The Young Girls Of Rochefort -1967- Criterion -... !!install!! Jun 2026
Visually, Demy and cinematographer Ghislain Cloquet transformed Rochefort. Much like the painted streets of Cherbourg , the production design is highly stylized. Shop fronts, buses, and walls were painted in bold primary colors to match the costumes, creating a hyper-real, storybook world. The Criterion restoration captures these pastel blues, pinks, and yellows with breathtaking vibrancy.
By 1967, Kelly’s star in Hollywood had waned. Demy, an obsessive fan of Singin’ in the Rain , wrote a role specifically for him: Andy, the American composer passing through Rochefort. Kelly, fluent in French, performs his own dubbing and choreographs his own solo number.
The documentary The Young Girls Turn 25 (1993) is essential—it catches up with the town of Rochefort, which hated the film crew but now throws an annual festival in Demy’s honor. Also, the interview with composer Michel Legrand reveals he wrote the overture overnight. Overnight. While smoking. The man was a machine. The Young Girls of Rochefort -1967- Criterion -...
The film is notable for its incredible ensemble cast, bringing together French cinema royalty and Hollywood icons:
is an aspiring classical composer.
The narrative centers on twin sisters Delphine (Catherine Deneuve) and Solange (Françoise Dorléac)—the former a ballet teacher, the latter a music composer. Both dream of escaping their provincial town for the artistic grandeur of Paris and finding their ideal, sublime loves. Surrounding them is a vibrant ensemble: their mother Yvonne (Danielle Darrieux), who regrets abandoning the man she loved; Maxence (Jacques Perrin), a poetic sailor searching for his "ideal woman"; and Simon Dame (Michel Piccoli), a music shop owner harboring a long-lost heartbreak.
It is a film that balances, as noted in the Criterion essay, a "sense of yearning and loss" with a "delerious state of being," making it a deeply emotional experience disguised as a lighthearted musical 1.2.1. Conclusion Kelly, fluent in French, performs his own dubbing
The Young Girls of Rochefort is profoundly marked by its casting. Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac were real-life sisters. Demy explicitly wrote the roles to capture their genuine sisterly bond, capturing their playful synchronized energy and shared artistic rhythm on camera. Tragically, just months after the film’s French premiere in 1967, Dorléac died in a car accident at the age of 25. This heartbreaking reality casts a bittersweet, melancholic shadow over contemporary viewings of the movie, transforming their joyful onscreen duets into a poignant time capsule of their relationship.
Their quiet lives are disrupted by a traveling fair that arrives in town, introducing two charismatic showmen, Etienne (George Chakiris) and Bill (Grover Dale). Meanwhile, a famous American pianist, Andy Miller (Gene Kelly), visiting his old friend Simon Dame (Michel Piccoli), becomes entranced by Solange’s musical talent. Delphine searches for the sailor Maxence (Jacques Perrin), having been captivated by a portrait he painted of his "dream girl." Their mother, Yvonne (Danielle Darrieux), runs a café and pines for her long-lost love, Simon, unaware that he has recently returned to town. As the characters weave through a series of coincidences and near-misses, the film builds a palpable tension, leading to a fairground finale where fates are finally decided. It is, as one critic puts it, "the cheeriest movie ever made featuring an axe murder." The plot is a delightfully contrived, Shakespearean comedy of errors that demonstrates Demy’s ability to "leap from mundanity into effervescent flights of fancy." Yvonne (Danielle Darrieux)