Lola (Jacques Demy, 1961)

Anouk Aimée in Lola

Lola / Cécile: Anouk Aimée
Roland Cassard: Marc Michel
Michel: Jacques Harden
Frankie: Alan Scott
Madame Desnoyers: Elina Labourdette
Jeanne, Michel's Mother: Margo Lion
Cécile Desnoyers: Annie Duperoux
Claire, the Bar Owner: Catherine Lutz
Daisy: Corinne Marchand
Yvon, Lola's Son: Gérard Delaroche

Director: Jacques Demy
Screenplay: Jacques Demy
Cinematography: Raoul Coutard
Production design: Bernard Evein
Film editing: Anne-Marie Cotret
Music: Michel Legrand

The characters in Lola, as in many of Jacques Demy's films, see life as performance art. They're ready to don the mask and play the role at any moment: Lola even wears her black lace cabaret-performer costume under a trenchcoat when she's out on the street. The film opens with a poseur, the then-mysterious "cowboy" dressed in white and driving a white Cadillac convertible, who is later revealed to be Lola's missing husband, Michel. Everyone, it seems, is putting on an act, especially Mme. Desnoyers, whose constant concern with appearances has begun to rub off on her daughter, Cécile. Sometimes Demy imposes a role on his characters: The young American sailor, Frankie, hangs out with a troupe of sailors that recalls MGM musicals of the 1940s like Anchors Aweigh (George Sidney, 1945) and On the Town (Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1949) which starred a famous Frankie. Even the most spontaneous character in the film, Roland, wears his ennui like a costume. To my taste, this constant role-playing gets a little tiresome -- I keep wanting the characters to have an unguarded moment. Although Demy's films often seem to me to be better in retrospect than in the watching, as you work out the playful cross-references -- young Cécile's name is the same as Lola's real one, and so on -- and allusions to books and movies, there is much to be said for what's on screen, particularly Anouk Aimée's giddy, uninhibited Lola, a long way from her role in 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963) as Guido's soignée neglected wife. There's some roughness in this film, Demy's first, such as the odd fact that Alan Scott, an American actor, speaks with a non-American accent when his lines are in English -- I don't think anyone born in New Jersey would pronounce "Chicago, Illinois" the way Frankie does, so I suspect dubbing. But as self-conscious a film as it is, Lola is a rewarding one.

Bay of Angels (Jacques Demy, 1963)

Claude Mann and Jeanne Moreau in Bay of Angels

Jacqueline ("Jackie") Demaistre: Jeanne Moreau
Jean Fournier: Claude Mann
Caron: Paul Guers
M. Fournier: Henri Nassiet
Hotel Clerk: Conchita Parodi

Director: Jacques Demy
Screenplay: Jacques Demy
Cinematography: Jean Rabier
Music: Michel Legrand

A platinum blond Jeanne Moreau, dressed in white, evokes Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946), though Moreau's Jackie Demaistre is not so lethal as Turner's Cora Smith. Jackie is modeling herself on both Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy, but without Monroe's fragility or the American Jackie's poise. In short, the Jackie Demaistre crafted by Moreau and Jacques Demy is her own woman, and one of film's most memorable. She is a compulsive gambler, whose habit has estranged her from her husband and her small son, but she carries on nevertheless, winning big and losing big, yet somehow surviving even when she bets away her train ticket home -- or more likely, to the next casino. Into her circuit wanders a young bank clerk on his vacation, Jean Fournier, who has been introduced to the gambling life by a co-worker. Jean thinks gambling is immoral, yet once he gets a taste for it, and more to the point, once he meets Jackie, he flings himself headlong into the life. Unfortunately, Jean is played by an actor making his first film, Claude Mann, who although he has a handsome presence is not able to make the character into a coherent figure. Sometimes broody, sometimes violent, sometimes philosophical, sometimes just a callow young man with no aim in life, Jean is mostly obsessed with Jackie, who is obsessed with gambling. She returns his affection in her way, which means that if he stands between her and the roulette wheel, he'd better watch out. She takes up with him because she thinks he brings her luck, and their relationship frays when he doesn't. If Moreau had had someone more compelling than Mann to play against -- one of the hyphenated Jeans, Belmondo or Trintignant, for example -- Bay of Angels might have blown me away. As it is, it's just one of those quintessential French films of the 1960s -- a bit wispy as it comes to plot but full of atmosphere, much of it provided by the casinos of the Riviera and Michel Legrand's score. It has many enthusiastic admirers, but I have a feeling most of the enthusiasm was generated by Moreau, who could always blind one to the defects of her movies.

Two With Marcello Mastroianni

A Slightly Pregnant Man (Jacques Demy, 1973)

Catherine Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni in A Slightly Pregnant Man

Irène de Fontenoy: Catherine Deneuve
Marco Mazetti: Marcello Mastroianni
Dr. Delavigne: Micheline Presle
Maria Mazetti: Marisa Pavan

Director: Jacques Demy
Screenplay: Jacques Demy
Cinematography: Andréas Winding
Production design: Bernard Evein
Music: Michel Legrand

A Special Day (Ettore Scola, 1977)

Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren in A Special Day

Antonietta: Sophia Loren
Gabriele: Marcello Mastroianni
Emanuele: John Vernon
Caretaker: Françoise Berd

Director: Ettore Scola
Screenplay: Ruggero Maccari, Ettore Scola, Maurizio Costanzo
Cinematography: Pasqualino De Santis
Production design: Luciano Ricceri

The great charm of Marcello Mastroianni lies, I think, in the fact that he always seems to be the odd man out. Despite his good looks and sex appeal, there is always the sense that the characters he plays, even though they attract women on the order of Catherine Deneuve and Sophia Loren, are never quite in charge of the world they inhabit. Certainly this is true of his most famous roles, Marcello in La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960) and Guido in 8 1/2 (Fellini, 1963). And directors Jacques Demy and Ettore Scola exploit this otherness in Mastroianni in very different ways: Demy in the satiric A Slightly Pregnant Man and Scola in the earnest A Special Day. In the former film, whose French title was the lengthy L'Événement le plus important depuis que l'homme a marché sur la Lune (The Most Important Event Since Man Walked on the Moon), Mastroianni plays Marco, a driving-school instructor who feels out of sorts and goes to see a doctor who decides that he must be pregnant. When a well-known specialist confirms the diagnosis and presents his findings to other scientists, the press goes wild and the advertising department for a maternity-wear company launches a campaign for male maternity clothes. Marco winds up on posters everywhere, and he and his fiancée, Irène, begin to make big plans for the money the company pays him. Eventually, the diagnosis proves to be false, however, and the film concludes with an anticlimactic thud. Demy, whose best-known work is probably the cotton-candy musicals The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), seems to have launched into his screenplay with no sense of how to end it satisfactorily. Until that point, however, Mastroianni and Deneuve have fun with their roles. Forgoing her usual sophisticated chic, she plays a somewhat blowsy beauty-shop owner. A Special Day earned Mastroianni one of his three Oscar nominations, partly because there's nothing the Academy likes better than a straight actor daring to play gay. He is Gabriele, a radio announcer who has lost his job because the Fascists have begun purging the work force of "undesirables." The day is May 8, 1938, when Hitler visits Mussolini in Rome to solidify their alliance. He lives in a large apartment complex with windows facing an open courtyard. Across the way lives Antonietta, a woman with an abusive husband and six children. On this day, she has stayed home to clean house after sending her family off to the parades and speeches, but when the family's pet mynah bird escapes and flies out into the courtyard, she asks Gabriele's help in retrieving him. They are virtually the only people left in the complex other than the nosy, gossipy concierge, whose radio is blaring the news of the day -- Fascist anthems, speeches, the cheers of the crowd, and a running patriotic commentary -- which serves as the sometimes ironic counterpoint to the growing intimacy of the mismatched couple. A severely deglamourized Loren gives a fine performance, as does Mastroianni: Gabriele is aware that at any moment he may be taken away to a concentration camp, and he vacillates between suicide and a carpe diem fatalism. The film is a little too predictable, and although the screenplay by Scola and Ruggero Maccari is original, it feels somewhat like an adaptation of a two-character stage play. Pasqualino De Santis's cinematography, using long takes and tracking shots through the apartment complex (which we never leave except in the archival newsreel footage at the film's beginning), helps open it up.  

The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy, 1967)

Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac in The Young Girls of Rochefort

Delphine Garnier: Catherine Deneuve
Solange Garnier: Françoise Dorléac
Yvonne Garnier: Danielle Darrieux
Andy Miller: Gene Kelly
Étienne: George Chakiris
Maxence: Jacques Perrin
Simon Dame: Michel Piccoli
Bill: Grover Dale
Josette: Geneviève Thénier
Subtil Dutroux: Henri Crémieux

Director: Jacques Demy
Screenplay: Jacques Demy
Cinematography: Ghislain Cloquet
Production design: Bernard Evein
Film editing: Jean Hamon
Music: Michel Legrand

I appreciate Jacques Demy's hommage to the Hollywood musical, but I think I would have to like Michel Legrand's songs more to really enjoy The Young Girls of Rochefort. Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) has been known to seriously divide and damage friendships, though when I last saw it I rather enjoyed its cheeky sentimentality and bright colors. Rochefort takes a similar approach to Cherbourg, setting a musical romance in a French town and filling it with wall-to-wall Legrand songs, but by doubling down on the concept -- giving us multiple romances, extending the time from Cherbourg's 91 minutes to Rochefort's more than two hours, and bringing in guest stars from American musicals -- it begins to try one's patience. Catherine Deneuve, who starred in Cherbourg, is joined by her sister, Françoise Dorléac, and the two of them have great charm, though Deneuve's delicately beautiful face is smothered under an enormous blond wig for much of the film. They are courted by Étienne and Bill, who often seem to be doing dance movements borrowed from Jerome Robbins's choreography for West Side Story (Robbins and Robert Wise, 1961), in which the actor playing Étienne, George Chakiris, appeared. (Rochefort's choreographer is Norman Maen.) But Solange winds up with an American composer, Andy Miller, while Delphine keeps missing a connection with Maxence, an artist who has painted a picture of his ideal woman who looks exactly like Delphine. Meanwhile, their mother, Yvonne, doesn't realize that her old flame (and the father of her young son), Simon Dame, has recently moved to Rochefort. (She had turned him down because she didn't want to be known as Madame Dame. No, I'm not kidding.) And so it goes. The movie is given a jolt of life by Gene Kelly's extended cameo: At 55, he's as buoyant as ever, though somewhat implausible as the 25-year-old Dorléac's love interest. He would have been better paired with Darrieux. It's a candy-box movie, but for my taste it's like someone got there first and ate the best pieces, leaving me the ones with coconut centers.