Umbrellas Of Cherbourg
What:
Umbrellas Of Cherbourg (1964)
When:
Out now
Where:
On DVD from Aztec International, along with other remastered Jacques Demy releases like The Young Girls of Rochefort
Watch a clip:
Here
There's a certain subset of people who'll happily accept all kinds of ridiculousness in their cinema - guns that never need reloading, perfectly choreographed sex scenes, coincidence upon coincidence - but instantly dismiss anything in which the cast bursts into song.
In Jacques Demy's 1964 classic, the songs don't burst free; they just are. Every word in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is sung, with a score that was structured around patterns of everyday conversation. This means it's not about the songs, but the singing, and how conversation is transformed by the act of running it through melody.
Despite being one of the most colour-saturated films ever made - you'll be seeing pastel splotches for hours afterwards - it refuses to fall into the pink goo of Hollywood happy endings. It begins with young lovers defying logic and embracing clichés to be together, and it ends somewhere very different, someplace very cold.
If you're still rolling your eyes dismissively when a young Catherine Deneuve is singing "Je t'aime... Je t'aime... Je t'aime..." as a train carries away the man she loves, go to a doctor. Explain how you're still alive without a beating heart.
Format: DVD
Mood: Whimsical
Keywords: Jacques Demy, Musical
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