Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by clarkjohnsen (R) on January 02, 2002 at 09:42:52

Most remember Jacques Demy for Umbrellas of Cherbourg, but he was much more than a colorist, which I had forgotten until reading the following article in the Boston Globe today. Very interesting! Here ya go.

VINTAGE FILMS

Two restored Demy films leave something to chance

By Leighton Klein, Globe Staff, 1/2/2002

While we like to believe we're in control of our lives, chance is generally in the driver's seat. The job you didn't get because you were a heartbeat too late; the apartment you could have found if only you'd rounded that last corner; the love of your life you blithely walked past, not knowing.

''Lola'' and ''Bay of Angels,'' two little-seen Jacques Demy classics opening tonight at the Brattle Theatre, plunge deep into the game of chance we play every day. The first centers on a nightclub dancer abandoned years before by the father of her child, the second on two gamblers' descent into what could be love, or maybe just convenience. Both films are worth not just seeing, but watching closely. With Demy, God is in the details, and fate as well.

Recently restored under the direction of filmmaker Agnes Varda, Demy's widow, the films are making a welcome return to area screens after a lengthy absence. In the case of ''Bay of Angels,'' it hasn't been screened since its initial release in 1963. And while ''Lola'' is more familiar, it's been seen in increasingly poor prints since the original negative was lost in a fire in 1970.

Demy is best known for ''The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,'' his innovative 1964 musical. Sung completely in recitative and filmed in eye-popping colors, it made a star of Catherine Deneuve and overshadowed much of Demy's prior and, in many ways, subsequent work. (Tellingly, ''candy colored'' is the adjective many critics use when describing his films, even though his features prior to ''Cherbourg'' were in black and white.)

''Lola,'' Demy's full-length debut, was a love song to his hometown, Nantes, on France's Atlantic coast. Originally envisioned as a musical, the film follows a group of friends, acquaintances, and strangers as they make their way through the port city's streets. Lola (Anouk Aimee) dances at ''L'Eldorado,'' heaven's own clip joint, and passes time with an American sailor, but only because he happens to remind her of a long-departed lover. Roland (Marc Michel), a failed violinist, drags himself from job to bar to shop, uninterested in life and cynical about all things. Mrs. Desnoyers (Elina Labourdette), a widow, tries to raise her daughter alone, while Jeanne (Margo Lion), an older woman who paints in the cafe, wonders what happened to her son Michel, who disappeared seven years before.

The characters are unstable enough on their own, and their chance interactions and hidden relationships make up the story of ''Lola.'' Life-changing decisions hang by the barest of threads, even as everyone clings to what's left of their hopes. That budgetary constraints forced Demy to cut the songs planned for ''Lola'' is perhaps a gift: The film overflows with energy, and the rhythm of music is in every exchange.

''Bay of Angels'' was Demy's next film, and is the one truest to what is thought of as France's new wave, if unintentionally so. Said to have been written during a production delay in the lengthy ''Cherbourg'' shoot, the film focuses on the relationship between Jackie Demaistre (Jeanne Moreau), a compulsive gambler, and Jean Fournier (Claude Mann), a naive and impulsive bank clerk.

Chance again takes center stage as Fournier, the son of a watchmaker, is talked into a trip to a casino by a co-worker. There he discovers a world free from time, where his skill with numbers takes on a whole new meaning. As he watches the first spin of the wheel, you can see the needle sink in, and when he meets Demaistre across a roulette table in Nice, you know he's hit the jackpot - or been wiped out.

Moreau had more than 30 films to her credit when Demy cast her in ''Bay of Angels,'' including ''Jules and Jim'' and a half-dozen others now considered masterpieces. Yet Demy's bare-bones scenario gave her room to create one of French cinema's more indelible characters. With her death's-head of white-blond hair, Demaistre is an entire world to herself: wild and sad, thoughtless yet sweet, blind to everything but her own weaknesses. She and Fournier team up, sharing winnings and losses, and eventually a room in a crumbling hotel. ''Number 18, as usual,'' he tells the clerk. To Demaistre, it's just another bet, but Fournier, for better or worse, wants more.

Both ''Bay of Angels'' and ''Lola'' are deeply rooted in their settings and gorgeously photographed. Demy shot both films on location using only available light, again for financial reasons, but the results are equally stunning. Raoul Coutard, Jean-Luc Godard's favorite cinematographer, brings Nantes to shimmering life in ''Lola,'' while Jean Rabier, who went on to do ''Cherbourg,'' lets the Riviera's cold sun burn away the gamblers' masks in ''Bay of Angels.''

Unlike some of his films' characters, Jacques Demy knew that luck may come and go, but chance is always with us. And now, thanks to Agnes Vardas's restoration efforts, Boston has the chance to truly see two of Demy's greatest films. It's something worth seizing.

Leighton Klein can be reached by e-mail at lklein@globe.com.