The Young Girls of Rochefort
Alternate title(s):
Foreign Title: Les demoiselles de Rochefort
Date: January 01, 1967 to December 31, 1967
Dates Note: 1967
Country of Origin:
France
Place of Origin: France
Languages:
French
Color: Color
Silent: No
Based On:
Additional Info:
Curator Notes
Film Series/Exhibition Title:
Agnès Varda: An Irresistible ForceDescription:
See it large: this dance musical by Varda’s husband, Jacques Demy, is as antithetical to the small screen as West Side Story, whose choreography it emulates and whose star George Chakiris improbably appears here—along with Gene Kelly, Mr. American in Paris himself. In the sleepy town of Rochefort, denizens who somnolently dance sidewise down the street are energized by the arrival of a traveling commercial fair that passes for spectacle. Catherine Deneuve and her talented sister Françoise Dorléac play musical twin sisters who while away the hours in their Barbie-doll outfits until they can hitch a ride to love and fame. In Demy’s clever patter set to Michel Legrand’s music, their barista mother Danielle Darrieux dreams of a love lost to the silliness of the French language, and everyone around her pines, in rhyme, for a poetic ideal. Billed as a paean to American musicals, The Young Girls of Rochefort is vintage French: sugary surface, just a hint of the grotesque, and legs.
Film Series/Exhibition Title:
Sunday Summer Cinema: Dancing in the StreetsDescription:
See it large—a dance musical as antithetical to the small screen as West Side Story, whose choreography it emulates and whose star George Chakiris improbably appears here, along with Gene Kelly, Mr. American in Paris himself. In the sleepy town of Rochefort, denizens who somnolently dance sidewise down the street are energized by the arrival of a traveling commercial fair that passes for spectacle. Catherine Deneuve and her talented sister Françoise Dorléac play musical twin sisters who while away the hours in their Barbie-doll outfits until they can hitch a ride to love and fame. In Demy’s clever patter set to Michel Legrand’s music, their barista mother Danielle Darrieux dreams of a love lost to the silliness of the French language, and everyone around her pines, in rhyme, for a poetic ideal. Billed as a paean to American musicals, The Young Girls of Rochefort is vintage French: sugary surface, just a hint of the grotesque, and legs.
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