Jacques Demy
Introduction


**Jacques Demy** (; 5 June 1931 – 27 October 1990\) was a French director, screenwriter and lyricist. He appeared at the height of the [French New Wave](/wiki/French_New_Wave "French New Wave") alongside contemporaries like [Jean\-Luc Godard](/wiki/Jean-Luc_Godard "Jean-Luc Godard") and [François Truffaut](/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Truffaut "François Truffaut"). Demy's films are celebrated for their [visual style](/wiki/Style_%28visual_arts%29 "Style (visual arts)"), which drew upon diverse sources such as classic Hollywood musicals, the [plein\-air](/wiki/En_plein_air "En plein air") [realism](/wiki/Realism_%28arts%29 "Realism (arts)") of his French New Wave colleagues, [fairy tales](/wiki/Fairy_tales "Fairy tales"), [jazz](/wiki/Jazz "Jazz"), [Japanese manga](/wiki/Japanese_manga "Japanese manga"), and the [opera](/wiki/Opera "Opera"). His films contain overlapping [continuity](/wiki/Continuity_%28fiction%29 "Continuity (fiction)") (i.e., characters cross over from film to film), lush musical scores (typically composed by [Michel Legrand](/wiki/Michel_Legrand "Michel Legrand")) and motifs like teenage love, [labor rights](/wiki/Labor_rights "Labor rights"), chance encounters, incest, and the intersection between dreams and reality. He was married to [Agnès Varda](/wiki/Agn%C3%A8s_Varda "Agnès Varda"), another prominent director of the French New Wave. Demy is best known for the two musicals he directed in the mid\-1960s: *[The Umbrellas of Cherbourg](/wiki/The_Umbrellas_of_Cherbourg "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg")* (1964\) and *[The Young Girls of Rochefort](/wiki/The_Young_Girls_of_Rochefort "The Young Girls of Rochefort")* (1967\).


What is notable about the musical scores in Jacques Demy's films?