Film Review
If there is one unifying theme to the French New Wave, it is a
conscious attempt to more accurately portray real life in cinema, to
break away from the conventions and lazy clichés that had made
films a poor approximation to how most people lived their lives.
This striving for authenticity was embraced most vigorously by such
filmmakers as Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and Francois Truffaut,
one-time critics who set out to revolutionise French cinema in the late
1950s, early 1960s, after lambasting it for its tired
conformity. On the face of it, director Jacques Demy
appeared to be heading in the opposite direction, shoring up the old
archetypes and artificial stylisation of the past to create films that
seem to epitomise the naive out-dated romanticism that was anathema to
the spirit of the Nouvelle Vague. Yet Demy's films are as much a
part of the French New Wave as Godard's and Truffaut's, and are just as
successful in grasping the elusive nettle of authenticity that these
directors set so much store by. Beneath the gaudy surface
artifice and head-spinning maze of plot contrivance, Demy's films have
depth and sincerity, qualities that make them universally accessible
and profoundly moving. What may look like whimsical fairytales
are in fact insightful and deeply compassionate studies in the trauma
of human experience.
Jacques Demy's unique vision of cinema is already crystallised in his
first full-length film,
Lola,
which he made after directing a number of documentary shorts. The
two most significant influences on Demy were the spectacular MGM
musicals of the 1940s and '50s and the films of the great German
cineaste Max Ophüls (to whom Lola is dedicated, named after his
last great work
Lola Montès).
Lola was originally conceived as a
lavish colour musical, but Demy's producer Georges de Beauregard
soon put paid to that idea. The film that Demy ended up making may
not have been the overblown extravaganza he had envisaged but it does
evoke something of those great Hollywood musicals and was an
essential stepping stone to the musicals he would make in the years
that followed, notably
Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964)
and
Les Demoiselles de Rochefort
(1967). Nor is music overlooked in
Lola - it is in fact an essential element of the film. The soundtrack includes
an original score by Demy's lifelong collaborator Michel Legrand and part
of the Second Movement from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, both of which are supremely
effective in helping to tell the story, stressing the emotional highs
and lows of the protagonists whilst heightening the lyrical power of
what we see on the screen. There is even a full-blown musical
number,
Lola's Song, written
by Demy's wife Agnès Varda and performed with show-stopping
panache by Anouk Aimée.
Of all the films that Jacques Demy made,
Lola is the one that is most
readily identified with the French New Wave. Shot entirely on
location in black and white without artificial lighting, it has that
gritty, unglamorous naturalism that we associate with the early films
of the Nouvelle Vague - albeit (unusually) in widescreen format.
The film owes its distinctive look to cinematographer Raoul Coutard,
who had recently worked with Jean-Luc Godard on his debut feature
À
bout de souffle (1960). Demy and Coutard make an
interesting combination, since they appear (at a superficial level) to
represent the two extreme poles of film aesthetic, artifice versus
realism. Oddly, it is Coutard's cinematography that contributes
most to the film's sense of unreality. Whereas the diffuse
daylight of Paris allowed Coutard to capture a near-documentary realism
in his early films for Godard and Truffaut, here the blistering
sunlight of Nantes (Demy's home town) almost completely saturates the
film, achieving virtually the opposite effect. In some scenes,
the characters are reduced to silhouettes performing like marionettes
in front of a blinding white background; in others, the intense light
brings an eerie dreamlike quality to what we see. The effect is quite startling and grants us admission to both the
exterior and interior worlds of the protagonists. We sense the
penury of Lola's existence and the ennui that afflicts Roland, but we
can also engage with the fluffy hopes and dreams that make their lives
bearable. Demy takes subjectivity to a more extreme level in the
sequence in which the young Cécile enjoys a birthday outing with
the sailor Frankie, employing the slow-motion device that has since
become a stock cliché of the worst kind but which works
perfectly here, in the context of a foolish little girl wallowing in
her first amorous infatuation.
Taking the lead in one of her most memorable screen roles is Anouk
Aimée, who had recently had a major career break through
Federico Fellini's
La Dolce Vita (1960) and who
would later win international celebrity for her part in Claude
Lelouch's
Un homme et une femme (1966).
Whilst, on paper, Lola is little more than a walking cliché, a
good-natured prostitute pining for her one true love, Aimée
brings a heart-wrenching reality to the part - whilst stunningly
sensual in her cabaret number, she is subtly moving in those scenes
when she reflects on her lost love. Demy's penchant for casting
exceptionally photogenic young actors is apparent in his choice for the
three male leads - Marc Michel, Alan Scott and Jacques Harden -
although, like Aimée, all manage to make their archetypal
characters (the moody drifter, the lovelorn sailor and the returning
lover) convincing and sympathetic. Michel, who had previously
featured in Jacques Becker's
Le Trou (1960), would reprise
his role as the upwardly mobile jewel merchant in
Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964),
whilst Anouk Aimée would also return as
Lola, in Demy's darkly reflective
Model Shop (1969). The film's
most endearing (and amusing) character is the snobbish man-eater Madame
Desnoyers, played with relish by Elina Labourdette, who had previously
starred in Robert Bresson's
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne
(1945).
There is an austere beauty to
Lola
that sets it apart from Demy's other work and makes it one of his most
exquisitely poignant films. The characters may be superficial,
the plot hopelessly contrived, but none of this matters. In the
bizarre quasi-real fairytale that Demy lures us into, it is not long
before we find something we can relate to and take comfort from.
Whilst Demy's subsequent films would become more stylised, more prone
to sugary artifice and less like the world we recognise as our own,
they would still have an irresistible allure and remain relevant to us.
Demy's mesmerisingly beautiful filmscapes suggest the unblemished
paradise that we yearn for, but beneath the surface impression we see
also the flawed Eden in which we live and which we must content
ourselves with. If authenticity was the goal of the French New
Wave, then Jacques Demy surely found it in his films.
© James Travers 2011
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Next Jacques Demy film:
La Baie des anges (1963)
Film Synopsis
Lola is a cabaret singer and dancer in the French port of Nantes.
A prostitute, she is popular with the town's sailors, especially an
American sailor named Frankie, who is madly in love with
her. Frankie reminds Lola of her first love, Michel, who
left her seven years ago to make his fortune in another country,
unaware that he had given her a child. One day, Lola runs into a
childhood friend Roland Cassard, a young drifter who is unsure what to
do with his life. Roland soon discovers that he is in love with
Lola, but she, still faithful to Michel, is unable to love him in
return. A chance encounter with a girl who resembles Lola when
she was a child brings Roland into contact with a former dancer Madame
Desnoyers, who lost everything in the war. Whilst the latter is
obviously smitten with Roland, he thinks only of leaving Nantes,
perhaps to fulfil a commission as a diamond smuggler. Just as
Lola is about to leave the town for a gig in Marseilles, her former
lover Michel returns - but will Fate bring them together or keep them
apart forever?
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.