Celestial umbrellas
Jacques Demy was born in Pontchâteau, France, in 1931, in time to live on the harshness of war, the Germans invasion, the Nazi horror, dividing the country between collaboration and resistance, and the subsequent liberation of France. After all the brutality, studied Fine Arts and worked as an assistant to Paul Grimault, fundamental figure of animation cinema. That collaboration was undoubtedly a great influence on subsequent color vision especially in his musical films. In addition, he also worked as assistant of documentary filmmaker Georges Rouquier.
The first film directed by Jacques Demy came in 1955, Le Sabotier du Val de Loire (1955), although his first major work would be Lola (1960), in the middle of the effervescence of the Nouvelle Vague movement. Jacques Demy joined the group of Godard, Resnais, Chabrol, Rohmer, Truffaut, Varda, his wife, and a long etc, with his own personality being a part of a unique moment in the history of cinema that continues to our days.
Later he filmed Les baies des anges (1962) starring Jeanne Moreau and Les parapluies de Cherbourg (1964), drama with all the dialogue sung that made him win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It was a renewed vision of musical cinema, dramatic but deeply colorful, moving away from the signs of identity of the early Nouvelle Vague, strongly marked by the dramatic black and white. Catherine Deneuve starred in that movie and its sequel, the delightful Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967), this time beside Françoise Dorleac, two films that are certainly classics in film history.
His career continued until his early death in 1990, works as the aesthetic innovations Model Shop (1969), Peau d'âne (1970), a review of children's stories again with Deneuve as a leading actress, Lady Oscar (1979), and approach to the Japanese manga version of "The Rose of Versailles" , and the last Trois places pour le 26 (1988) by mixing reality and fiction to tell the life of Yves Montand. His films are a huge umbrella to shelter from the prevailing mediocrity, a color changing available to the open imaginations, small or large, who know that social humidity is suffering only in bones of little creative muscle. As Kavafis once wrote, who is able to appreciate poetry lives one step closer to heaven. Jacques Demy painted heaven full of life.
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Text by Juan Carlos Romero
Photo courtesy of Festival de Cine de San Sebastian / Donostia Zinemaldia.