as the Queen's guard (the queen in question is Marie Antionette). As played, the drag is extremely unconvincing, but it seems to deceive people. Except that we soon realise it doesn't: Marie A and her friends know she's a she, and so do most of the other women at court - she's even sparked a fashion for masculine dress. (The original comic strip was apparently inspired by the real life Chevalier d'Eon, but it doesn't have an ounce of the ingrained oddness of his/her story.) The men, however, seem unable to penetrate the disguise, even when they're "oddly attracted" to the fey young soldier. Her 'brotherly' bond to groom Andre, with whom she was raised, blossoms into true love on cue. So far, so fairy tale, but Demy uses those role-playing conventions to take the film into some rather challenging areas.

As the film progresses, the charade seems to slip away - a new group of soldiers refuse to obey their boss because he's obviously a girl, for example - and by the time 'Lady Oscar' comes to be married off to a wicked baron, her true gender is common knowledge. And this is where Demy delivers his coup de grace. The Baron's interest in Oscar, it seems, is as much because of her masculine pose and despite it, and he indicates that what he's really interested in is a three-way with Andre as well. Her retaliation is to do a Marlene: turn up for the engagement party in man-drag, aggressively dance with a fetching maiden (a newcomer who seems to be the only person present unaware that Oscar's a woman) and conclude with a full-on kiss. In such comparatively decorative surroundings, the scene carries a real punch.

Otherwise, it's memorably lush, with Demy making the most of his opportunity to film at Versailles. However lightweight the story is, the film is consistently gorgeous to look at and the transfer is very good.

Parking - This film has so many things going against it you feel like it ought to give up the fight halfway through.
1) It's an update of Orpheus, and not just of the myth, but of Cocteau's Orpheus, against which it's hopelessly outmatched (and Jean Marais is on hand to rub it in).
2) In this version, Orpheus is a rock star.
3) And Eurydice is an avant-garde sculptor.
4) It's a wall-to-wall fashion crime scene, with Orphee wearing a red headband throughout.
5) When he's 'rocking out' on stage the headband flashes with LED's.
6) The special effects are atrocious (Charon's eyes glow red - spooky!)
7) It's a musical, but the music is abominable French 80s pop.
8) It's topical! (The John Lennon references boomerang almost as disastrously as the Cocteau ones.)

But despite all this, I think I'm with Barmy on this: I sort of loved it. The very '80s vision of Hell as a black, white and acid red transitional space (part warehouse, part abandoned downtown, part airport security post) is pretty indelible. And there is one half-decent song (about which more in a moment).

And, once again, Demy's interest in unusual sexual politics manages to make this film unlike anything else of its time. Orphee, you see, is unabashedly bisexual, living in a menage a trois / quatre with his beloved wife and his beloved boyfriend, Calais (fourth wheel Aristee, who evidently just likes to watch, is the cutest of the bunch), and the film's big romantic number is a 'Triad'-like ballad about not wanting to have to choose between his male and female lover. What's really remarkable about this aspect of the film is that the tangled erotic relationships are never presented as problematic: Orphee's male lover is never presented as a threat to his marital love, and the tragedy of his loss of Eurydice is in no way 'discounted' by the relationship that survives. This would be a bold enough attitude to take in a new film, but it's amazing to see it in one more than 20 years old. Presumably this would have been the most personal aspect of the film for Demy, and it's certainly the one that burns most passionately from the screen.

[colinr0380]

I should admit some curiosity about Lady Oscar since the lead, Catriona McColl, went on to star in Lucio Fulci's most bizarre films City Of The Living Dead, The House By The Cemetery and of course The Beyond.

[whaleallright]

I'm wondering what people think of UNE CHAMBRE EN VILLE. I saw this years ago and thought pretty highly of it, but my memories are growing dim. The film has been very hard to see, until now I suppose.

[zedz]

I'm wondering what people think of UNE CHAMBRE EN VILLE. I saw this years ago and thought pretty highly of it, but my memories are growing dim. The film has been very hard to see, until now I suppose.

Watched this last night, and it struck me as the most successful of the post-Rochefort films. It's very much of a piece with Demoiselles and Umbrellas (and was originally conceived as another Deneuve vehicle, one that brought the cycle back to Nantes), though it represents yet another approach to the 'problem' of the musical. The film is structured and written as a non-musical (no 'numbers' as such), but every scene is set to continuous music and all of the dialogue is sung.

I must say that in my opinion the music is the film's weak point. It's inoffensive, but the deliberate refusal to resolve into song structures turns it into a bit of a recitative-a-thon, and there are only a couple of musically memorable passages (notably the big choral confrontations in the streets). It's sometimes described as an opera rather than a musical, but that doesn't seem quite right to me either - it's a sung melodrama.

On the plus side, there's characteristic Demy decor and colour (notably a deep red parlour that alludes to the one in Le bel indifferent) and interesting experiments with tone. If this isn't the darkest musical ever made, it's not for lack of trying.

With one film left to go, it's now hard to see one Demy film without seeing all the others peeping through it (guess which arcade features in Une chambre en ville?). As a director he really laboured to tie his oeuvre together, and it resolves into several interwoven strands:

The Experimental Musicals (films that play in different ways with the classical Hollywood musical form):
Primarily Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, Les Demoiselles de Rochefort and Une Chambre en ville, but also Lola (a musical without the music) and Parking. And then there are the films with songs that aren't really musicals (Peau d'ane, The Pied Piper).

The 'Lola' Universe:
Lola, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, Model Shop

The Cocteau films:
Le Bel Indifferent, Peau d'Ane, Parking

The (Facile) Gender-Play Films:
L'evennement le plus important. . ., Lady Oscar, Parking

The Children's Films:
Peau d'ane, The Pied Piper, Lady Oscar

Several films fall into more than one category, but there are only a couple that don't fall into any of them: Baie des anges and La Naissance du jour. But the former at least is quintessential Demy.

[zedz]

Final film down: 3 places pour le 26

It's one last musical, and probably Demy's most classical one along with Les Demoilselles de Rochefort. Like that film, it contains specific references to the MGM model, with The Band Wagon as convenient referent. In this case, the aging musical comedy star is Yves Montand (was this really his first musical?) and the young co-star is Mathilda May, though the complications are rather more melodramatic.

It's all rather frothy, but very sweet. The colour-coordinated decor is prime Demy and the camera often takes on the lyrical mobility of his best work. There's a lovely soundcheck scene where Montand sings unaccompanied and echoing while the camera drifts through the void of the empty theatre.

Song-wise, Legrand fares much much better than he did with Parking, although almost every song is saddled with a grotesquely unsympathetic late-80s arrangement (sequencers and cheap drum machines) that's hard to forgive. Surely Montand himself wasn't recording in that mode at the time (or did he really undergo the 1980s equivalent of 'Electric Mud'?)

Having made my way through all of the films now, Demy's 1980s now seem a much more rewarding period than his 1970s. Any one of La Naissance de la jour, Un Chambre en ville, Parking and 3 places pour le 26 (hell, I'll even throw in La table tournante!) is a more rewarding watch than the four 70s films or Model Shop, though by the same token none of them match any of those first four features. It makes for a very neatly stratified career, at least.

[domino harvey]

I thought I'd asked this already but I guess I didn't-- what's the best place to go to for ordering this set?

[zedz]

I went straight through Cine-Tamaris (keeping it in the family): http://www.cine-tamaris.com/article.php?id=3962

[domino harvey]

For me in America it ended up costing about thirty euros less to order via Amazon. Thanks though!

[Gregory]

I'm getting around to purchasing this now, or at least I hope to buy it soon. It's currently € 100 at both Ciné-Tamaris (€29 shipping pretty much rules that out) and Amazon.fr. Has anyone noted whether this set ever fluctuates in price at Amazon?

[domino harvey]

I've never seen prices budge on Amazon.fr, I suspect there's some sort of reason why but whatever the price is now is probably stable

[Knappen]

The Pied Piper - the ultimate edition (photographed by me during a spending raid at Gibert Joseph today).

[Matt]

The Pied Piper - the ultimate edition (photographed by me during a spending raid at Gibert Joseph today).

Hey, bonus: new Borsalino special edition!

[Knappen]

The Easter egg of the photo!

[Perkins Cobb]

Starting to go through the Intégrale now, in chronological order. Couple of questions for anybody (zedz!) who's done the same:

(1) Am I correct in that Demy's short films Musée Grévin (1958) and La mère et l'enfant (1959) are omitted, rather than buried on some disc I haven't gotten to? And if so, any idea why?

(2) Is Ars (1959) flagged improperly for widescreen TVs, or are the counterintuitive settings on my Sherwood player defeating me again? I can't check it on my reliable old DVD/CRT set-up at the moment.

[zedz]

Starting to go through the Intégrale now, in chronological order. Couple of questions for anybody (zedz!) who's done the same:

(1) Am I correct in that Demy's short films Musée Grévin (1958) and La mère et l'enfant (1959) are omitted, rather than buried on some disc I haven't gotten to? And if so, any idea why?

As far as I know they're not on there - are they extant?

(2) Is Ars (1959) flagged improperly for widescreen TVs, or are the counterintuitive settings on my Sherwood player defeating me again? I can't check it on my reliable old DVD/CRT set-up at the moment.

Pass. I watched mine on a reliable old DVD / CRT set-up as well, but I'll check on my new system and see if I can shed any light on it.

[Perkins Cobb]

(1) Am I correct in that Demy's short films Musée Grévin (1958) and La mère et l'enfant (1959) are omitted, rather than buried on some disc I haven't gotten to? And if so, any idea why?

As far as I know they're not on there - are they extant?

Beats me, but that would be the most logical explanation: That Agnes tried to find them and couldn't.

[J Wilson]

I just received the Arte blu-ray of Demoiselles de Rochefort, and it looks pretty great at first glance. The packaging bills this as a 2010 2K HD restoration, which includes a DTS 2.0 audio track. The film has always been grainy, and here the grain is retained, but the picture looks brighter and more detailed overall. One small example is the piano sheet music during the "Pair of Twins" number; on the DVD, the title ("Meditations") is smeared; on the BR, it's clearly readable. Curiously, the original white opening titles have been replaced by orange ones in a different font. Not sure why the originals had to be omitted, but they aren't there any longer. The disc includes some of the same extras as the integrale set, such as the Varda docu. I don't have any means to take screen grabs, so can't provide any help there. Overall, it looks to be a great improvement over the most recent DVD. English subtitles ARE included on the film, despite my posting originally that there were no subs.

[hearthesilence]

They're playing this film at BAM today - I was debating whether to go or put the money towards a Blu-Ray purchase, so I did a little research and found this review on Amazon's French site:

Sorry for having to post this in English - you wouldn't want to know from my French - but the "reviewer" below who lambasts this transfer should have his eyes or his TV examined. I was not a fan of Ms. Varda's "restoration", which I saw in the cinema and which was a muddy, ugly mess and looked nothing like the IB Technicolor prints of the film (I owned one), and the DVDs based on that "restoration" looked worse.

So, I'm happy to report that this new blu-ray is spectacular and everything it should be. Whatever their source, they did a brilliant job with the transfer, which is sharp, and with color that actually looks like Technicolor, which is what Mr. Demy intended. Do not hesitate to buy this blu-ray - it is a miracle and if you love the film or even like the film, you will be very happy!

Les Demoiselles de Rochefort [Blu-ray]

Screencaps for the Miramax and BFI DVD's can be seen here, while screencaps for the Blu-Ray are here.. The difference is astounding. If Varda did indeed supervise the color timing on the BFI DVD, it certainly backs up the Amazon.fr reviewer's comments.

[domino harvey]

Well, I need that in my life right now

[fdm]

Just watched the blu-ray last night, first time I've seen the film. Looks great, sounds pretty great as well. Hard to go wrong with this. (Couldn't do much with the extras, as my region locked player only presented video for the feature and the trailer.)

Looking forward to checking out more Demy in the future. (Up to this point I'd only caught a bit of Umbrellas on tv once while flipping channels, and have been sitting on the Intégrale for a while, so time to dig in.)

Edit: A year later, finally got around to watching the box set, finishing up with the last film last night (last night being 3 June 2012). What a treat this set is. (The dvd version of Young Girls Of Rochefort was indeed pretty bad, so I just fast forwarded through it to refresh my memory (and watched the dvd's extras for the first time instead). Intend to revisit that blu-ray pretty soon. And even moreso now, look forward to seeing some more of these on blu-ray as well, especially Umbrellas Of Cherboug.)