Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris

For American fans of Jacques Brel, this is a rare opportunity to see him perform. The rest of the cast is excellent. This movie was part of a series of stage performances that the Zanucks put on film. They ran as a subscription series in very limited venues. All were good, some excellent, all very different from what was generally available.

This adaptation of the stage play is so dated that it almost overshadows the amazing performances. Elly Stone does not have your typical voice but she does have all the power and passion that you could ever add to an interpretation of a Brel song. Watching her sing "Sons of..." is the highpoint of the film.

The worst thing about this film is it starts out so poorly it is hard to recover. The opening renditions are very poorly shot. and there are some non-singing, non-vocal moments of "surrealism" that are too awful to be believed. But as we settle into the idea of not having a plot and not apologizing for this fact, the songs become more straight-forward performances. The heartbreaking "Song for Old Lovers" is the highpoint towards the end. It is, however, unfortunate that such a crazy song as sung by Ms. Stone, namely "Carousel", is ruined by some very petty editing "techniques" that climaxes in an image we've already seen and that wasn't effective the first time.

Some other song highlights are "Next" and "Mathilde", but it is Ms. Stone that really makes you feel the urgency of these songs. If we could just watch her and the other cast just perform these the way they did on stage, it would have been a better film. But the director decides to rely on some cinematic tricks that just look worse after time.

As for Brel's appearance, it is slightly anti-climactic, but utterly moving. His is the saddest and most recognizable of all the songs gathered here, and in its original French the most authentic. We should consider ourselves lucky for the documentation of that moment.

I would advise anyone who is willing to watch this to skip the first 8 chapters or so, and start with "Alone" sung by the Priest at the funeral. Then the film is shorter and you miss the embarrassing opening numbers...

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.

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.

I love this film because I loved the music... Jacques Brel is a talented songwriter... he writes with much emotion and feeling. I wish this film was available on Video or broadcasted again on television. I have not seen it for over a decade.

Hopefully, it will be revived soon or made available to the public...As long as someone listens to his music... Jacques Brel is still Alive and Well and Living in Paris.