Jacquot De Nantes [DVD]

This is a biography of writer/director Jacquot Demy made by his former wife shortly after his death. It starts just before World War II and continues until a few years after the war. His age during this time was about eight to eighteen. Even though much of his childhood was during the war he considered he had a happy childhood. The movie is based on Jacquot's memoirs and is inter cut with clips from some of his movies and some clips of him while he was probably in his fifties, plus some narration by someone else, probably Agnes Varda, the director.The shooting style is a little strange, the family life is in black & white, but the theme of the film is Jacquot's love of any kind of performance and whenever anything directly related to this appears the films switches to color. At least I think that is what she was doing. More than once the film is switching back and forth between a colorized performance and a black & white Jacquot watching the performance. This might have had the desired effect if the movie was only showing Jacquot's childhood, however with the inter cutting of some clips from his movies which are mostly in color, but some in black & white, plus the clips of him in his fifties which are all in color, the transitions between black & white and color create more confusion than clarity.I should note here that the clips from his movies show how he directly used his childhood experiences in making his movies later in life. In some places Anges' reenactment of the young Jacquot is immediately followed by a clip which is almost exactly the same but with different actors. At other times the clip from his movie is not quite as close to Anges' reenactment of his childhood, but is clearly based on the same childhood experience.I enjoyed the movie, but must admit I was a little lost during the early part of the movie. However after getting into the rhythm of the movie I liked it and after finishing the movie I went back and watched first couple of chapters again.A couple of other noteworthy things:The movie summery on the back of the DVD case is in what I believe to be Korean. This is not really a problem since I can read the movie summery online. Since Amazon.com sometimes posts reviews on more than one release of a movie I should add that I purchased ASIN: B0077667BQ; Region: all regions; Subtitles: English, Korean.The second noteworthy thing is that the movie does contain a small amount of nudity. The opening of the movie shows a painting of a couple lying nude on a beach, I suspect that this is a painting by Jacquot. Later in the film is what I assume to be Jacquot's first sexual experience being played out. Around the age of thirteen he and Ren take a refugee girl up to the attic where each boy takes his turn as lookout while the other boy spends time with the girl. The camera shows the boy acting as lookout while we hear the girl giggling off camera. The girl is seen topless , Ren is seen in his underwear, and Jacquot is seen both in his underwear and fully nude (mostly from the rear, only very briefly from the front). None of the three show any sign of starting puberty.

Excellent quality print of the film. Well-done! Buyer beware this is not a Region 1 DVD. You would need an all-region DVD or Blu-Ray player if you are anywhere except Europe.Jacques Demy, France's noted film director, gets a beautiful send-off in this bio-pic/documentary done during and after his cancer treatment and death, by his filmmaker wife. It's not especially deep, but it is very charming, interspersing the young Jacques and his adventures with scenes from his later films that are reminiscent of his experiences and of the old Jacques being shot and interviewed.

For me—I prefer Agnès Varda to Jacques Demy. She made this film with such love it was hard not to become very fond of Demy!!!

I already owned this movie on VHS videotape but I wanted a digital, long lasting version so I bought the DVD. The videotape picture clarity is much superior to the DVD! Viewing both versions on my 1080p flatscreen TV, the DVD picture is darker than the VHS picture and not as clear (fuzzy). I recommend the VHS copy if you have a videocassette player. Otherwise, hope that the DVD is reissued using updated technology for improving picture clarity.

If you have not seen any movies of Jack Demy, or if you have seen them and didn’t like them, this is definitely not the film for you. If you do like his films, I think you will enjoy this very relaxed, slow paced, but very charming movie about his youth in Nantes just before, during and just after WW2. It is supremely accurate in detail, documentary style and believability, yet also simplicity. It shows plainly how important music was throughout his youth, and his steadfast commitment to the cinema

I'll start right off by saying that if you haven't seen any of the major films from the subject of this terrific bio-docudrama, Jacques (Jacquot) Demy, then you probably won't get much out of it and in fact I'd suggest you'd be much better off watching THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG instead. That 1964 musical is probably Demy's most famous film, and it's one that is featured in several clips (along with every one of the late director's features if I'm not mistaken) in this loving recreation of the director's early years, taken from his memoirs and directed by his equally talented director wife as he was dying of AIDS.The film shifts fluidly from black and white to color - often a remarkable reproduction of 60s Technicolor, perhaps a tribute more to young Jacquot's early visions than to his 30s and 40s surroundings - and from the present-day (1990) dying man conversing about his past to recreations of those formative years, falling in love with movies in SNOW WHITE (1937, when Demy was 6) through leaving for film school in Paris after years of trying to convince his stubborn working class father that film was a worthy profession at the end of the 1940s.World War II is of course a central motif in any film about people living in France during that era, but interestingly enough the film takes the unsentimental childish view that (presumably) was reality for the director at the time - it was for him, living in a provincial town in the west of the country and being lucky enough to come through it with family intact, an inconvenience or an adventure most of the time - here he discovers a love of the country, but there he discovers an abhorrence of violence, which ends up reflecting in some of the sunniest and most fairy-tale-like films in French cinema. No, for the young Jacques Demy the real struggle was with his fair but very firm male parent, never indulgent like his mother and determined that his eldest son should learn a real trade as a mechanic - much of Parpluies certainly derives from those teen-age years of tech school and working on cars.My favorite parts of the film are probably those devoted to Demy's nascent homegrown film career - unlike many of his better-known peers like Godard and Chabrol, Demy was never a critic and started out making films not long after he began to be obsessed with watching them, on his own at first with hand-cranked and then cheap electric 9.5 mm cameras. Several reconstructions of his early work with human actors and with animation provide both amusement and a real sense that here is a person who found his calling early, and never gave up despite the easier paths open to him. It would be an excellent film for all budding filmmakers to watch, and it's another example of Varda's terrific understanding of the documentary and essay forms, not quite in either category, not quite fiction, but all love and affection.

Ce film est réalisé par Agnès Varda en hommage à son mari décédé un an plus tôt, Jacques Demy, lui aussi réalisateur des célèbres « Parapluies de Cherbourg, Les demoiselles de Rochefort, Peau d'âne... », une œuvre rare qui montre la naissance et le développement d'une passion chez un enfant investi par le cinéma. C'est la Seconde guerre mondiale et les loisirs ne sont pas la préoccupation essentielle des adultes, comme on peut s'en douter. Pourtant, la magie du théâtre de Guignol, l'opéra, la fascination qu'exerce sur le petit Jacquot le dessin animé de Walt Diney « Blanche neige et les sept nains », la volonté de créer un spectacle pour ses amis du quartier et le désir immense de projeter la vie - sa vie - sur un simple drap vont le motiver à l'excès malgré l'incompréhension totale de son père, bien plus pragmatique avec son garage « à faire tourner ». Il aura également étudié la musique par l'apprentissage du violon pendant cinq ans d'où sa capacité à travailler par la suite avec le grand Michel, notre fameux compositeur de musiques de films (Michel Legrand). À l'adolescence, sûr de son choix et de son orientation artistique, le parcours de Jacques Demy lui permettra de devenir l'assistant de Lamorisse pour « Le voyage en ballon » en 1960, quatre ans après « Le ballon rouge », musiques de Jean Prodromidès. Question musique de film justement, le travail effectué par Joanna Bruzdowicz pour « Jacquot de Nantes » laisse à désirer ; il consiste davantage à superviser la gestion des vingt-six musiques additionnelles (!) plutôt que de composer directement pour le film, une démarche peu créatrice difficile à accepter. Jacques Demy, imprégné par la musique dans son enfance, saura compenser tout cela dans son œuvre favorisant de manière remarquable le développement et l'intérêt mondial du public pour la musique de films et de comédies musicales. Quant à Agnès Varda, l'une des dernières représentantes de ce que l'on a appelé « la nouvelle vague du cinéma français », aussi à l'aise dans les courts-métrages et les documentaires que dans les longs-métrages et la photographie, elle fait preuve de « résistance et d'endurance » comme elle aime à le répéter. Une sacré femme !

J'ai adoré ce film que j'avais vu à la télévision, il raconte l'enfance de Jacques Demy qui réalisa entre autre "Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, et les Demoiselles de Rochefort) on le voit à différentes époques de son enfance, et pourquoi il a été passionné par le cinéma dès le début. Ce film rétro-chronologiqueen noir et blanc et en couleurN d'Agnès Verda est très émouvant.

Superlative bio by Agnes Varda of her late husband the celebrated director Jacques Demy. The three boys playing him are all superb, especially the youngest who really conveys the young Demy's growing love for cinema and the moving image.

Most loving tribute to a dying husband, (Jacques Demy) by Agnès Varda.Extras included add to interest. One of my favourite World Cinema movies.

Toute la poésie d'Agnès Varda et de son mari