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The Young Girls of Rochefort

Les demoiselles de Rochefort

France

1967

120 Min
Color
2.35:1
English, French
  • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
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DIR Jacques Demy, Agnès Varda

PROD Perrine Bauduin, Gilbert de Goldschmidt

SCR Jacques Demy, Julian More

DP Ghislain Cloquet

CAST Catherine Deneuve, Gene Kelly, George Chakiris, Françoise Dorléac, Jacques Perrin, Danielle Darrieux, Michel Piccoli, Jacques Riberolles, Grover Dale

ED Jean Hamon

PROD DES Bernard Evein

MUSIC Michel Legrand

SOUND Jacques Maumont

San Sebastián (Classic Retrospective)

Synopsis

Delphine and Solange are two sisters living in Rochefort. Delphine is a dancing teacher and Solange composes and teaches the piano. Maxence is a poet and a painter. He is doing his military service. Simon owns a music shop, he left Paris once month ago to come back where he fell in love 10 years ago. They are looking for love, looking for each other, without being aware that their ideal partner is very close… A film whose scenario is much less important than its feeling of euphory, according to the director Jacques Demy. —IMDb

Director

Original

Jacques Demy

Jacques Demy (5 June 1931 – 27 October 1990) was one of the most approachable filmmakers to appear in the wake of the French New Wave. Uninterested in the formal experimentation of Alain Resnais, or the political agitation of Jean-Luc Godard, Demy instead created a self-contained fantasy world closer to that of François Truffaut, drawing on musicals, fairytales and the golden age of Hollywood.

After working with the animator Paul Grimault and the filmmaker Georges Rouquier, Demy directed his first feature film, Lola, in 1961, with Anouk Aimée playing the eponymous cabaret singer. The Demy universe here emerges fully-fledged. Characters burst into song (courtesy of composer and lifelong Demy-collaborator Michel Legrand); iconic Hollywood imagery is lovingly appropriated as in the opening scene with the man in a white Stetson in the Cadillac, daringly set to Beethoven’s “Seventh Symphony”); plot is dictated by the director’s fascination with fate, and stock themes of chance encounters… read more

Original

Agnès Varda

Agnès Varda has been called the “Grandmother of the New Wave,” a well-meaning if curious tribute for a woman who directed her first feature film at the age of 26. Born in Brussels, Varda studied literature and psychology at the Sorbonne, and art history at the École du Louvre. She’d originally wanted to be a museum curator, but a night-school course in photography changed her mind. Rapidly establishing herself as a top-rank still photographer, Varda became the official cameraperson for the Theatre Festival of Avignon and the Theatre National Populaire, and then pursued a career as a photojournalist.

Encouraged by filmmaker Alain Resnais, Varda made her movie directorial bow in 1955 with La Pointe Courte. She based the film on a William Faulkner short story, to which she was attracted because of its parallel plotlines (a recurring device in her later films). That same year, she accompanied another future New Wave director, Chris Marker, to China as visual advisor for his Dimanche… read more

Wall

Displaying 4 of 13 wall posts.
Picture of Tara Violet

Tara Violet

6May12

I loved everything about it, everything

Picture of Joseph Judge

Joseph Judge

5Mar12

Convoluted and overstuffed, but I really wouldn't have it any other way.

Picture of Michael Harbour

Michael Harbour

17Jan12

The dance numbers are spiffy. The casualness with which everyone in the movie accepts everything from french fries to a dismembered body is odd and left me disengaged. If the people in the movie don't care, neither do I.

Picture of Hardyandnelson

Hardyandnelson

17Dec11

Un bijou intemporel à consommer sans modération ou du moins pour le talent de Françoise Dorléac , le charme de Catherine Deneuve et la voix d’éphèbe de Jacques Perrin .

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W184

Daily Viewing. Michel Legrand @ 80

By David Hudson on February 24, 2012

The clip, of course, has to come from Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964).

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