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Posted: |
Apr 14, 2019 - 3:51 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In 1958, while living in Paris, Agnes Varda met her future husband, Jacques Demy, also a French director. They moved in together in 1959. She was married to Demy from 1962 until his death in 1990. Varda made several films about Demy and his work. One was 1993's THE YOUNG GIRLS TURN 25 ("Les demoiselles ont eu 25 ans"), which was a look back Demy's 1968 film THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT. In this documentary, 25 years later, the performers return to the village where the film was shot.
Varda’s approach is loose, jumping between the town's celebration and her own archival behind-the-scenes 16mm footage, such as Demy dancing and singing along to one of the musical numbers. There are interviews with Catherine Deneuve, Michel Legrand, Jacques Perrin and various other people associated with the film. And there is a sad moment when Rochefort locations are dedicated to the memories of Demy and Françoise Dorléac, who was Deneuve's sister in real-life (as well as in the film) and who died in a tragic car crash just 3 months after the film opened..
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Posted: |
Apr 14, 2019 - 4:29 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Anges Varda looked at Jacques Demy's entire career in her 1995 documentary THE WORLD OF JACQUES DEMY. Said Varda: "After doing a fiction film about Jacque's childhood ("Jacquot de Nantes"), my idea was to make a documentary—a relatively objective one—about Jacques Demy, as an adult and a filmmaker. I recorded reminiscences and asked for reactions. I provided some of my personal memories and documents about him, but I often was regaled by his friends, his entourage, the actors and actresses who had worked with him, as well as fans and three demoiselles who never met him but who moved naturally through his world."
With the aid of cinematographers Stephane Krausz, Peter Pilafian, and Georges Strouve, along with editor Marie-Josee Audiard and the sound work of Thierry Ferreux and Jean-Luc Rault-Cheynet, Varda chooses a different approach to narrative where she goes for a more non-linear look into Demy’s life and work.
The film also showcases Demy’s brief flirtation in Hollywood when he was making MODEL SHOP as a sequel to LOLA with Anouk Aimee, where the original male lead was supposed to be an up-and-coming actor named Harrison Ford. Ford talks about how much Demy and one of the film’s producers wanted him to be in the film. Instead, Columbia chose Gary Lockwood of 2001: A SPACE OSYSSEY for the role, which Demy wasn’t happy with though the resulting film was something Demy thought was good but not great.
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Posted: |
Apr 14, 2019 - 5:04 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Although names such as Godard and Truffaut spring first to mind when the French New Wave is mentioned, Agnes Varda made her first feature film years before either of them. Said Varda: "They called me 'The Ancestor of the New Wave' when I was only 30. I had seen very few films, which, in a way, gave me both the naivety and the daring to do what I did." In 2017, Agnes Varda received an Honorary Oscar in recognition of "her compassion and curiosity [which] inform a uniquely personal cinema".
Winners of the 2017 Honorary Oscars; (clockwise from upper left) Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Charles Burnett, Donald Sutherland, Owen Roizman, and Agnès Varda
Agnes Varda and Jacques Demy
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