"I like it a lot too."
For two films released less than a week apart in March 1967, in the same country and with their marketing eyes presumably fixed on an overlapping segment of the cinema audiences of their time, it's hard to imagine that the contrasts in style and method could be any more stark than they are in Eric Rohmer's La collectionneuse (the previous title reviewed on this blog) and Jacques Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort. The former, a dour dissection of hedonistic narcissism and cruel sexual manipulation in a trio of unlikable, excessively privileged young people, was filmed on such a tight budget that the director would call "Action!" before he started the cameras rolling to save money on film. The latter, an expensive, exuberant, irrepressibly cheerful celebration of love and infatuation among beautiful working class people more adorable than they have the right to be, even as their relationships are shot through with poignant longing and a melancholy lack of resolution.
La collectionneuse is, in keeping with Rohmer's trademark style, a first-person narrative suffused with endless dialogues that consistently veer between articulate philosophizing on matters worthy of reflective consideration and preening self-absorbed justification of rank selfishness. After experiencing the global success of 1964's musical sensation The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Demy built upon that film's formula with brilliant innovations in crafting his follow-up. The Young Girls of Rochefort aims to seduce us in a flourish of bouncy, jazz-inflected show tunes, bright pastel fabrics, splashy sunshine, supple dancers twirling around indoors and out, and romantic flirtations simultaneously tantalizing and wistful.
Both directors were associated to some extent with the French nouvelle vague, even though that wave was definitely receding at the time, and some would argue that it had already long since pulled away from the shore. But Rohmer came from that Cahiers du cinema group, characterized by a more militant and critical approach to filmmaking, more famously championed by directors like Godard, Chabrol and Truffaut. For them, the movies were a life-consuming, ego-defining commitment to be contended for with fervent, quasi-religious zeal. Demy associated with the Left Bank wing of the French New Wave, which took a softer stance and had fewer qualms with stylistic choices that appealed to the masses, while also offering enough intrigue to please viewers with a more intellectualized appreciation of cinema. They regarded film as a relatively young medium, still establishing its place among the other respectable arts, which they sought to incorporate graciously into their own craft. I'm speaking in broad generalizations here, but I think the argument holds up well enough, if subjected to critical scrutiny. (Let me know if you think I'm off base!)
As far as a review of the film goes, this is a tough one for me to write about, because writing anything resembling a plot synopsis mostly has the effect of deflating the sense of euphoric enthusiasm I have coming off of yet another rewatch, my third in the past four days. And in between I've been listening to the soundtrack via my phone and its Bluetooth technology, where I just stream it on Hulu and let it play through my speakers at work and in my car. Even when the audio is just people talking to each other, the effect is irrepressibly musical.
But there is a story here to tie so many vibrant elements together, a tale of passionate hearts seeking their satisfaction in lovers idealized, imagined or remembered from long ago, wondering when or if their yearning will ever cease, pulled forward in time to pursue their dreams by an intuition that fulfillment is not all that far away, but all too humanly distracted by the mundane to remain attentive to just how proximate the end of their wandering could be. The sisters Catherine Deneuve and Francoise Dorleac are indelibly charming, thoroughly delightful to look at, even if they're really not singing. Their on-screen mother Danielle Darrieux was such an unexpected pleasure for me to see again after I fell into such a deep infatuation with her five years ago after watching The Earrings of Madame de...
Gene Kelly also provides a serendipitous surprise. I had no idea he was going to be in this film until he just popped up, flashing his trademark toothy grin, gliding his limbs in all directions with immaculatly smooth agility. The freshly scrubbed and painted city, captured in saturated colors, is immortalized, along with its inhabitants as extras, by swooping cameras in a ravishing widescreen sprawl. There's that guy from West Side Story, one of the irrepressible carnies trying to keep their shimmy girls content and part of the crew, and all the rest of that splendid supporting cast, each one an epitome of sorts for some vital aspect of how we humans cope with the promises and disappointments of love. But mostly it's a movie that really moves itself along, physically and emotionally at a pace so brisk and playful that I hardly feel like sitting back and analyzing the motion all that deeply. Getting caught up in the swirl of sensations is more fitting with the film's intentions, and doing so preserves the element of surprise that will yield new delights and discoveries even after watching it several times through, as all great musicals are meant to be experienced - over and over again.
Given the amount of money (a lot) that was spent to realize Demy's and composer Michel LeGrand's vision in The Young Girls of Rochefort, it's fair to say that they and the talent assembled to make this film were all intent on crafting another hugely successful crowd pleaser that would reach well beyond the scope of the art house contingent. And while the original box office take apparently didn't quite live up to the studio's expectations, I can only conclude that their ambitions were brilliantly realized, at least in artistic terms. Maybe audiences that turned out to be a bit indifferent or unimpressed in its original run had already been over-exposed to big budget musical spectacles of this sort back when those types of films were released much more frequently than they are today. To my eyes, The Young Girls of Rochefort looks like a miracle, and I'm happy to live in a world where such a marvel as this film exists. I only got around to watching it for the first time this week, and I immediately bonded with it. My biggest, and only, regret about it is that I've lived this many years without having the music and imagery and irrepressible spirit of this amazing production in my mind and heart. But it's there now, and the joy makes up for that lost time.