The Essential Jacques Demy
14 Episodes
French director Jacques Demy didn’t just make movies—he created an entire cinematic world. Demy launched his glorious feature filmmaking career in the sixties, a decade of astonishing invention in his national cinema. He stood out from the crowd of his fellow New Wavers, however, by filtering his self-conscious formalism through deeply emotional storytelling. Fate and coincidence, doomed love, and storybook romance surface throughout his films, many of which are further united by the intersecting lives of characters who appear or are referenced across titles. The works collected here—made from the sixties to the eighties and ranging from musical to melodrama to fantasia—are triumphs of visual and sound design, camera work, and music, and they are galvanized by the great stars of French cinema at their centers, including Anouk Aimée, Catherine Deneuve, and Jeanne Moreau. Presented alongside Demy’s films are tributes that Agnès Varda, his wife for nearly thirty years, completed after his passing in 1990—including THE WORLD OF JACQUES DEMY, Varda’s moving portrait of her beloved husband and his place in film history; the tender evocation of Demy’s childhood JACQUOT DE NANTES, a dream project that she realized for him when he became too ill to direct it himself; and a documentary about the making of THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT in which Varda returns to the town of Rochefort for the film’s twenty-fifth anniversary.
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08:32Episode 1Les horizons morts
Episode 1
Directed by Jacques Demy • 1951 • France
Jacques Demy makes a rare on-screen appearance as the star of LES HORIZONS MORTS (“The Dead Horizons”), his debut dramatic short from 1951, about a young man suffering from a broken heart.
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23:40Episode 2Le sabotier du Val de Loire
Episode 2
Directed by Jacques Demy • 1956 • France
This 1956 short film by Jacques Demy documents a week in the life of a clog maker in the Loire Valley.
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Lola
Episode 4
Directed by Jacques Demy • 1961 • France, Italy
Starring Anouk Aimée, Marc MichelJacques Demy’s crystalline debut gave birth to the fictional universe in which so many of his characters would live, play, and love. It’s among his most profoundly felt films, a tale of crisscrossing lives in Nante...
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1:24:27Episode 6Bay of Angels
Episode 6
Directed by Jacques Demy • 1963 • France
Starring Jeanne Moreau, Claude MannThis precisely wrought, emotionally penetrating romantic drama from Jacques Demy, set largely in the casinos of Nice, is a visually lovely but darkly realistic investigation into love and obsession. A bottle-blonde Jean...
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1:32:08Episode 7The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Episode 7
Directed by Jacques Demy • 1964 • France
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Nino CastelnuovoThe angelically beautiful Catherine Deneuve was launched to stardom by this dazzling musical heart-tugger from Jacques Demy. She plays an umbrella-shop owner’s delicate daughter, glowing with first love for a h...
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2:06:48Episode 8The Young Girls of Rochefort
Episode 8
Directed by Jacques Demy • 1967 • France
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Françoise DorléacJacques Demy followed up THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG with another musical about missed connections and second chances, this one a more effervescent confection. Twins Delphine and Solange, a dance instructor and...
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1:30:13Episode 9Donkey Skin
Episode 9
Directed by Jacques Demy • 1970 • France
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Jean Marais, Delphine SeyrigIn this lovingly crafted, wildly eccentric adaptation of a classic French fairy tale, Jacques Demy casts Catherine Deneuve as a princess who must go into hiding as a scullery maid in order to fend o...
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1:36:20Episode 10A Slightly Pregnant Man
Episode 10
Directed by Jacques Demy • 1973 • France
Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Micheline PresleFeeling out of sorts, Marco (Marcello Mastroianni), an Italian driving instructor living in Paris, pays a visit to the doctor, who promptly diagnoses him as . . . four months pregnant. It’...
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1:34:26Episode 11Une chambre en ville
Episode 11
Directed by Jacques Demy • 1982 • France
Starring Dominique Sanda, Michel Piccoli, Richard BerryIn this musical melodrama set against the backdrop of a workers’ strike in Nantes, Dominique Sanda plays a young woman who wishes to leave her brutish husband (Michel Piccoli) for an earthy steelwork...
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1:59:49Episode 12Jacquot de Nantes
Episode 12
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1991 • France
Starring Philippe Maron, Édouard Joubeaud, Laurent MonnierAgnès Varda’s tender evocation of the childhood of her husband, Jacques Demy—a dream project that she realized for him when he became too ill to direct it himself—is a wonder-filled portrait of the...
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1:06:57Episode 13The Young Girls Turn 25
Episode 13
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1993 • France
For this documentary about the making of THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT, filmmaker Agnès Varda, director Jacques Demy’s widow, returned to the town of Rochefort for the film’s twenty-fifth anniversary. In it, she interviews actors Catherine Deneuve, Jacque...
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1:31:49Episode 14The World of Jacques Demy
Episode 14
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1995 • France, Belgium, Spain
Hollywood has had its fair share of power couples; husband and wife duos that have each enjoyed illustrious careers in the film industry. In France, one of the most noteworthy marital unions occurred when Jacques Demy and Agnès Varda tied...
