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| Jacques
Demy |
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| Director
/ Screenwriter |
| 1931 - 1990 |
| Born June 5,
Pontchateau, Loire-Atlantique, Payes-de-la-Loire, France |
| Key
Production Country: France |
| Key Genres:
Musical, Romance, Musical Romance |
| Key
Collaborators: Bernard
Evein (Production Designer), Michel Legrand (Composer), Catherine
Deneuve (Leading Player), Marc Michel (Leading Player), Mag Bodard
(Producer), Michel Piccoli (Leading Character Player), Jean Rabier
(Cinematographer), Anne-Marie Cotret (Editor), Monique Teisseire
(Editor), Danielle Darrieux (Character Player) |
| Highly
Recommended: The
Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), The Young Girls of Rochefort
(1967) |
| Recommended: Lola
(1961) |
| Links:
[
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [ All-Movie
Guide ] [ Senses
of Cinema: Great Directors ] [
Film Reference ] [
Encyclopedia of European Cinema Biography ] [
Wikipedia ] [
Strictly
Film School ] [
Flickhead Article (2004) ] [
Zeitgeist Films Biography ] |
| DVD's:
[ Amazon
] |
| 1,000
Greatest Films: Lola (1961),
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) |
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"A
whimsical purveyor of modern fairytales, Jacques Demy was one of
the rare French directors to make musicals. Demy was brought up
in Nantes (see his widow Agnès Varda's
film, Jacquot de Nantes, 1991), where his first film,
Lola (1961), was set. Its circular construction, frothiness,
and long tracking shots are reminiscent of
Max Ophüls, the film's dedicatee" -
Ronald Bergan (Film - Eyewitness Companions, 2006) |
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"It
is not so much that Demy doesn't believe in happy endings: he
simply doesn't believe in permanent ones (as "life is
movement"). The ambivalent, bittersweet "feel" of Demy is
perhaps best summed up in the end of Les Parapluies de
Cherbourg, where the lovers, now both married to others,
accidentally meet, implicitly acknowledge their love, and return
with acceptance to the relationships to which they are committed." -
Robin Wood & Rob Edelman (The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, 1998) |
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"Demy
was more of a stage manager than a director, but, as Gilbert and
Sullivan would have put it, 'a good one too'. He arranged his
characters, his settings, with loving care, then tracked around
them with fluid and caressing camera. Demy created fairy-tale
worlds in miniature, whether in actual fairytales, like The
Pied Piper, or modern fables set to music (mainly by Michel
Legrand). Either way, his keying of pastel shades is unique in
the cinema. Apart possibly from
Franco Zeffirelli, no-one made films as prettily as
Demy." - David
Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999) |
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"Perhaps the only non-American to lense quality musicals, Demy
guided the touching, innovate Umbrellas of Cherbourg
(64), which features singing in place of dialogue and the
energetic The Young Girls of Rochefort (68)." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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