Young Girls of Rochefort, The (1967) – Nostalgia Central

Delphine Garnier (Catherine Deneuve) and her twin sister Solange (Deneuve’s real-life sister Françoise Dorléac) live in Rochefort, where Delphine is a dancing teacher, and Solange composes and teaches the piano.

Maxence (Jacques Perrin) is a poet and a painter with butter-coloured hair who is currently doing his military service in the navy, Andy Miller (Gene Kelly) is a concert pianist who has come to Rochefort to visit an old friend, and Etienne (George Chakiris) and Bill (Grover Dale) are a couple of chirpy young fellows passing through with a travelling fair.

All of them are looking for love.

Mix them up with the girls’ mother (Danielle Darrieux), who runs a cafe in the town square, a sad fellow who operates a music shop (Michel Piccoli), an arrogant abstract painter (Henri Crémieux), and several remarkable minor characters, and you have the full recipe.

The plot, insubstantial as it is, is far too complicated for a musical and necessitates an intolerable degree of explanation. Michel Legrand’s musical score tinkles pleasantly along without ever establishing a memorable melody.

Sadly, the film was also dubbed into English for international audiences, resulting in some American-accented English, around which the lips of the characters seldom convincingly meet.

The singing voices were all dubbed as well (except for Darrieux).

The film is ravishing to look at, though, and its chief strength is the elegance of the designs: the white interior of a music shop with instruments tastefully suspended from the most unlikely spots; Rochefort’s Place Colbert enclosed by blue and pink shuttered houses; a gallery lined with Op Art paintings . . .

And no visitors (including a party of nuns) are allowed anywhere unless they have adjusted their dress to complement the surroundings.

25-year-old Françoise Dorléac was killed in a car accident just three months after the film’s release in France and almost a year before it was released in the US.

Delphine Garnier
Catherine Deneuve
Anne Germain (singing voice)
Etienne
George Chakiris
Romuald (singing voice)
Solange Garnier
Françoise Dorléac
Claude Parent (singing voice)
Maxence
Jacques Perrin
Jacques Revaux (singing voice)
Andy Miller
Gene Kelly
Donald Burke (singing voice)
Simon Dame
Michel Piccoli
Georges Blaness (singing voice)
Guillaume Lancien
Jacques Riberolles
Bill
Grover Dale
José Bartel (singing voice)
Josette
Geneviève Thénier
Alice Herald (singing voice)
Subtil Dutrouz
Henri Crémieux
Judith
Pamela Hart
Christiane Legrand (singing voice)
Esther
Leslie North
Claudine Meunier (singing voice)
Bouboo Garnier
Patrick Jeantet
Olivier Bonnet (singing voice)
Yvonne Garnier
Danielle Darrieux
Pépé
René Pascal

Director
Jacques Demy

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