Watch Bay of Angels For Free

Sadly Over-hyped

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Kara, are you a film maker or just a philosopher? What a precise and concise analysis of one of the greatest early Demy's works! I agree fully, and make your words mine. Your photography skill is evident (I'm a photographer too). Furthermore, the photography is one of the high spots of this film. Superb B&W rendition, together with expert scene lighting, camera, decors, everything. The zigzag mirrors scenes in the casino are a treat! Never been into gambling, but I know a little about addictions. It's always a sad story. I've met Demy in Rio de Janeiro some 30 yrs ago. We became friends, but unfortunately he died in 1990. I highly recommend Agnes Varda's films. Not by accident she was married to Jacques, and their son Mathieu Demy is a very good actor.

The first fifteen minutes promise much. A young man is introduced to gambling and wins. His drab life is transformed, briefly. Then he decides to take off for 3 weeks to the coast and more Casinos. There he meets Jeanne Moreau, platinum tresses, and pouty lips, addicted to gambling, and as guileful as they come. Will he succumb to her flashy exterior or will he see sense and quit while his common sense is still intact? Well it's a french "new wave" movie so as can be expected, it's all about people's weaknesses not their strengths.The movie then drags us around from casino to casino, from loss to gain, to loss. There is no passion here. This I hope was intended for wasting one's life for a turn in ones luck is a passionless existence. These kinds of themes are like movies about alcoholics. Who cares for these people? Who wants to watch people we care less for pissing away their lives? Don't waste your time. This "wave" laps on shore like a whisper.

... or one of them is the movement that pseuds insist on promoting to upper-case as The New Wave and I dismiss as the lower-case new wavelet but in life we can seldom pigeon-hole everything and Jacques Demy is a case in point; he is part of the hiccup only inasmuch as his early features were made just as the vague in question was retreating back into the ocean of mediocrity from whence it came. True, he made these early movies for a stick of gum and mostly on location but he possessed more flair for actual film-making than for intellectualising on celluloid. Nor was he above subtlety; there is, for example, a nice touch in this film when Claude Mann and Jeanne Moreau share a pint bottle of whiskey and the brand is Black and White reflecting the motif of the entire film; Moreau, the car, the beach are all white, Mann, the croupiers and virtually every other male are dressed in black. Plot-wise it's stripped to the bone; Mann is a straight-up guy, Moreau is Gamblers-in-yer-face. They meet. End of. On the other hand if you want to talk Theme how much time do you have. Nice makes a nice location, Michel Legrand weighs in with a pleasant jazz-inflected score and it's fine for one viewing and just for the record another of my bete noirs is wagering against the red at roulette.

I was chilled to the bone, and mesmerized, by the dark crime of M (1931). Then, in the double-feature session, the 15-y-o boy trespassing as a 17-y-o, quickly changed his temperature when the 'great sinner' Jeanne Moreau appeared on La Baie des Anges (1963). «Actress Moreau forcefully demonstrates the verve, style and flamboyant femaless that make her the envy of European sex symbols much greener in years and cooler in blood. Her wicked, winning presence has saved a bad movie from utter oblivion, and at 36 she knows how to turn Bay of the Angels into a one woman show.» So wrote a reviewer (Time, November 27, 1964), and I couldn't put it better; I'm now copying this from my typewritten notes - no photocopier at home, then. That young boy would never enter a casino in his life due to this film, and he tried to see all the films starring Jeanne Moreau. I'm a winner on two counts, by money not given away to casino owners, and by a plethora of good films that were saved from oblivion by this great woman, and actress.