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Jacques Demy | |
|---|---|
 Demy in 1956 | |
| Born | (1931-06-05)5 June 1931 Pontchâteau, France |
| Died | 27 October 1990(1990-10-27) (aged 59) Paris, France |
| Resting place | Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris, France |
| Occupations |
|
| Years active | 1955–1988 |
| Movement | French New Wave |
| Spouse | |
| Children | Rosalie Varda (step-daughter) Mathieu Demy |
Jacques Demy (French:[ʒakdəmi]; 5 June 1931 – 27 October 1990) was a French director, screenwriter and lyricist. He appeared at the height of theFrench New Wave alongside contemporaries likeJean-Luc Godard andFrançois Truffaut. Demy's films are celebrated for theirvisual style, which drew upon diverse sources such as classic Hollywood musicals, theplein-airrealism of his French New Wave colleagues,fairy tales,jazz,Japanese manga, and theopera. His films contain overlappingcontinuity (i.e., characters cross over from film to film), lush musical scores (typically composed byMichel Legrand) and motifs like teenage love,labor rights, chance encounters, incest, and the intersection between dreams and reality. He was married toAgnès Varda, another prominent director of the French New Wave. Demy is best known for the two musicals he directed in the mid-1960s:The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) andThe Young Girls of Rochefort (1967).
After working with the animatorPaul Grimault and the filmmakerGeorges Rouquier, Demy directedLola, his first feature film, in 1961, withAnouk Aimée playing the eponymous cabaret singer. The Demy universe emerges here: Characters burst into song (courtesy of composer and lifelong Demy-collaboratorMichel Legrand); iconic Hollywood imagery is appropriated, as in the opening scene with the man in a white Stetson in the Cadillac; plot is dictated by the director's fascination with fate and stock themes of chance encounters and long-lost love; and the setting, as with many of Demy's films, is the French Atlantic coast of his childhood, specifically the seaport town of Nantes.
La Baie des Anges (The Bay of Angels, 1963), starringJeanne Moreau, took the theme of fate further, with its story of love at the roulette tables.
Demy is perhaps best known for his original musicalLes Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 1964), with a score by Legrand. The whimsical concept of singing all the dialogue sets the tone for this tragedy of the everyday. The film also sees the emergence of Demy's trademark visual style, shot in saturated supercolour, with every detail—neckties, wallpaper,Catherine Deneuve's bleached-blonde hair—selected for visual impact. Roland Cassard, the young man fromLola (Marc Michel) reappears here, marrying Deneuve's character. Such reappearances are typical of Demy's work.Kurt Vonnegut was a huge fan ofLes Parapluies, writing in private correspondence: "I sawThe Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I took very hard. To an unmoored, middle-aged man like myself, it was heart-breaking. That's all right. I like to have my heart broken."
Demy's subsequent films never quite captured audience and critical acclaim the wayLes Parapluies did, although he continued to make ambitious and original dramas and musicals.Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967), another whimsical-yet-melancholic musical, features Deneuve and her sisterFrançoise Dorléac as sisters living in the seaside town ofRochefort, daughters ofDanielle Darrieux. It was shot in color widescreenCinemaScope and featured an Oscar-nominated musical score as well as dance appearances byGene Kelly andWest Side Story'sGeorge Chakiris.
In 1968, afterColumbia Pictures gave Demy a lucrative offer to shoot his first film in America, he and his wife, film directorAgnès Varda, moved to Los Angeles briefly. Demy's movie was a naturalistic drama: 1969'sModel Shop. Lola (Anouk Aimée) reappears, her dreams shattered, her life having taken a turn for the worse. Abandoned by her husband Michel for a female gambler named Jackie Demaistre (Jeanne Moreau's character fromBay of Angels), Lola is scrounging to make enough money to return to France and her child by working as a nude model in a backdoor model-shop on theSunset Strip. She runs into an aimless, young architect (Gary Lockwood), who navigates the streets of Los Angeles; like Lola, he is looking for love and meaning in life.Model Shop is a time capsule of late-1960s Los Angeles and documents the death of the hippie movement, the Vietnam draft, and the ennui and misery that results from broken relationships. This bleakness and decided lack of whimsy—uncharacteristic for Demy—had a large amount to do withModel Shop's critical and commercial failure.
Peau d'Âne (Donkey Skin, 1970) was a step in the opposite direction as a visually extravagant musical interpretation of a classic French fairy tale which highlights the tale's incestuous overtones, starring Deneuve,Jean Marais, andDelphine Seyrig. It was Demy's first foray into the world of fairy tales and historical fantasia, which he explored inThe Pied Piper andLady Oscar.
Although none of Demy's subsequent films captured the contemporary success of his earlier work, some have been reappraised:David Thomson wrote about "the fascinating application of the operatic technique to an unusually dark story" inUne chambre en ville (A Room in Town, 1982).[citation needed]L'événement le plus important depuis que l'homme a marché sur la lune (1973) ("A Slightly Pregnant Man") is a look back at the pressures ofsecond-wave feminism in France and the fears it elicited in men.Lady Oscar (1979), based on the Japanese manga seriesThe Rose of Versailles, has been discussed and analyzed for itsqueer and political subtext (the title character is born female, her father raises her as a male so she can get ahead in 18th-century French aristocracy, and she eventually falls in love with her surrogate brother, a working-class revolutionary).
Parapluies de Cherbourg has been color-restored twice from original prints by Demy. In 2014,The Criterion Collection released a boxed set of Demy's "essential" work, with hours of supplements, essays, and restored image and sound. The films includeLola,Bay of Angels,The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,The Young Girls of Rochefort,Donkey Skin, andUne Chambre en Ville as well as most of Demy's early short films.
As a student, Demy did not learn any foreign languages. In the 1960s, with the help of some classes, internships, and spending some time in the United States, he learned English. At the time of the Anouchka project, which took many years to complete, he also learned Russian.[1]In the early 1970s, taking after the example ofMichel Legrand, he earned hisprivate pilot's license for passenger planes.[2]
Jacques Demy was bisexual.[3] In 1958, Jacques Demy andAgnès Varda met at a short film festival in Tours. The two married in 1962. They had a son together,Mathieu Demy (born 1972), and Demy also adopted Varda's daughter,Rosalie Varda (born 1958), whom she had withAntoine Bourseiller in a previous relationship.[4] Together, Demy and Varda owned a home in Paris and another property with an old mill on theNoirmoutier Island inVendée, where the shots of Demy on a beach inJacquot de Nantes (1991) were taken. The film is a version of Demy's autobiographical notebooks, an account of Demy's childhood and his lifelong love of theatre and cinema. Varda paid homage to her husband inJacquot de Nantes,Les demoiselles ont eu 25 ans (1993), andL’Univers de Jacques Demy (1995).
Demy died on October 27, 1990, at the age of 59.[5][6] Originally, it was reported that he died ofcancer,[7] but in 2008 Varda revealed that Demy died ofHIV/AIDS.[8][9][10] He was buried at theMontparnasse Cemetery in Paris.[11]
| Year | English title | Director | Writer | Original title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1961 | Lola | Yes | Yes | |
| 1963 | Bay of Angels | Yes | Yes | La Baie des Anges |
| 1964 | The Umbrellas of Cherbourg | Yes | Yes | Les Parapluies de Cherbourg |
| 1967 | The Young Girls of Rochefort | Yes | Yes | Les Demoiselles de Rochefort |
| 1969 | Model Shop | Yes | Yes | |
| 1970 | Donkey Skin | Yes | Yes | Peau d'Âne |
| 1972 | The Pied Piper | Yes | Yes | |
| 1973 | A Slightly Pregnant Man | Yes | Yes | L'événement le plus important depuis que l'homme a marché sur la lune |
| 1979 | Lady Oscar | Yes | Yes | |
| 1982 | A Room in Town | Yes | Yes | Une chambre en ville |
| 1985 | Parking | Yes | Yes | |
| 1988 | The Turntable | Yes | Yes | La table tournante |
| 1988 | Three Seats for the 26th | Yes | Yes | Trois places pour le 26 |
| Year | English title | Director | Writer | Original title | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1951 | Dead Horizons | Yes | Yes | Les horizons morts | |
| 1956 | The clog maker of the Loire Valley | Yes | Yes | Le sabotier du Val de Loire | Documentary short |
| 1957 | The Beautiful Indifferent | Yes | No | Le bel indifférent | |
| 1958 | Grévin Museum | Yes | No | Musée Grévin | |
| 1959 | Mother and Child | Yes | No | La mère et l'enfant | |
| 1959 | Ars | Yes | Yes | Ars | Documentary short |
| 1962 | Lust | Yes | Yes | La luxure | An episode inThe Seven Deadly Sins |
| Year | English title | Director | Writer | Original title | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1980 | Break of Day | Yes | Yes | La Naissance du Jour | Part ofLe roman du samedi. Television movie. |
On 5 June 2019, on Demy's 88th birthday, he was honored with aGoogle Doodle.[12]
