Musicals—16

From [in many ways] the ridiculousness of the Beatles’ films we discussed last week to this week’s film, the sublime Umbrellas of Cherbourg [1964] by Jacques Demy. It’s a French film and the French title is Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. This may be the most original film musical ever made. And what a risk they took! Why? Because the entire film is sung. That’s right, not a line of dialogue, not a word between songs—everything a character says is sung. But it’s not like most operas, where you have grand, dramatic stories and all the singing is in the operatic mode, no, no. This film has characters that sing about filling a gas tank—as well as sing about love and longing.

When I first saw this film I was at university in Iowa. We had a little film society that would show movies on Saturday night—I’ve no idea who ran it or how the films were chosen—but I always went. We’re talking a screen that was brought to the front of the room and rolled up and a projector that was wheeled in with a techie who would string the film through it and show the film… and in addition to the poor sound quality you heard the pocketa-pocketa of the film running through the projector as well.

So, not ideal viewing conditions—which didn’t matter a bit. This film was mesmerizing.

When it began, I had no idea what it was or what was going on, other than it was going to be in French with subtitles. I’d never seen a foreign film before.

As the film unfolded and the characters sang everything to one another, it seemed weird at first, but I quickly got into the rhythm. This was in part due to the naturalness with which the characters sang and also due to the beauty of the Michel Legrand score.

When the film ended, I was absolutely shattered—so beautiful, so sad, so dreamy… it’s one of my favorite films of all time. But a little aside—after viewing it I thought, “Ah, they sing everything in French films.” Yep. That’s how little I knew—I really thought films from France were all sung!!

Here are some clips of the film as you listen to the great NY Times critic A.O. Scott talk about the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h-w5qM2VMM.

This film would go on to be Damien Chazelle’s inspiration for La La Land [2016]. Both films are organized by the four seasons of the year, both films follow lovers who mean everything to each other, and both films have those lovers ending up with other people. So the endings of both films are bittersweet.

Bittersweet. If you’re aiming to write a musical that’s also a love story, think about making that ending bittersweet. Sometimes, those are the most heartfelt and memorable stories. Why? Because we live in a world where things don’t always work out, but our romantic souls want for them to work out, and when they don’t, our hearts go out to the characters and, in many ways, we feel their loss, because I don’t care who you are, you’ve felt loss.

If there’s one film musical you have time to see from the 60s, let it be this one. And next week, on to the 70s!

Copyright © Diane Lake

10Nov19

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com