Euphoria #27: “Make sure that your umbrella is upside-down.”
Newly-declared Shadowplayer Matthew McConkey (if that really IS his name) nominates this blissful melancholia and bittersweet charm in title-sequence form, as his Cinema Euphoria du jour.
I had misremembered it! I vaguely thought the titles were different colours relating to the hue of the passing parapluies, but NO! That’s the coloured darts in the title sequence of HELP! This is less pop-art but utterly lovely.
Some “flaws” that aren’t: the way the camera has to tilt down before the rain starts, and tilt up AFTER it’s finished, because they don’t have a rain machine big enough to drench the whole port. It works beautifully as a piece of abstract camera choreography, and if there’s a little bit of economics making it happen in THIS precise way, that’s all part of Demy’s artistry. He makes budgetary considerations into aesthetics.
The way the rain is visibly pouring off the camera crane itself, in a couple of big obvious trickles. Who cares? It’s right out there, and if they’d been bothered by that, they wouldn’t have been able to do this shot at all, and it’s a gorgeous shot, so accept it, like the floorboards that creak whenever the camera moves in Rivette’s DUELLE: REJOICE in it!
A couple of things that HAVE slightly bothered me:
(1) The plot is on the simple side. It’s basically one-third of Pagnol’s FANNY trilogy, stripped of the more amusing older characters (does anybody ever mentionRaimu anymore? A Film Great!). Which means it limps along a little. But it IS heading for the most gloriously sad-sweet conclusion, in cinema’s most beautiful petrol station, so it’s all worthwhile.
(2) The colours. In this scene, and the ending, and many others, they are JUST SUBLIME. In a few scenes, they border on visual armageddon. The stripes in Deneuve’s mum’s wallpaper? Those colours just Don’t Belong Together. Scenes like this perpetrate more injury to the eyeball than Lucio Fulci managed in his ENTIRE CAREER.
(3) Catherine Deneuve. I know, I know, she IS the Queen of France or whatever, and her unused ice-rink of a persona works beautifully in BELLE DE JOUR and most other stuff, but I dunno, maybe somebody WARMER? She’s perfect at the end though, for mysterious poetic reasons that can’t be defined.
(4) The songs. Er, song. Shouldn’t there be more than one? I mean, it’s a truly great song, but can you get by on just the one? Maybe you could, if somebody would SING it, a definitive version of it…
These, if I took them seriously, would be serious flaws indeed. But somehow I don’t care. I tend to regard LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT as the great musical, the great film, and this as a Beginning and Ending of such transcendency and transplendency as to obviate any need for a film in between.
So it DOESN’T MATTER WHAT I THINK!
January 24, 2008 at 1:18 am
Les Demoiselle is a genuine musical comedy with songs and dances. Les Parapluies is a film en chant IOW a sung soundtrack.
Varda’s Jeannot explains how everything in Les Parapluies is absolutely real. The plot was something that actually happened to a couple in the neighborhood where Jacques’ parents ran a garage.
La Deneuve’s mixture of warmth and heat is unique and central to her Absolute Goddess status. The climax of the film in this regard is the fast track toward her as she is revealed wearing her wedding dress.
Jacques was a truly unusual person. Roland in Lola is as close as he got to a self-portrait. That’s him — always dreamy, half asleep and un petit triste.
My dearest memories are singing a passage of the score with him a capella at a party given in his honor in Hollywood back in the late 70’s and seeing him again in Paris in 84, late one night at La Cupole. He was going into production on what would be his last film, Trois Places our le 26th, but Matthieu had a cold and he wanted to rush home to care for him. He was such a good mother.
I met Deneuve twice. The first time was in 1970 at the New York Film Festival. She was there with Truffaut — he for L’Enfant Sauvage she for Tristana. In the afternoon we were in the same revolving door together, she coming in me leaving. Noticing that I noticed her she turned on that 24-watt smile full force. Overwhelming!
In the mid-80’s she was in L.A. for a Film event. A party was being given in her honor at some French attache’s home in Beverly Hills. The place was mobbed and hysterical. I found myself siting next to her on a couch while the action roiled around us. I asked her if she was alright. She was terribly amused by it all and assured me she was OK. So we chatted a bit in this human maelstrom. Clearly this wasn’t the first time she’d been in such a scene.
January 24, 2008 at 8:03 am
Both films rank high among my guilty peasures, but I think, picking up on the “real story” assertion mentioned in David Ehrenstein’s post, Les Parapluies has a greater emotional impact. Les Desmoiselles, however, is piece of irresistible candy-coloured froth that’s camper than a pink tent on Everest. Forced to choose between the final filling station scene in Les Parapluies and the introductory Chanson des Jumelles duet by Deneuve and Dorleac in Les Desmoiselles, I’d have to go for the former because of its emotional resonance.
January 24, 2008 at 9:27 am
Then there’s Peau D’Ane, with Deneuve’s duet with her fairy godmother about how father-daughter incest is a bad idea…rather odd!
I guess Deneuve must be well-used to the celebrity maelstrom by now. Love the revolving door story.
I have Jacquot de Nantes lined up to watch sometime, hopefully soon!
January 24, 2008 at 2:59 pm
“Guy’s” little boy playing in the snow in the ESSO station finale of Les Parapluies is played by Michael Legrand’s son.