Les demoiselles de Rochefort (1967)

User Rating:

7.7/10   

Directors:

Jacques Demy
Agnès Varda

Writer:

Jacques Demy (written by)

Release Date:

11 April 1968 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Musical | Romance

Tagline:

...they're Singing and Dancing in the Streets

Plot:

Delphine and Solange are two sisters living in Rochefort. Delphine is a dancing teacher and Solange composes and teaches the piano...

Plot Keywords:

Love | Twins | Piano | Dance | Painter

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar.

Cast

Catherine Deneuve	...	Delphine Garnier
George Chakiris	...	Etienne
Françoise Dorléac	...	Solange Garnier (as Françoise Dorleac)
Jacques Perrin	...	Maxence
Michel Piccoli	...	Simon Dame
Jacques Riberolles	...	Guillaume Lancien
Grover Dale	...	Bill
Geneviève Thénier	...	Josette (as Geneviève Thenier)
Henri Crémieux	...	Subtil Dutrouz (as Henri Cremieux)
Pamela Hart	...	Judith
Leslie North	...	Esther
Patrick Jeantet	...	Boubou Garnier
Gene Kelly	...	Andy Miller
Danielle Darrieux	...	Yvonne Garnier
René Bazart	...	Pépé

Also Known As:

The Young Girls of Rochefort (USA)

Runtime:

120 min | Argentina:128 min | Germany:122 min | Japan:127 min | Sweden:126 min | USA:125 min

Country:

France

Language:

French | English

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints)

Certification:

Singapore:PG | Australia:G | Argentina:Atp | Finland:S | France:U | Sweden:Btl | USA:G | Hong Kong:I

Filming Locations:

Rochefort, Charente-Maritime, France

Company:

Madeleine Films

Trivia:

Before Jacques Demy selected Rochefort as the location for this movie, he also considered Avignon, Hyeres, Toulouse, and La Rochelle among others. Rochefort won out because of the size of its central square, though production designer Bernard Evein found it necessary to repaint 40,000 square meters of the city's facades.

Quotes:

Simon Dame: [Singing] How very sad it was the night she fled the scene, she didn't want the name of Madame Guillotine. She had this silly fear that if she went to bed, she'd suddenly wake up one day without her head

Movie Connections:

References Les enfants du paradis (1945)

Soundtrack:

Nous Voyageons De Ville En Ville

Two of a kind musical; Deeper than you think

'Girls of Rochefort' would amount to not much more than a mawkish, extremely sentimental film, if one only looked at the surface. But fortunately an original French New Waver made this (quite non-new-wavish) film and there's definitely more here if you care to look. Like its companion piece, the more popular 'Umbrellas of Cherbourg,' 'Girls of Rochefort' contains and exists to hint at and coelesce surprisingly hidden meanings behind the vulgarity and overstatement. Yes! Believe it or not these two films contain (much like the more obvious case of Jaques Tati's comedies) in their style, some of the deepest and I believe quite intentional (judging by the absolutely systematic understated style of Demy's first film 'Lola' which magnificently proves he can handle that 'understatement business' whenever it suits him) criticism of petty bourgeois values ever put on film. As for Legrand's music, it is sometimes great, sometimes extremely annoying to the point of nausea. Whether or not it was intended to actually do what it does in fact do--make the general public like it at its face and the 'artsy' people disgusted to a certain point, so they can imagine they're seeing Marxist criticism in it--will of course determine Demy's stature as either a premeditated master of cinema or a master in retrospect. Either way, mastery is the name of the game, and like the best American musicals these two flicks lend themselves to quite a bit of welcome ambiguity. As for purely visual delights: where else can you see both Francoise Dorleac and younger sister Catherine Deneauve,in their prime, blessing the screen simultaneously with their exquisite beauty?