The Disc Jockey
What’s new on DVD: a pair of overlooked French classics, and saying goodbye to Superfly
In the mid-1990s, entirely (and appropriately) by chance, I wandered into a screening of Jacques Demy’s 1964 musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at San Francisco’s Castro Theatre. It turned out to be one of my favorite movies, and it was made even sweeter by the film’s wet-eyed worshippers, who applauded and wept and sang along in French. I now understand their devotion, and hope it spreads when Umbrellas tours the country this spring in a new 40th-anniversary print. (Hello? Belcourt?) In the meantime, Demy’s first two films, Lola and Bay of Angels, both essential, have just been released on DVD. Though neither musicals nor in color, they’re scarcely less lilting than the rain-misted Umbrellas.
His 1961 debut Lola remains one of his best-known films: a bittersweet roundelay about a single-mom saloon dancer (Anouk Aimee, in the role that made her an international star) who flits in and out of romance, waiting for the return of her true love. The movie sets the boundaries of the Demy monde: it takes place in Nantes, the seaside town of his childhood, and it introduces characters and themes he’d return to throughout his career. As always in his films, the swooniest conventions of Hollywood romances clash, collide and commingle with drab reality, and somehow both come away sharper and brighter—especially in Raoul Coutard’s luminous black-and-white ‘Scope imagery.
Demy’s insistence on the power of chance and the exhilaration of risk gives his 1963 gambling drama Bay of Angels an edge of mad exuberance. Few movies have dared to portray compulsion so alluringly. The hero, sullen bank clerk Jean (Claude Mann), lets a buddy talk him into sampling the thrill of betting, starting with several thousand francs on a spin of the roulette wheel. He knows when to quit, though, so it isn’t really gambling. It takes a true addict, Jackie—played by a sunlight-blond Jeanne Moreau, who gives madness a glamorous immediacy—to hook him on the irrational all-or-nothing bet that pays off only in exaltation or punishment.
Accompanied by a pulse-racing Michel Legrand piano theme, the sound of curiosity plunging into abandon, Jean and Jackie drift from luxury to poverty on the Riviera, and Demy reads every sickening turn of the wheel on their tense faces. Yet Jean is grateful to discover the extremes of emotion, which spurs him to save his rootless companion. “What counts is to want something,” he tells Jackie, “no matter what the cost is”—a statement of principle for all the desperate lovers in Demy’s films, and for their creator as well.
As usual, Wellspring’s DVD editions come with few extras. Besides the theatrical trailer, the only addition of note on each disc is a short excerpt from The World of Jacques Demy, the 1995 documentary prepared by the filmmaker’s widow, Nouvelle Vague director Agnes Varda (Cleo from 5 to 7). Let’s hope The Umbrellas of Cherbourg gets a better package if someone does a 40th-anniversary DVD. The movies themselves, however, are gorgeous and undimmed—a worthy introduction to a director who’s just starting to get his due.
♦ A single blockbuster role can fit an actor like a straitjacket, confining him for life to a single type or career path. Ron O’Neal, who died Wednesday at age 66 after a long bout with cancer, spent 30 years hounded by the shadow of Youngblood Priest, the high-rolling pusherman he played in Gordon Parks Jr.’s trend-setting 1972 blaxploitation smash Super Fly. A Cleveland native who turned to theater at Ohio State, O’Neal won acclaim and awards on the New York stage before moving on to film. But starring roles for black actors in the early 1970s were largely limited to pimps, playas or private eyes, and once Super Fly hit O’Neal was a victim of his own success. He would be envisioned forever in mack threads and a plumed hat by casting directors, long after the short-lived blaxploitation craze petered out.
Ironically, O’Neal’s best moment on film remains the one that all but ensured he’d never have another role that good. Just released this week in a new DVD special edition, Super Fly holds up better for its gritty '70s ambiance, locations and documentary feel than for its thug-life melodrama. It’s the old tale of the hood who wants one last score, and just like the Warner Bros. gangster movies of the 1930s, its screw-the-system gloss on getting ahead connected strongly with disenfranchised audiences—and turned O’Neal into a reluctant role model for real-life rollers (as well as a target for African American civic leaders). But as Priest himself might say, hate the game, not the player. O’Neal made Priest one of the great early-1970s antiheroes, a Staggerlee with the charisma of Malcolm MacDowell’s droog leader in A Clockwork Orange. For that he’ll be fly forever.
Warner’s new disc does Super Fly right. Author and film professor Todd Boyd provides commentary, and multiple features cover everything from the vintage pimp threads to Curtis Mayfield’s glorious score, which undercuts the movie’s dope-dealer hero worship at every opportunity. There’s also an interview with O’Neal, who comments on the mixed blessing of his career-defining role. Sadly, he died the day after this new edition hit the streets. Youngblood Priest, however, lives on.
—Jim Ridley
Warner’s new disc does Super Fly right. Author and film professor Todd Boyd provides commentary, and multiple features cover everything from the vintage pimp threads to Curtis Mayfield’s glorious score, which undercuts the movie’s dope-dealer hero worship at every opportunity. There’s also an interview with O’Neal, who comments on the mixed blessing of his career-defining role. Sadly, he died the day after this new edition hit the streets. Youngblood Priest, however, lives on.
—Jim Ridley
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