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Perhaps motivated by the success of La La Land, Criterion has reissued two impressive Jacques Demy musicals as separate releases. This all-singing, all-dancing homage to candy-colored vintage Hollywood musicals is a captivating Franco-American hybrid that allows free rein to Demy’s marvelously positive romantic philosophy.

The Young Girls of Rochefort

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 717

1967 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 125 min. / Les Demoiselles de Rochefort / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 11, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Françoise Dorléac, Danielle Darrieux, George Chakiris, Gene Kelly, Michel Piccoli, Jacques Perrin

Cinematography: Ghislain Cloquet

Production Designer: Bernard Evein

Film Editor: Jean Hamon

Original Music: Michel Legrand

Produced by Mag Bodard, Gilbert de Goldschmidt

Written and Directed by Jacques Demy

I was going to squeak by reviewing only Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, but the interest in the new La La Land prompted some emails and messages that tell me a revisit of the charming...

Jacques Demy’s international breakthrough musical gives us Catherine Deneuve and wall-to-wall Michel Legrand pop-jazz — it’s a different animal than La La Land but they’re being compared anyway. The story of a romance without a happily-ever-after is doggedly naturalistic, despite visuals as bright and buoyant as an old MGM show.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 716

1964 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 92 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Les parapluies de Cherbourg / Street Date April 11, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon, Marc Michel, Ellen Farner, Mireille Perrey, Jean Champion.

Cinematography: Jean Rabier

Production design:Bernard Evein

Film Editors: Anne-Marie Cotret, Monique Teisseire

Original Music: Michel Legrand

Produced by Mag Bodard

Written and Directed by Jacques Demy

What with all the hubbub about last year’s Oscar favorite La La Land, I wonder if Hollywood will be trotting out more retro-nostalgia, ‘let’s put on a show’ musical fantasy fare.

(Jacques Demy, 1964, StudioCanal)

One of the enduring attractions of the French New Wave is what is now thought of as Jacques Demy's seaside trilogy – three bittersweet musical films on the themes of love, loss and life not turning out the way you expect it to, all with recurring characters and taking place in ports on the Atlantic coast. All three are designed by Demy's school friend Bernard Evein with music by Michel Legrand.

The first, Lola (1961), Demy's directorial debut, is a cleverly patterned fairytale set in his native Nantes and stars Anouk Aimée as a golden-hearted nightclub prostitute reunited with her former love and is stunningly shot in black and white by key nouvelle vague cameraman Raoul Coutard.

The other two, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967), are both in imaginatively used colour and pay homage to the Hollywood musical, most especially the films of Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen,...