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Jacques Demy: Music
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Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is a musical more than anything, though it doesn't follow the specific rules of the genre. It doesn't have any "songs," per se, it's just that when the characters speak to each other in everyday language, they sing. They don't even use rhyming words.
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Jacques Demy (June 5, 1931 – October 27, 1990) was one of the most approachable filmmakers of the French New Wave. Uninterested in the formal experimentation of Alain Resnais, or the political agitation of Jean-Luc Godard, Demy instead created a self-contained fantasy world closer to that of François Truffaut, drawing on musicals, fairytales and the golden age of Hollywood.
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Jacques Demy, the subject of this biography, was undoubtedly a great filmmaker; his films were poetical visions, filled with music, fantasy and magic. The titular Jacquot refers to Jacques' nickname as a child.
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The second of Jacques Demy's informal trilogy of homages to 1950s Hollywood musicals, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is famous for having no spoken dialogue. Instead, the cast sing every line (like the more recent Evita), without ever forcing their voices in any way, taking the film into the realm of operetta or opera (... distinguishing it from say, Tales of Hoffman or Carmen). They are also accompanied by music throughout. This novel approach was Demy's solution to the problem often apparent within Hollywood musicals of the disparity between the musical and non-musical elements, and how best to `integrate' them.
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That style of Demy's dialogue is absolutely right for this entirely-sung film. The script would be too slight for a 'spoken' movie, especially with so many two- and three-character scenes; yet it would not be overtly emotional or dramatic enough to sustain a full-blown musical, like
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