Saccharine for some, poignant for others, Jacques Demy’s ‘enchanted’ world is familiar to generations of French audiences accustomed to watching Christmas repeats of his fairytale Peau d’âne (1970) or seeing Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac prance and pirouette in Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1966). Demy achieved international recognition with Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1963), which was awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes. However, beneath the apparently sugary coating of his films lie more philosophical reflections on some of the most pressing issues that preoccupy Western societies, including affect, subjectivity, self/other relations and free will.
This wide-ranging book addresses many of the key aspects of Demy’s cinema, including his associations with the New Wave, his unique approach to musicals, his adaptations of fairytales, his representations of gender and sexuality and his legacy as an iconic director for generations of audiences and filmmakers.
Table of Content
Introduction: ‘Un demi, Jacques, bien frais, avec de la mousse’: background and early filmmaking
1. Jacques Demy, the Nouvelle Vague and beyond
2. Melodic reconfigurations: Demy’s musicals
3. Fantasy and its disenchantments: fairytale, fable and myth in the Demy-monde
4. Gender and sexuality in the Demy-monde
5. Mythologising Demy
Concluding remarks
Filmography
Select bibliography
Index
About the author
Darren Waldron is Senior Lecturer in French Screen Studies at the University of Manchester
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