Remembering Jacques Demy - John Baxter recalls a visit to Rochefort and his family's feel good movie LES DEMOISELLES DE...

Dancing on Place Colbert, Rochefort, Gene Kelly and Francoise Dorleac
front left (click on any image for a slideshow)

NOT ANN-MARGRET. 

         In my first weeks of living in France, my wife-to-be took me to a party in a seaside town on the Atlantic.  The house stood on a headland looking out across the estuary of the Gironde and the Charente, past the Napoleonic fortifications of Fort Boyard, towards the ocean and the ancient port of Rochefort. Centuries of wind had bent the trees into sinuous feminine shapes redolent of art nouveau. I drank Kir Royale and tried to follow the conversation with my movie subtitle French. Something told me I wasn’t in Woy Woy any more.

         One guest who spoke good English took pity on me. 

         “Even after Los Angeles,” he said, “all this..” His wave took in the moonlit ocean and the brittle chatter. “...must be strange.” 

         “Not entirely,” I said. “In fact, I feel I know it already. Because of Les Demoiselles de Rochefort.” 

         “Well, here is a coincidence,” he said, “because I worked on that film. I was liaison between Jacques Demy and the city. If you like, I could walk you around Rochefort and show you where we shot it. Tomorrow, perhaps. If you are not too busy.”

         I wasn’t too busy.

         No film evokes for me the grace of life in France better than Jacques Demy’s 1967 musical.It’s our family’s feel-good movie. To watch the opening scenes of the travelling trade show arriving in Rochefortand see George Chakiris and the other dancers lazily stretch and unwind to Michel Legrand’s jazz score is like drinking cool water on a stifling day. 

         

Catherine Deneuve, Françoise Dorléac

But then they explode, dancing through the streets with such vivacity and good humour  that housewives and storekeepers and especially sailors in their white uniforms and red-pompommed hats drop everything to join Chakiris, Grover Dale, Catherine Deneuve, Françoise Dorleac and – unexpectedly – Gene Kelly in ecstatic movement.

         Our new friend’s name was Bernard Rideau – who, I learned from others, had been a consultant on communications for two French presidents, and commanded dizzying amounts for his services.  

“It nearly didn’t happen,” he said the next day. We were sitting at a café on Place Colbert, the wide square in the heart of Rochefort where many of the scenes in the film take place, and where Bernard, Demy and the mayor had their initial meetings.

Demy described a key establishing shot that craned up from the square into the first-floor window where Dorleac and Deneuve - sisters both in real life and in the film – teach music. 

“He pointed out the building he wanted,” said Rideau. “The mayor said it was a bank, so of course they would never agree. I asked if any other building would do. Jacques said there was only one other – but it was themairie, the town hall, and the room he wanted was the mayor’s office!”

“Well, I’m afraid that’s impossible,” the mayor said. 

For Demy, this was a deal-breaker. There were plenty of other towns along the coast, he said, gathering up his papers.  Les Demoiselles de Rochefort could just as easily be Les Demoiselles de Royan or Les Demoiselles de La Rochelle. Seeing all that priceless publicity and revenue slipping away, His Honour made a bold decision.

“Maybe my office could do with some redecoration,” he said, and moved out so that the twins could move in.

Françoise Dorléac, Michel Piccoli

For the rest of the day, we wandered through the sunny streets of Rochefort. Rideau pointed out the music shop owned in the film by Michel Piccoli, now a boucherie, and the café on Place Colbert owned by the twins’ mother, Danielle Darrieux. It wasn’t in the same place as the film. Demy disliked the light, so rebuilt it to face in a different direction. Enormous effort went into achieving the illusion of effortlessness. Demy delayed the film for two years until Gene Kelly was available, and, deciding French dancers lacked the necessary well-drilled technique, imported British performers and choreographer Norman Maen from the hard school of TV variety. 

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort demonstrate Demy’s virtuosity but also the steely will behind his look of schoolboy dreaminess. It was only because of his insistence of achieving a precise effect that the vivid primaries in which production designer Bernard Evein repainted the walls of Cherbourg seem perfectly natural, as does the way Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo, dazed by love, glide across the cobbles in an hommage to Josette Day as she enters the castle in Cocteau’s La Belle et La Bête. 

Catherine Deneuve and the primary colours of Les Parapluies de Cherbourg

In 2016 Damien Chazelle was praised for recapturing the vitality of Demoiselles in La La Land but not by anyone who knew Demy’s film. Some felt he tried too hard, others not hard enough. The real truth was articulated in an episode of the TV series Mad Men. An agency is hired to adapt a scene from the Ann-Margret musical Bye Bye Birdie into a soft drink commercial. They use the same music, and perfectly reproduce the background colour and camera style. The girl is a near lookalike. It looks right, sounds right, smells right - except it doesn’t work.

John Slattery as veteran ad. man Roger Sterling knows exactly why. ”It’s not Ann-Margret.”  

Sometimes only the original will do. To borrow a line from the advertising for another peerless product: Demy - There Is No Substitute.