THE ESSENTIAL JACQUES DEMY 12
FILMS EXTRAS
1960-1982 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Short films, Documentaries, Featurettes, Video essay, Booklet
Describing any selection of a filmmaker’s body of work as ‘The Essential…’ is asking for trouble. Doing so implies anything left out is therefore redundant, and when it comes to French auteur Jacques Demy, that’s a pretty bold claim. OK, so you could make a case for skipping 1973’s The Slightly Pregnant Man. But anyone who doesn’t consider Model Shop (1969) or Troi Places Pour Le 26 (1988) essential needs their head looking at (good thing Arrow Academy put out a Model Shop Blu-ray last year).
Still, you’ll struggle to find many flaws with this Criterion Collection boxset. The HD transfer of Demy’s debut feature Lola (1961, ★★★★) looks rough in places, but that’s because the original negatives were destroyed, leaving only inferior materials for the restoration. And you wouldn’t notice, if the other five films – gambling melodrama Bay Of Angels (1963, ★★★★), musical classics The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg (1964,
★★★★★) and The Young Girls Of Rochefort (1967, ★★★★★), incestuous fairytale Donkey Skin (1970, ★★★), and the tragically operatic Une Chambre En Ville (1982, ★★★★) – didn’t look so fantastic.
There’s still scope for more, though. The standalone BFI release of The Young Girls Of Rochefort includes a number of features either not included or cut down here. So Essential-ly welcome - but not quite definitive Demy. Anton van Beek