Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris (film)
Encyclopedia
Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris is a 1975
French
/Canadian
musical film
directed by Denis Héroux
. The screenplay
by Eric Blau is an adaptation of his book
for the long-running off-Broadway
revue of the same name
. The score is composed of songs with music by Jacques Brel
and his accompanist Gérard Jouannest and English translations of the original French
lyrics by Blau and Mort Shuman
.
Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris was produced and released by the American Film Theatre
, which adapted theatrical works for a subscription-driven cinema series. It was the second of two musical films created by the American Film Theatre, following Lost in the Stars
in 1974.
theater, where three audience members – a military officer, a taxi driver, and a woman on a shopping trip - discover they are being depicted as marionette caricature
s against a backdrop of newsreel footage from the 1920s through the 1950s. They find themselves trapped backstage amidst bizarre circumstances . . . the puppet master is found dead above the stage, a gigantic plaster hand drops from the ceiling to the floor, and a deafening siren blares endlessly. The trio escapes from the theater to a beach, where the military officer locates the siren and kicks it, causing it to blow up.
The film then resumes the stage show's plotless structure. In this version, different cinematic interpretations are used to illustrate the show's score. A straightforward approach is for some songs: "Bachelor's Dance" finds a bartender singing out loud of his potential mate while eyeing the female patrons of his establishment, while "Amsterdam" places a weary inebriate in a barroom corner while he watches the mix of sailors and sexual predators pass by his table. Other songs are interpreted in a surreal manner: with "Marieke," images of a large red ball bouncing off a cliff are mixed with that of Elly Stone, dressed in a suit and tie, pursuing a little girl amidst the headstones of a cemetery.
s and eccentric-looking characters was added.
Mort Shuman and Elly Stone were members of the original off-Broadway cast, while Joe Masiell was a replacement later in the run. These were the only film performances of Stone and Masiell, whose respective careers focused on theatre
and cabaret
performances. Jacques Brel, who had no part in the original stage production, was recruited for a guest appearance.
François Rauber
served as the film's music director
and orchestrated
and conducted the score. The order of the songs was rearranged, and the original overture was cut, replaced with the song "Madeleine" performed during the title sequence by off-camera singers. Three songs from the original revue were also cut: "The Girls And The Dogs (Les filles et les chiens)," "Fanette (La Fanette)," and “You're Not Alone (Jef)." Five new songs were added in their place: "The Taxi Cab (Le gaz)," "My Childhood (Mon enfance)," "Last Supper (Le dernier repas)," "Song for Old Lovers (La chanson des vieux amants)," and "Ne me quitte pas
." The latter song was performed by Brel in French without English subtitles (there was already a popular English-language translation by Rod McKuen
).
Interiors were filmed at the Studios de la Victorine in Nice
.
said, "Mr. Heroux, with the obvious cooperation of Eric Blau and Mort Shuman . . . has transformed what was essentially a concert into an extravaganza of surreal images that keep messing things up. The images are vivid and disconnected to one another (good) but they inevitably wind up being visual translations of the lyrics (bad). It's a rather classy variation on the format employed by the old Hit Parade
television show, though it's seldom as witty."
Three decades later, when the film was released in the U.S. on DVD by Kino on Video, reaction was still negative. Glenn Erickson
of DVD Talk
wrote, "As interpreted here, the revue format has the same pacing problems that a stack of music videos would have if there were not enough variety. Many of the songs are amusing or emotional, but after a while too many seem similar - a plaintive half-melody that slowly rises in intensity and volume, until the singer is practically screaming. The elaborate scene changes don't help the fact that we're not seeing live performances - the frantic singers are mouthing to playback, which robs the material of its stage immediacy."
Writing in The Boston Globe
, Ed Siegel called the film "the biggest dud of all" in the American Film Theatre series and added, "As directed by Denis Heroux, Brel looks like an amateurish version of Hair
."
1975 in film
The year 1975 in film involved some significant events, with Steven Spielberg's thriller Jaws topping the box office.-Events:*March 26 - The film version of The Who's Tommy premieres in London....
French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
/Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
musical film
Musical film
The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate...
directed by Denis Héroux
Denis Héroux
Denis Héroux, OC is a Canadian film director and producer.-Biography:Héroux wanted to become a teacher when he collaborated with Denys Arcand and Stéphane Venne on the 1962 film about life as a student, Seul ou avec d’autres...
. The screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
by Eric Blau is an adaptation of his book
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
for the long-running off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
revue of the same name
Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris
Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris is an American musical revue of the songs of Jacques Brel.-Original Off-Broadway Production:...
. The score is composed of songs with music by Jacques Brel
Jacques Brel
Jacques Brel was a Belgian singer-songwriter who composed and performed literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs that generated a large, devoted following in France initially, and later throughout the world. He was widely considered a master of the modern chanson...
and his accompanist Gérard Jouannest and English translations of the original French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
lyrics by Blau and Mort Shuman
Mort Shuman
Mort Shuman was an American singer, pianist and songwriter, best known as co-writer of many 1960s rock and roll hits, including "Viva Las Vegas"...
.
Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris was produced and released by the American Film Theatre
American Film Theatre
The American Film Theatre was a limited run series of film adaptations of stage plays, produced by Ely Landau. Two seasons were produced from 1973 to 1975...
, which adapted theatrical works for a subscription-driven cinema series. It was the second of two musical films created by the American Film Theatre, following Lost in the Stars
Lost in the Stars (film)
Lost in the Stars is the 1974 film version of the Kurt Weill-Maxwell Anderson musicalized adaptation of the Alan Paton novel Cry, the Beloved Country...
in 1974.
Plot synopsis
The film opens in a puppetPuppet
A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, a play or a presentation that is a very ancient form of theatre....
theater, where three audience members – a military officer, a taxi driver, and a woman on a shopping trip - discover they are being depicted as marionette caricature
Caricature
A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.Caricatures can be...
s against a backdrop of newsreel footage from the 1920s through the 1950s. They find themselves trapped backstage amidst bizarre circumstances . . . the puppet master is found dead above the stage, a gigantic plaster hand drops from the ceiling to the floor, and a deafening siren blares endlessly. The trio escapes from the theater to a beach, where the military officer locates the siren and kicks it, causing it to blow up.
The film then resumes the stage show's plotless structure. In this version, different cinematic interpretations are used to illustrate the show's score. A straightforward approach is for some songs: "Bachelor's Dance" finds a bartender singing out loud of his potential mate while eyeing the female patrons of his establishment, while "Amsterdam" places a weary inebriate in a barroom corner while he watches the mix of sailors and sexual predators pass by his table. Other songs are interpreted in a surreal manner: with "Marieke," images of a large red ball bouncing off a cliff are mixed with that of Elly Stone, dressed in a suit and tie, pursuing a little girl amidst the headstones of a cemetery.
Production notes
The original Off-Broadway revue was a series of 25 songs performed by two men and two women. For the film version, screenwriter Blau and director Heroux reconfigured the presentation. One of the women was dropped from the cast line-up, and a chorus consisting of young hippieHippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
s and eccentric-looking characters was added.
Mort Shuman and Elly Stone were members of the original off-Broadway cast, while Joe Masiell was a replacement later in the run. These were the only film performances of Stone and Masiell, whose respective careers focused on theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
and cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...
performances. Jacques Brel, who had no part in the original stage production, was recruited for a guest appearance.
François Rauber
François Rauber
François Rauber was a French pianist, composer, arranger and conductor known for his works with chansonnier Jacques Brel...
served as the film's music director
Music director
A music director may be the director of an orchestra, the director of music for a film, the director of music at a radio station, the head of the music department in a school, the co-ordinator of the musical ensembles in a university or college , the head bandmaster of a military band, the head...
and orchestrated
Orchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...
and conducted the score. The order of the songs was rearranged, and the original overture was cut, replaced with the song "Madeleine" performed during the title sequence by off-camera singers. Three songs from the original revue were also cut: "The Girls And The Dogs (Les filles et les chiens)," "Fanette (La Fanette)," and “You're Not Alone (Jef)." Five new songs were added in their place: "The Taxi Cab (Le gaz)," "My Childhood (Mon enfance)," "Last Supper (Le dernier repas)," "Song for Old Lovers (La chanson des vieux amants)," and "Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
"Ne me quitte pas" is a song written and sung in French and in Dutch by the Belgian chansonnier Jacques Brel in 1959. It has been covered in the original French by many artists and has also been translated into and performed in many other languages...
." The latter song was performed by Brel in French without English subtitles (there was already a popular English-language translation by Rod McKuen
Rod McKuen
Rod McKuen is an American poet, songwriter, composer, and singer. He was one of the best-selling poets in the United States during the late 1960s. Throughout his career, McKuen produced a wide range of recordings, which included popular music, spoken word poetry, film soundtracks, and classical music...
).
Interiors were filmed at the Studios de la Victorine in Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
.
Principal cast
- Elly Stone ..... Lady with Shopping Bag
- Mort Shuman ..... Taxi Driver
- Joe Masiell ..... Marine
- Jacques Brel ..... Himself
Soundtrack
Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris has no dialogue; the entire film is sung.- Madeleine – Performed off-camera by Françoise Simon, Joseph Neil, Annette Perrone, Judy Lander and Shawn ElliottShawn ElliottShawn Elliott is an actor. He is known for his role as Eduardo Fernandez, father of Alex and Gaby Fernandez on the TV show Ghostwriter. His most recent role was on the TV show Kidnapped.-External links:...
(who was a member of the original off-Broadway cast) - Marathon (Les flamandes) – Mort Shuman, Elly Stone, and Joe Masiell
- My Childhood (Mon enfance) – Elly Stone
- The Statue – Joe Masiell
- Brussels (Bruxelles) – Mort Shuman, Elly Stone, and Joe Masiell
- JackieJacky (Jacques Brel song)"Jacky" is a song written by Jacques Brel. He recorded the song on 2 November 1965, and it was released on his 1966 album Ces Gens-Là. The song was translated from French into English and retitled as "Jackie"....
(La chanson de Jacky) – Mort Shuman - Timid Frieda (Les timides) – Elly Stone
- Taxicab (Le gaz) – Mort Shuman
- The Old Folks (Les vieux) – Elly Stone
- Alone (Seul) – Joe Masiell
- Funeral Tango (Le tango funèbre) – Mort Shuman
- I Loved (J'aimais) – Elly Stone
- Bachelor’s Dance (La bourrée du célibataire) - Joe Masiell
- Amsterdam – Mort Shuman
- Ne Me Quitte Pas – Jacques Brel
- Desperate Ones (Les désespérés) Mort Shuman, Elly Stone, and Joe Masiell
- Sons Of… (Fils de...) - Elly Stone
- The Bulls (Les taureaux) – Joe Masiell
- MariekeMarieke (song)Marieke is a 1962 song by the Belgian singer Jacques Brel.-The song:In Marieke, Brel sings about a Flemish girl, Marieke, whom he once loved and lived "between the towers of Bruges and Gent"...
– Elly Stone (performed in English and Flemish) - Last Supper (Le Dernier Repas) - Mort Shuman, Elly Stone, and Joe Masiell
- Mathilde – Mort Shuman
- The Middle Class (Les bourgeois) – Mort Shuman and Joe Masiell
- Song of Old Lovers (La chanson des vieux amants) – Elly Stone
- Next (Au suivant) – Joe Masiell
- Carousel (La valse à mille temps) – Elly Stone
- If Only We Have Love (Quand on n'a que l'amour) - Mort Shuman, Elly Stone, and Joe Masiell.
Critical reception
The film did not receive a strong reaction from the critics at the time of its release. In his review in the New York Times, Vincent CanbyVincent Canby
Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...
said, "Mr. Heroux, with the obvious cooperation of Eric Blau and Mort Shuman . . . has transformed what was essentially a concert into an extravaganza of surreal images that keep messing things up. The images are vivid and disconnected to one another (good) but they inevitably wind up being visual translations of the lyrics (bad). It's a rather classy variation on the format employed by the old Hit Parade
Your Hit Parade
Your Hit Parade, is an American radio and television music program that was broadcast from 1935 to 1955 on radio, and seen from 1950 to 1959 on television. It was sponsored by American Tobacco's Lucky Strike cigarettes. During this 24-year run, the show had 19 orchestra leaders and 52 singers or...
television show, though it's seldom as witty."
Three decades later, when the film was released in the U.S. on DVD by Kino on Video, reaction was still negative. Glenn Erickson
Glenn Erickson
Glenn Erickson is an American film editor and film critic. He started in the film industry in 1975 as an editor of low budget films and later worked in minor technical crew capacities in such major films as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 1941...
of DVD Talk
DVD Talk
DVD Talk is a website for DVD enthusiasts founded in January 1999 by Geoffrey Kleinman when DVDs and DVD players were first beginning to hit the market.The site started as an online forum, an email newsletter, and a page of DVD news and reviews...
wrote, "As interpreted here, the revue format has the same pacing problems that a stack of music videos would have if there were not enough variety. Many of the songs are amusing or emotional, but after a while too many seem similar - a plaintive half-melody that slowly rises in intensity and volume, until the singer is practically screaming. The elaborate scene changes don't help the fact that we're not seeing live performances - the frantic singers are mouthing to playback, which robs the material of its stage immediacy."
Writing in The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
, Ed Siegel called the film "the biggest dud of all" in the American Film Theatre series and added, "As directed by Denis Heroux, Brel looks like an amateurish version of Hair
Hair (musical)
Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement...
."