Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris

This film is of interest because it captures two of the original performers of the original version of the Off-Broadway revue, and because Jacques Brel appears in it. But wow, it couldn't be more 70s. The show is not improved by the faux-surrealism or the "hippie children" running around like escapees from "Pippin" or "Godspell". Elly Stone, who brought Jacques Brel's songs to the US, has an intensely irritating voice but is still compelling. Mort Shuman, another original cast member (I believe he also did some of the translations), is quite good. For some reason they dropped the second female role, and the second male role is played by Joe Masiell rather than the original Shawn Elliott, whom I would have been interested to see. Masiell has an excellent voice but his mannerisms are a little over the top.

The best part of the film is also the worst: Jacques Brel himself, singing one of his most famous songs, "Ne Me Quitte Pas". It starts out with a closeup of his eyes. The camera pulls back, and you see him simply sitting at a table, singing the song. He's stunning. You think to yourself, "What a great chance to see him at the height of his powers! How smart of them to let him just sit and sing!" And then the camera starts moving in, slowly but relentlessly, to just a closeup of his eyes ... and STAYS THERE for the rest of the song! What idiot directed THAT?? Truly a case of the sublime turning into the ridiculous.

Jacques Brel Is Alive And Well And Living In The Sewer. This is a chanson and babble artifact. Prince Jacques Brel is one of the most notorious human mimes ever (breakout 1975 Paris) - second only to La Bonhomme who broke out of his invisible box at the Quebec City Winter Carnival 1604. In this compilation movie, we see a combination of such subtle physicality and the babble that made Brel such a threat. Enjoy it for the babble, but learn, should the threat of human mime occur again. Human Alert: MIMES; No Rating: Babble Artifact and VOSTFR designations; Learning merit: 1.

I saw this film in 1975 as part of the AFI series at UCLA. Walking into the theatre, I had no idea what to expect and had never heard of Jacques Brel before. I became a huge Jacques Brel fan that evening and have enjoyed his music for the last 27 years. This film is a delightful cabaret of music video before it even existed. Ellie Stone's torch singing performance, in particular, made me a fan for life. The rest of the cast was equally dynamic; I can still hear "Next" being sung inside my head. Brel's work is touching, political, brilliant. This film was available on video for a very short time in the early 80's. How I wish I had purchased it then as it is no longer available. I would love to see this film over and over again.

My introduction to the music of Jacques Brel was through The American Film Theater's adaptation of the long-running off-Broadway revue JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS. Starring two of the original cast (Elly Stone and Brel's English lyric translator Mort Shuman) and a cast replacement (Joe Masielle), Brel's haunting music is vividly brought to life in an eclectic film. There's no real plot to speak of, but here, you don't need one- the music speaks for itself. Even The Master appears to sing one of his hits ("Ne Me Quitte Pas"), and his back-up cast effectively sing about love, loss, pain and the ultimate triumph of the Human Spirit. For Broadway buffs, it's a treat to know that several other actors who appeared on stage in this revue have cameo appearances (Shawn Elliott, Judy Landers and Annette Perone). The joyous news is that Kino Video will be finally releasing the film on VHS and DVD in April 2003- after watching a butchered print taken from commercial tv, you can bet that this movie is going to be watched on my DVD player over and over. Do yourself a favor and experience this wonderful film...your heart will NEVER forget it!

I have been a Brel fan for many years and it so happened that I never had the chance to see Brel translated in English. I am glad that I found this DVD at the library and I enjoyed most of it. I have read some criticism here on the cinematography, and I fully agree with it. In particular, my criticism is on the voice synchronization. It is very rare to find such poor technical quality in movie, but in this case I do bear in mind that this was play before it was a movie. I am very familiar with the French originals and I was impressed by Mort Shuman's lyrics, and by the powerful performance of Elly Stone. IN particular I found the interpretation of (the very difficult) "Marike" very impressive, in particular since part of it was in (very well pronounced) Flemish. I liked Brel's performance of course, but I would have expected translation subtitles, since the rest of the songs were in English. As a movie, this DVD is unwatchable and I fell asleep watching it. However, after waking up, I listened carefully to the music and the lyrics and realized that this was a very talented crew, but the filming was amateurish. In part this was deliberate, but overall I am sure a remake of this movie as a series of new music videos would be well received by Brel enthusiasts like myself. My rank of 5 is an average of Music 9 and Cinematography 1.