Le monde enchanté de Jacques Demy

Who recalls that he practically discovered Harrison Ford? Back in 1967 Jacques Demy, 1931-1990, had chosen him as his main actor for Model Shop, his only American film. Columbia Studios did not agree and imposed Gary Lockwood… This catalogue accompanies the exhibition at the Cinémathèque française, nearly half a century after his Palme d’or in Cannes in 1964 for Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. It is an impressionist portrait of a sensitive movie maker, who invented a new genre of musical comedy, both intellectual and nostalgic, from Demoiselles de Rochefort to Trois places pour le 26. It rolls out the thread of friendships and loyalties, including Agnès Varda, Costa-Gavras, Truffaut, Michel Legrand; it retraces his itinerary, from Nantes where he was born in a modest family with his father as a garage attendant and his mother as a hairdresser. Then Christian-Jaque noticed him, he went off to start his career and it was prematurely ended, at the age of 59 before he could finish his last project, Anouchka, the adaptation of Tolstoi’s Anna Karenine. We are interested in seeing the photographs and paintings Demy made - an aspect of his creativity few know about - in a style inspired by Ed Ruscha. But we can only regret not finding appended his detailed filmography that hardly includes some fifteen long feature films.

• Le monde enchanté de Jacques Demy, Skira Flammarion, 2013, 256 p., €45