Paris Song

Marie has had a tough childhood ever since her mother Elisa committed suicide. She has spent most of her life in an orphanage and now makes a living as a small time criminal in Paris. Now she wants to unravel her past and find her father whom she blames for her mother's death.

Ken Russell at the BBC, Disc 2 & 3 (2008)
Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World (1966); Dante's Inferno (1967); Delius: Song of Summer (1968)

He is perhaps the most criminally underrated great director of all time. He's earned an Oscar nom, and more early career accolades than many attempting his craft. But thanks to a late in life clash with commerciality, and a stern sense of self-importance, Ken Russell now stands as a pseudo-joke. He remains a great champion of his own Englishness, and has often used unusual platforms (Celebrity Big Brother in the UK, for example) to keep his reputation exposed and intact.

Jacques Demy's 1964 masterpiece is a pop-art opera, or, to borrow the director's own description, a film in song. This simple romantic tragedy begins in 1957. Guy Foucher (Nino Castelnuovo), a 20-year-old French auto mechanic, has fallen in love with 17-year-old Geneviève Emery (a luminous Catherine Deneuve), an employee in her widowed mother's chic but financially embattled umbrella shop. On the evening before Guy is to leave for a two-year tour of combat in Algeria, he and Geneviève make love. She becomes pregnant and must choose between waiting for Guy's return or accepting an offer of marriage from a wealthy diamond merchant (Marc Michel, reprising his role from Demy's masterful debut, Lola). A completely sung movie, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is closest in form to a cinematic opera. Composer Michel Legrand composed the score, modeling it around the patterns of everyday conversation.