The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964, Jacques Demy) (Patreon)

92/100

Third viewing, last seen 2004. This has apparently become one of those movies that makes me weepy within seconds—Legrand's gently seismic "I Will Wait for You" theme plays a sizable role in that, of course, but it's also just the sheer formal beauty of Demy's sustained overhead shot, with umbrella colors and extras' timing + directional movement casually yet dazzlingly choreographed around opening credits that keep shifting position. (I'd maim for behind-the-scenes footage shot from an elevated position about 50 yards away.) "No movie could possibly fulfill this promise of precision-tooled mournful rapture," one thinks, a conviction that The Umbrellas of Cherbourg proceeds to both confirm and deny: Yes, it actually does remain a sensory feast on that rarefied level throughout (you've done something astonishing with color when I, with my defective L-cone, keep muttering "Holy shit" upon cuts to a new set)...but also No, it's not exactly the swoony romance that all the visual and aural lushness would seem to naturally suggest. What makes the ending so powerful is its matter-of-fact transference of passion, the score achieving maximum grandiose ardor not as Guy and Geneviève part (though that's happening simultaneously, and nobody could begrudge our feeling a pang or two) but as Guy happily greets Madeleine and François, returning without apparent regret to the contented life he's built for himself. There's something genuinely radical about a movie that pushes every fairy-tale button imaginable, underlining artifice so strenuously that literally every line gets sung rather than spoken*, only to end not with "happily ever after," nor even the conventionally oppositional "miserably ever after" (which is merely a downbeat expression of the same fundamental idea: true love exists), but with what's essentially a pragmatic paean to settling. And that's not le mot juste, really, as there's zero indication of either party feeling that (s)he's chosen a second-best spouse/path/life. Sometimes—often!—things just don't work out, and when that happens, sometimes—often!—other things, equally or more wonderful, arrive to take their place. A strikingly mature ethos that every single element of the movie had been actively working against. 

Honestly, Umbrellas isn't on my Sight & Sound ballot only because there's something slightly unsatisfying, to me, about the disconnect between Demy's words and Legrand's melodies. By which I mean that much of the time you can hear Legrand struggling to fit less-than-mellifluous lines into a musical framework. (Dancer in the Dark's songs suffer from the same problem, no doubt because Björk and Sjón had to shoe in a bunch of stuff that Von Trier wanted.) At times, this can be fun—I always laugh when that random dude pokes his head into the umbrella shop to sing-ask for directions and quickly gets sing-shooed away—but the purist in me wants every exchange to sound like "I Will Wait for You" and Roland Cassard's theme, i.e. like a proper song. Which one might argue is unreasonable, but Sweeney Todd is almost entirely sung-through. It can be done, if you're both gifted and fanatical enough. (Aside that had somehow never previously occurred to me: "The Windmills of My Mind" would have fit perfectly here, with different lyrics. Really wish he'd come up with that a few years earlier.) Anyway, while I don't actually deduct rating points for specific "flaws," you can ascribe most of the gap between 92 and 100 to the fact that this is one of the only musicals I love for which I don't own the complete soundtrack. That plus some lingering discomfort with Guy just letting his daughter go forever (one presumes), though that's the same decision often made by people who give babies up for adoption. Otherwise, utter perfection, and I'm never again firing it up without tissues handy.

ANCILLARY: Made the note "Spike Lee shot!" and can't find anywhere to incorporate it, but after being reminded that Demy employs Lee's trademark double-dolly move, with Geneviève and Guy "walking" down the street without moving their legs, seemingly pulled by an unseen conveyor belt, I'm now wondering who originated it. Somebody back in like 1916, no doubt. 

* I can't think offhand of another musical in which it doesn't bother me even a little bit that every single significant actor's vocal performance is entirely dubbed by somebody else. Lip-syncing's expert across the board, and every singing voice has been plausibly matched to the face. Quite remarkable.