713-719 The Essential Jacques Demy

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bottled spider
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Re: 713-719 The Essential Jacques Demy

#126 Post by bottled spider » Wed Jul 29, 2015 2:56 pm

One of the discs in the set has a concordance of interconnections or somesuch, which pointed out that, as jindianajonz mentioned,
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the elderly victim in Demoiselles was apparently Lola
. I didn't pick up on that myself.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: 713-719 The Essential Jacques Demy

#127 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Jul 29, 2015 3:00 pm

How would Lola have gotten old enough to become an "elderly" character between 1961 and 1968. Even if one looks at Lola being as being set in the mid-50s, she would not be elderly by the mid-60s. ;-)

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zedz
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Re: 713-719 The Essential Jacques Demy

#128 Post by zedz » Wed Jul 29, 2015 4:03 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote:How would Lola have gotten old enough to become an "elderly" character between 1961 and 1968. Even if one looks at Lola being as being set in the mid-50s, she would not be elderly by the mid-60s. ;-)
That does sound screwy, especially since Lola returns (a little jaded, but hardly old) as the star of Demy's subsequent film, Model Shop. Maybe somebody got their wires crossed with those two late sixties films?

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bottled spider
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Re: 713-719 The Essential Jacques Demy

#129 Post by bottled spider » Wed Jul 29, 2015 5:41 pm

Sorry, I realize I must have completely misremembered the content of that extra. It's been a while since I've seen it, and I don't own the set, so I should have refrained from commenting. At the risk of burying myself further, maybe it was this: the mother of the young girl in Lola was a former dancer, and some remark made in passing by a character in Young Girls of Rochefort implies that the "elderly woman" in question is the mother from Lola?

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Re: 713-719 The Essential Jacques Demy

#130 Post by Jakamarak » Wed Jul 29, 2015 6:01 pm

It's been about a year since I watched the special features and read the essays associated with this collection, so I may have confused a few of my facts. I seemed to recall that Demy acknowledged Anouk Aimee's character was inspired by the Marlene Dietrich character in Von Sternberg's "The Blue Angel". Isn't the Dietrich character referred to as Lola-Lola? In "The Young Girls of Rochefort" isn't the dancer actually referred to as Lola-Lola? Would it make sense that the character that is murdered is not in fact Aimee's Lola, but Dietrich's Lola-Lola? Would Dietrich's Lola-Lola be about the right age in 1967?

Anyway, that was the theory I concocted.

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Re: 713-719 The Essential Jacques Demy

#131 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Jul 29, 2015 8:26 pm

Jakamarak -- interesting theory and maybe true. ;-)

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Re: 713-719 The Essential Jacques Demy

#132 Post by artfilmfan » Thu Jul 30, 2015 8:24 am

Due to the praises of Rochefort above, I decided to watch Rochefort again to re-assess my opinion of the film. The result: I still prefer Lola and Cherbourg over Rochefort. IMHO, Cherbourg is a much better film. The story, the emotions and the acting are more natural and realistic. The score and songs are more beautiful and memorable. Also, Rochefort came across as too Hollywoodish for my taste. This is not to say it's a bad film. It's just not my preferred cup of tea.

I didn't try to solve the Lola-Lola mystery, though.

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Re: 713-719 The Essential Jacques Demy

#133 Post by hearthesilence » Sun Dec 06, 2015 11:24 am

Just checked Lola on this set - the DNR really is terrible, in a way that it makes the whole picture resemble a crappy streaming video - what little grain remains is poorly rendered, as are many details that occasionally take on a cubic or rectangular outline in long shot. An incredible shame because this was done to the same exact restoration I saw projected at MoMA a little over 3 years ago (Anouk Aimée was even there to introduce it!) and it looked fabulous. Part of the appeal was the film's grainy look that actually felt like an attractive and deliberate stylization, similar to what one might imagine if they were told about the Italian Neo-Realists and the French New Wave for the first time.

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hearthesilence
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Re: 713-719 The Essential Jacques Demy

#134 Post by hearthesilence » Sun Dec 06, 2015 4:56 pm

Also, there's a problem with Une chambre en ville. The transfer looks great, up until the climactic march, and then suddenly the compression goes to shit. Anyone else notice this? It's a dramatic change that's immediately noticeable - you have this square jpeg-like compression tiled throughout the picture. Look at the top half of the screen at all the buildings in the background in the scene's opening wide shots, it's easy to make out.

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Re: 713-719 The Essential Jacques Demy

#135 Post by jsteffe » Mon Dec 07, 2015 2:20 am

hearthesilence wrote:Just checked Lola on this set - the DNR really is terrible, in a way that it makes the whole picture resemble a crappy streaming video - what little grain remains is poorly rendered, as are many details that occasionally take on a cubic or rectangular outline in long shot. An incredible shame because this was done to the same exact restoration I saw projected at MoMA a little over 3 years ago (Anouk Aimée was even there to introduce it!) and it looked fabulous. Part of the appeal was the film's grainy look that actually felt like an attractive and deliberate stylization, similar to what one might imagine if they were told about the Italian Neo-Realists and the French New Wave for the first time.
I think LOLA is the nadir of Criterion's Blu-ray releases for the reasons you describe, at least of the Criterion titles that I own. I'm relieved to hear that at least the original restoration looks better. Perhaps someone else will release it one day with less aggressive DNR.

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Re: 713-719 The Essential Jacques Demy

#136 Post by artfilmfan » Mon Dec 07, 2015 8:50 am

I think the previous restoration of Lola was used on the Arte Video DVD that was released in 2010. That DVD is my go-to version of the film. I don't know whether the currently available Arte DVD is the same one that came out in 2010 or whether the new restoration is used on it. It's worth finding out whether Mr Bongo Films' DVD (which came out in 2010) used that previous restoration since it's still available and is relatively inexpensive.

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Re: 713-719 The Essential Jacques Demy

#137 Post by ianthemovie » Mon May 09, 2016 10:27 pm

I realize that I'm not saying anything new here, but I finally got around to watching Lola last night and good lord it looks bad. It reminded me of those Kino Lorber DVDs from circa 1998-1999 (of which I think Lola was one). The word I kept coming back to was smeary. The blacks look shallow and there's a real dingy feel to many of the shots, with actors frequently blurring into the background.

I watched the 10-minute "restoration demonstration" and remain baffled that so much work was put into restoring this, with such disappointing results. I realize they were working with limited resources but do Mathieu Demy and that Tom Burton guy actually think it came out looking good? It would have been great if they could have gotten Coutard involved, at least to approve of some of the decisions about the lighting and use of contrast. The video footage of the guys in the booth going "hmm...I think maybe it should be a little more like this..." does little to inspire confidence.

It's a real shame because the film remains great; I had forgotten many of the complicated twists of the plot, so it was a pleasure to revisit. It's also too bad because everything else about this set is just jaw-droppingly gorgeous, IMO, right down to the design of the digipak which looks like a box of pastel candies.

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Re: 713-719 The Essential Jacques Demy

#138 Post by diamonds » Mon Jan 02, 2017 2:57 pm

Like I'm sure a few members of this board do, I follow Armond White's sometimes delirious but always entertaining reviews, and recently read his article on La La Land entitled "La La Land is Not Gay Enough". In it, he of course brings up Demy and names The Umbrellas of Cherbourg as one of films he'd put on a "syllabus for Gay Cinema 102."

The crux of the article concerns how camp, in his view the coded way in which gays historically could subvert conventionality, is not present in Chazelle's film. He has written elsewhere about Channing Tatum's sailor dance number in Hail, Caesar! as a good example of what he's talking about. Since I don't know much about queer cinema, my question is, how might Umbrellas be read as a gay film?

I can see what I think he's talking about in Demy's Rochefort, and I remember reading an article about Une chambre en ville that identified codes in the rendezvous between Édith and François that would be instantly recognizable to gay men (I believe was their words). Are there moments like this in Umbrellas? The only scene I can think of that might constitute camp is the scene on the bicycle where the two are floating down the street. Is that the right line of thinking? Or is Armond projecting?

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Re: 713-719 The Essential Jacques Demy

#139 Post by knives » Mon Jan 02, 2017 6:12 pm

Armond is definitely projecting on some level and frankly I don't know why La La Land would need to be gay since there are already plenty of straight musicals and that Hail, Caesar! parody is awful. That said the queer elements of Demy's cinema are well spoken of with prominence in quite a few films. Though if my memory is holding out it is rather tertiary in Umbrellas

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tenia
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Re: 713-719 The Essential Jacques Demy

#140 Post by tenia » Tue Jan 03, 2017 1:41 am

knives wrote:Though if my memory is holding out it is rather tertiary in Umbrellas
Even less than tertiary, when the movie is a tragic love story with Algerian War as a background.

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Mr Sausage
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The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy, 1967)

#141 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Sep 18, 2017 6:20 am

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Re: The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jaques Demy, 1967)

#142 Post by bottled spider » Mon Sep 18, 2017 6:52 pm

The murder subplot might be likened to a severed toe in a bowl of lemon sorbet. What is the function of including such a grisly subplot? Its treatment may come across as jocular, and thereby callous. Is it?

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Re: The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jaques Demy, 1967)

#143 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Sep 18, 2017 7:37 pm

bottled spider wrote:The murder subplot might be likened to a severed toe in a bowl of lemon sorbet. What is the function of including such a grisly subplot? Its treatment may come across as jocular, and thereby callous. Is it?
I always hear that and another moments used as evidence of Demy darkening what seem like light, happy narratives by introducing unpleasant elements. But I've always thought the opposite: rather than making light things dark, Demy makes dark things light. Even a murder can't escape the candy-coloured cheeriness of the movie: the tone subordinates even something ugly like sex murder. When revealed, the characters (and movie I guess) treat the murderer with an attitude of 'that old scoundrel. Never thought he had it in him'. They, and the movie surrounding them, are utterly unruffled. Perhaps this is some kind of massive subversion, revealing the entirety of this bright, happy, joyous world to be covering a canker, a void where true human feeling and sympathy are absent. But I doubt it. Such a world ought to crumble under the weight of such a total undermining, and yet it continues on, happily itself, remaining whole. So I think the opposite is true: it's not the murder that subsumes the world, it's the world that subsumes the murder. I think the moment just reveals the voraciousness of the movie's artificiality: it can convert any material into itself. The surface is so strong and genuine in its construction and pleasure that it converts deeper issues to pure surface as well.

I see the same thing happening in a couple other Demy films (eg. the incest subplot in Donkey Skin which, while odd, is similarly weightless and about as convincing as the minute daubs of mud with which Deneuve uglies herself). I suspect a lot of critics over-represent these elements as a way to lend the more simple, childlike elements of the films a respectable seriousness. But I suspect Demy would laugh at this, and that his intent is far more like 'I can make even ugly things joyful, you just watch.' It's a kind of opposite Brothers Grimm: in those stories, simple children's tales are often grotesque and serious, whereas in Demy even weighty social realities take on a fairy tale's effervescence.

So, yeah, I don't believe in any of the social realities of The Young Girls of Rochefort or The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, no matter how close to modern issues they lean. But I believe in them fully as aesthetic experiences, as constructed worlds with a life and energy of their own. And in that, I see no reason to find these private cinematic worlds callous for not also having my social reality's emotional baggage. There is just no room for horror and despair in these worlds, as there really wasn't in the classic Hollywood musical. Maybe this is all a self-aware comment on the nature of Hollywood musical artifice--but if it is, it's not a critique or a judgement. It just probes what kind of emotions the form can and cannot contain as a way to understand what the film is and how it works. That is, if it is indeed reflexive (and it may not be), it's purely in a cataloguing and labeling spirit.

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Re: The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jaques Demy, 1967)

#144 Post by Michael Kerpan » Mon Sep 18, 2017 7:48 pm

> ...whereas in Demy even weighty social realities take on a fairy tale's effervescence.

Maybe this is why I (paradoxically?) appreciate his A Room in Town more than the other musicals....

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Re: The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jaques Demy, 1967)

#145 Post by domino harvey » Mon Sep 18, 2017 7:59 pm

I agree with Mr Sausage, the murder subplot darkens nothing here, and a reading of it as imposing the cruel hard world into the joyous musical frenzy of our characters is inaccurate and not supported by the film. It's a bit like Zazie for me-- by not treating some truly horrible elements as serious threats, the film is effectively more effervescent and carefree than it would be set in a world where these things don't exist

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Re: The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy, 1967)

#146 Post by Morbii » Tue Sep 19, 2017 3:33 am

I watched this film for the first time several months back, and found it to be delightful. I liked the nearly whole set (Criterion), really. I expected to hate this film because I'm not big on musicals, but it ended up being my favorite of the bunch. I was going to write a post back when I watched, but never got around to it and sadly am a bit out of touch with it all now.

Rather than consider Demy making things dark (or the reverse), I was mostly just entertained by what I decided was Demy's "delightfully morbid" side (reflected much more richly in Donkey Skin, even if I didn't enjoy the film).

Am I the only one that thought Gramps might be Frankie from Lola?

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Re: The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy, 1967)

#147 Post by bottled spider » Wed Sep 20, 2017 6:42 pm

The first time I watched it, I thought the manner in which the murder was presented was a gross lapse in taste and judgment. I wasn't bothered the next time I saw it, but still had the impression Demy intended the viewer to sit up and think 'what the hell is that doing in this kind of movie'. (If so, he succeeded decades later with one lone viewer in the hinterlands of Canada).

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Re: The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy, 1967)

#148 Post by Morbii » Wed Sep 20, 2017 7:22 pm

I remember feeling it was out of place, too, but in some ways it makes the film more real (there is evil in the world), and I do think Mr. Sausage above makes some interesting points.

I think Bay of Angels was a good example of him juxtaposing dark (addiction) and light (love) too, where ultimately the darkness won (IIRC).

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Re: 713-719 The Essential Jacques Demy

#149 Post by rohmerin » Sun Oct 01, 2017 11:03 am

I have bought the UK studio canal one in HMV at Oxford Street, London and merde !!! There's no French subtitles like the French one.
If I would known it... or read the back cover.

Another example of a French film perfect for improving French.
I know the film by heart but I don't know how to write well the words they use.

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Re: 713-719 The Essential Jacques Demy

#150 Post by teddyleevin » Thu Oct 05, 2017 12:24 am

A big issue I have with viewing musicals like this as a person with generally good French (but just not good enough to watch without subtitles) is the choice to use rhyming lyrics in the English subtitles, sometimes sacrificing the original poetry. I'm not sure if the Rochefort subtitles come from the "lost" English version, though that would provide some historical importance.

It's a discussion that comes up in my work a lot which includes translating operas for the purpose of supertitles, sometimes dealing with rhyming text or hard-to-translate wordplay. In a general sense, I find it to be a rather dissonant experience to be reading one rhyme in English while my ear hears another rhyme in French; regardless of whether or not I caught those words in French, I probably heard the rhyme and, if not, the fact that the English titles rhymed would telegraph to me that my ear would be hearing one in French. I consider it the one major downside of this set that these lyrics aren't just delivered as direct translations, letting the viewer enjoy the candy of the original poetry. A bonus of improving my French (and memorizing much of this wonderful music) would be turning the subtitles off entirely.

(Leading to another issue I have with many discs of foreign-language films that contain English sections that don't have an option that subtitles the English sections for the hard-of-hearing).

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