Jacques Demy's Une chambre en ville (1982) is the very first film of the Musical genre that I've EVER viewed, and that's really saying a lot because I've literally viewed hundreds of films over the years, of many different types. It's not at all that I consciously tried to avoid musicals in any way. I guess that, somehow, I just never encountered one before.
That said, I really didn't care for this film at all. I just had to turn it off after the first twenty minutes. My dislike, however, is not per se because Une chambre en ville is a musical, but more because of what type of musical it is. This film can perhaps best be called a Cinematic Opera, because literally every line spoken by the characters is a sung lyric from a song. Overall, I found that just to be very annoying, and even somewhat unbearable. Also, that every line of dialogue is sung gave the film a somewhat pretentious appearance, and truly blunted the drama of the storyline, at least in my opinion. I would, accordingly, feel compelled to classify it's artistic style as Unrealism of some sort, because, in the real world, people just don't sing their way through life. It's a shame too, because the storyline itself looked interesting, and could have amounted to a fairly decent dramatic production, of the storytelling type, had the musical element of the film been absent.
I am certain that I would enjoy a film of the Musical genre much more where the dialogue was primarily just plainly spoken, but the storyline was strategically punctuated by musical interludes.
I'm not saying at all that Une chambre en ville (1982) is a bad film in any way. The cinematography is great. The acting is actually pretty good. The storyline, as much of it that I saw, seemed fairly well developed. The music itself, absent the cinematic and dramatic context was not bad at all. It simply just boils down to the fact, I guess, that cinematic operas are just "not my cup of tea".
That said, I really didn't care for this film at all. I just had to turn it off after the first twenty minutes. My dislike, however, is not per se because Une chambre en ville is a musical, but more because of what type of musical it is. This film can perhaps best be called a Cinematic Opera, because literally every line spoken by the characters is a sung lyric from a song. Overall, I found that just to be very annoying, and even somewhat unbearable. Also, that every line of dialogue is sung gave the film a somewhat pretentious appearance, and truly blunted the drama of the storyline, at least in my opinion. I would, accordingly, feel compelled to classify it's artistic style as Unrealism of some sort, because, in the real world, people just don't sing their way through life. It's a shame too, because the storyline itself looked interesting, and could have amounted to a fairly decent dramatic production, of the storytelling type, had the musical element of the film been absent.
I am certain that I would enjoy a film of the Musical genre much more where the dialogue was primarily just plainly spoken, but the storyline was strategically punctuated by musical interludes.
I'm not saying at all that Une chambre en ville (1982) is a bad film in any way. The cinematography is great. The acting is actually pretty good. The storyline, as much of it that I saw, seemed fairly well developed. The music itself, absent the cinematic and dramatic context was not bad at all. It simply just boils down to the fact, I guess, that cinematic operas are just "not my cup of tea".