The Criterion Collection edition of Jacques Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)
Archival Interviews: A 1966 French television interview with director Jacques Demy and composer Michel Legrand discussing the film's music.
One of the film’s greatest curiosities is the presence of Gene Kelly. By 1967, Kelly was a god of MGM musicals. His casting was a strategic move by Demy, who wanted to pay homage to Singin’ in the Rain and An American in Paris. Kelly plays Andy Miller, a frustrated composer who drives a boat-shaped Cadillac. The Young Girls of Rochefort -1967- Criterion -...
In the vast, often somber library of the Criterion Collection—a canon filled with neorealism’s grit, Bergman’s existential dread, and Tarkovsky’s poetic melancholy—there is one title that stands apart like a pastel-colored firework against a grey sky. That title is Jacques Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967).
Set over the course of a single weekend in the picturesque seaside town of Rochefort, the film weaves together the lives of several characters searching for love and artistic fulfillment. The Criterion Collection edition of Jacques Demy's The
Michel Legrand’s score is the film’s beating heart. Lush motifs recur—particularly the yearning theme that threads the sisters’ story—and the songs shift between buoyant ensemble numbers and intimate melodic laments. Demy’s direction of movement creates dance out of everyday action: people drift, glance, and circle one another in choreography that advances plot and feeling simultaneously. The choreography feels effortless; it’s less about virtuosic display than about the choreography of encounters—how strangers become lovers through music and missed connections.
The Criterion Collection restoration (Spine #717) preserves the film’s specific visual intent. His casting was a strategic move by Demy,
Cultural Context: Supplements highlight the film’s production during the rising tensions of the late 60s, making its joy a radical act.
Criterion includes a 1988 documentary, Les Demoiselles ont eu 25 ans (The Young Girls Turned 25), directed by Agnès Varda, Demy’s wife. In it, a visibly heartbroken Deneuve revisits the now-drab real Rochefort, walking through the same squares where fake storefronts once glittered. The documentary is a masterful companion piece—not a making-of, but a meditation on how cinema petrifies youth, and how reality corrodes it.