Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris (film)
Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris is a 1975 FrenchCanadian musical film directed by Denis Hroux. The screenplay by Eric Blau is an adaptation of his book for the longrunning offBroadway revue of the same name. The score is composed of songs with music by Jacques Brel and his accompanist Grard Jouannest and English translations of the original French lyrics by Blau and Mort Shuman.
The film opens in a puppet theater, where three audience membersa military officer, a taxi driver, and a woman on a shopping tripdiscover they are being depicted as marionette caricatures 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 shows plotless structure. In this version, different cinematic interpretations are used to illustrate the shows score. A straightforward approach is for some songs Bachelors 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. ........
Source: Wikipedia
