French Film Composer Michel Legrand Elevates Ordinary Stories with Music

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: AUGUST 28, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 082801np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: CATHERINE DENEUVE
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:06

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

The same team that made the classic 1964 musical "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" made another musical three years later called "The Young Girls of Rochefort." That film has been restored and is now playing in New York and will open in cities around the country in September and October.

On this archive edition, we have an interview with Catherine Deneuve, who starred in "Umbrellas" and "Young Girls of Rochefort." In "Young Girls," Deneuve and her sister Francoise d'Orliac played twin sisters. Shortly after the film, Deneuve's sister was killed in a car crash.

I spoke with Catherine Deneuve in 1996. She's been called one of the most remarkably beautiful actresses of our time. She started her career in the early '60s and soon won international recognition for her performances in "Umbrellas," "Belle De Jour," and "Repulsion." More recently, she starred in "The Last Metro," "Indochine," "Ma Saison Preferet" (ph), and "Thieves."

Both of Catherine Deneuve's parents were actors. When Catherine started acting, she took on her mother's last name, Deneuve, instead of her fathers. I asked why.

CATHERINE DENEUVE, ACTRESS: Because I had my sister, who was an actress before me, and actually that's how I started to do films, because I played her sister in a film during holidays when I was at school. And that's why my parents allowed me to do that film.

But my sister was an actress before and she kept her name, which was, you know, normal, and I never thought anywhere that it would last. I wasn't sure I was going to go on doing films so I didn't really care. And I didn't want really to find another name, so I took my mother's name for that reason.

GROSS: Because your sister was using your father's name -- the family name?

DENEUVE: Yeah, family name. Yes.

GROSS: So you wanted to have a different name from her?

DENEUVE: Well, I think it would have been difficult to be both, you know -- maybe today, yes, I regret that. Today, I regret it, because I lost my sister and we were only four girls, so my family name is going to go. It's finished. And -- but I think at the time, it seemed difficult to be two, you know -- we were so close in age and everything that to have the same name would be some sort of confusion.

GROSS: You said it wasn't until "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" in 1964 that you started taking acting seriously. What was it about that film that made you serious about acting?

DENEUVE: It's not about the film. It's about the director, because...

GROSS: Jacques Demis.

DENEUVE: Jacques Demis, yes. He's a very -- it was a very important director and, you know, it was very important for me to meet someone like that so young. He give me confidence and he sort of make me look at things in a different way. I mean, I had done very few films before to meet him, and I couldn't imagine, you know, it could be like that. And it was really like a revelation. It was something I would have never think of.

And after that, it really was very different for me.

GROSS: Could you say what it was about his approach to making movies that you found so new and exciting and different?

DENEUVE: I suppose, first it's because his personality, you know, and his way of seeing films and directing and doing very long shots, and great -- very long, long traveling. And that was something that I was not used to, you know. And also the sense he had of color and using actors. And he was talking, you know, about what he was doing. That's something he wanted to share with us.

And he was very -- had a lot of confidence in me, which I didn't have. And that really helped me a lot. I realized that if a director really wants you and is very strong and has a good personality and is very positive, it can bring you -- to me, it was really like incredible discovery.

GROSS: I love this film. It was restored and recently re-released.

DENEUVE: Yes.

GROSS: Beautiful film.

DENEUVE: Beautiful, beautiful new copy.

GROSS: Now, all the dialogue is sung in the movie, and all the actors voices are dubbed by professional singers. When did you find out that you weren't going to be using your own voice in the movie?

DENEUVE: From the beginning, because it was written, you know, as an opera. And no way that the music of Michel Legrand could be sung by actor that would work for a few months. And it was already a very difficult work to have to learn by heart completely the film, so we could shoot the film and be completely lip-sync. That was very difficult.

And that was enough of a difficulty for two young actors like me and Nino Catanuovo (ph), my partner.

GROSS: I'm thinking of how hard it must be to give such a convincing performance when one of your greatest tools -- your voice -- can't be used.

DENEUVE: Yes, but you know, it was a musical. So when you have to do it, and first I wasn't, you know, I was not even 20 years old, so I didn't even really realize that; had very little experience. And when I -- I had to learn the music with the words, you know, I was so taken by the music. And I had -- even when you have to shoot, you have to really sing loud. You cannot just open your mouth, you know, as if you were just, you know, trying to be just in lip-sync. I mean, you really have to sing. It's not your voice that you hear, but I remember to have -- I had the impression that I was really singing.

And I thought, you know, that doing a film you have to do it for the best, and the fact it was not me, but a singer seemed normal to have a professional for the -- it's a frustration afterwards, a long time afterwards. But when I did it and when we did the film, it was -- it was absolutely fine for me, and I didn't think, you know, that what a shame it's not going to be my voice and I feel so frustrated or -- I didn't feel like that at all.

Maybe today, yes. I wouldn't do it because I have the impression that my voice is more known because I've been doing many films and people know my voice. But at the time, you know, it was to me a normal thing, you know, to have a professional singer. And anyway, it's very, very difficult to sing Michel Legrand.

GROSS: Yeah.

DENEUVE: Very difficult.

GROSS: I just want to ask you one question about the ending. This is a movie about a young couple who are deeply in love, but they're separated when he's sent off to the military. And because -- then she ends up being pregnant and because she doesn't hear from him a lot, she assumes he's left her. And she ends up marrying somebody else. He comes back, is heartbroken and later marries somebody else.

What do you think of the ending? Do you think that they're better off with the people who they married than with each other?

DENEUVE: I don't know. That's impossible to know. What I can think of, it's a very sad ending for me because it's a very -- it's -- obviously, they seem to be, you know, happy, I don't know. But they seem to be fine, you know, with the lives they have. But when you've been the film, and for the audience, I suppose, to the desire, you know, to get those two people together again because they were such a strong and such an emotional love story, that you feel like crying, because that's life. You know, it's very unfair.

Actually, the film is not such a -- it's not like a fairy tale like some people said, you know, because she's pregnant. Her mother pushes her to marry another man because she's pregnant, and she's -- no question, she's not going to keep the child and no question that she's going to by herself. And her mother pushes her in the arm of someone very fine, quite rich, you know. I mean, sort of conventional thing that make me cry.

LAUGHTER

Even today.

GROSS: In 1967, you made "Belle De Jour" directed by Luis Bunuel. Now, this movie has also recently been restored. It's an interesting contrast to "Umbrellas of Cherbourg." In "Umbrellas," you played somebody very young and very naive. In "Belle De Jour," you're a young married woman, but you...

DENEUVE: But quite naive, as well.

GROSS: OK, but now in a different way because...

DENEUVE: Yes. Naive in a way.

GROSS: Yeah. You can't be sexually satisfied within the marriage, so you become a prostitute at a very high-priced brothel.

DENEUVE: Call girl, yes.

GROSS: Yeah, and you're there during the day and your husband doesn't know about it.

DENEUVE: Mmm-hm.

GROSS: And the movie combines the reality of your married life, the brothel life, with all of these fantasy scenes.

DENEUVE: Mmm-hm.

GROSS: What was Bunuel's approach to directing you in this role?

DENEUVE: Very little, very, very little. The script was so, you know, really very heavy on the matter, so -- and Bunuel didn't like much to give psychological explanations to actors. I -- I remember to have had difficulties, you know, sometimes because also the producer were very strong and Bunuel was in Paris living in a hotel. And I wouldn't see him much, you know, outside of work. And he wouldn't let me go and see the rushes, the dailies, you know.

It was a little -- sometime it has been difficult. It was a difficult shooting sometimes. My remember of him is much better when we did "Tristana," you know, three -- two years later in Spain because that was a much better experience for me as an actress, with him.

"Belle De Jour" was a difficult subject anyway to do.

GROSS: Yes, well, I'm wondering if, in "Belle De Jour," if the woman's sexual fantasies of humiliation made any sense to you?

DENEUVE: Yes. It makes sense because fantasies are made not to -- it's like a phantasm. You're supposed to -- you imagine yourself in a situation that you might never leave, but that you need because it gives you some excitement or some -- and actually in "Belle De Jour," the very older situation or very classical situation that men and women think of, you know, sometimes in a love affair, it's something very -- and when I saw "Belle De Jour" again, I hadn't seen it for a very, very long time. I saw it again then in New York in that very beautiful restored copy in New York. And I was quite surprised to see the sort of humor, you know, also that there was in the film which I didn't feel that much at the time when I did the film. Maybe when I filmed it -- when I did the film, I didn't feel that much.

GROSS: Now, the film critic David Thompson wrote this about you. He wrote: "Deneuve is a fantastic actress; her beauty, a receptacle for any imagination, perhaps the greatest cool blonde, forever hinting an intimations of depravity."

What's your reaction to that?

DENEUVE: I like that.

LAUGHTER

I think it's better than any kind of, you know, nicer compliment about being -- I think it's very -- I think it's very intriguing, you know, to imagine someone being such a -- like a deep volcano. You know, you don't know how far down, you know, you can fall. But in the same time, officially when you look at that person, she seems, you know, very straightforward, very -- I find it very intriguing.

GROSS: Yes.

DENEUVE: I would like to meet the person he's talking about.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: You feel very far from that as Catherine Deneuve?

DENEUVE: Well, I have the impression he's talking, of course, about someone else, you know, something with me, but mostly something about the character. And it's one of the film I've done -- "Belle De Jour" -- that followed me more than anything during all my life. Because I did "Belle De Jour" in '69, and even today I can feel in some question of journalists the fact that "Belle De Jour" is something that people say I'm very related with. You know, as if I was, you know, partly, you know, very much that person.

GROSS: What about "Repulsion" though? I'm sure people always ask you about your character as a sexually-repressed woman going mad.

DENEUVE: She's a schizophrenic, yeah. She's a schizophrenic girl and she's -- but "Repulsion" was very, very close to me in a way, because she was a very shy, very violent -- deeply violent -- but shy in the same time. And it's just because she was put in a certain kind of situation that sort of madness, you know, came out. Otherwise, you can imagine she could have followed very well for a very long time living with her sister, probably getting married and having children. And nothing would have happened.

Then, you know, there was something in her that went wrong, but because of the situation to be left alone for a weekend, and her imagination, she has that little -- she had that little potential thing that became terrible and she becomes, you know, what the film tells you. She becomes a criminal in the most violent way that -- but also, I think in "Repulsion," it's something I think people can identify with that woman. She's not a monster, you know. She's not doing that, you know, as a crude thing just to be being cruel and wanted to kill. It's just something that she can't resist because she's -- she has fear -- fear of men and she feels threatened.

GROSS: Do you think that men and women relate to you differently on screen?

DENEUVE: Well, I hope so.

LAUGHTER

I mean, I -- yes, because there is a difference between men and women. You know, I don't think -- I don't think they see male and female actors on screen the same way. But I think...

GROSS: Well, let...

DENEUVE: ... I think women quite sympathize with me, you know.

GROSS: Mmm-hm.

DENEUVE: I don't think women sort of resent me as a sort of icy dangerous blond, no. No, I don't think that.

GROSS: You know, I'm wondering if women relate to you even more now than in the early part of your career when you played more naive and very seductive women. Now, there's a certain power that your characters have, or at least some of them have...

DENEUVE: Yeah, I think so.

GROSS: ... the powerful characters have.

DENEUVE: The powerful character that you can have, you know, that's the compensation of getting older, you know, is to have, you know, more mature parts with a character stronger and with more -- but it's -- it's very difficult. It's true, for a young actress to find a very deep, very important, very touching, very warm, very, very serious part. It's quite difficult to find everything in a part for a young actress.

When you can think of a mature actress, I think that a certain age, you know, of life for an actress on screen, and there is the sort of what I was like in "Umbrellas of Cherbourg." You know, I was the young, romantic, idealistic girlfriend. Then there was, you know, the mature, younger, mature and responsible woman in "Last Metro," the film by Francois Truffaut.

GROSS: Right.

DENEUVE: And there is today a touching woman that women can sympathize and identify with because I don't represent, you know, a sort of glamorous in a sort of artificial way of person. So it's -- it's the evolution of a life of an actress, I think.

GROSS: My guest is Catherine Deneuve. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

BREAK

Back to our 1996 interview with Catherine Deneuve.

In America, actresses start to feel shut out of films often by their mid-30s because they're no longer eligible for the glamour roles. Did you ever experience that in France?

DENEUVE: No, because we are allowed to grow a little older in Europe, you know, not only in France, but in Europe. I think there is more attraction for a mature woman than there seems to be here, where everybody's so scared to get old and where people seem to be running so much after youth.

Which, being an actress, you know, and being going -- growing up in age, you know, in that profession, I can't understand. But there is a sort of to me a foolish thing to try to escape in the wrong way, you know. I think you have to fight, you know, as much as you can, and try to stay in shape. But if you run against what you are, I think you can really become crazy.

GROSS: In America, I think a lot of actresses and actors as well feel that plastic surgery becomes essential to their career after a certain age. What about in Europe?

DENEUVE: Yeah, it goes with it. It goes with it. You know, it goes with running against time. In Europe, it's the same, but to another level, I suppose. I suppose it's the -- it's not as many people do it and it's not as evident, but people do it to a more reasonable level, I have the impression.

GROSS: Has that been an issue for you?

DENEUVE: An issue for me, what?

GROSS: Plastic surgery.

DENEUVE: What means "to be an issue?"

LAUGHTER

GROSS: I guess it's my very polite way of asking if you've done it yourself, which you don't need to answer if you don't want to.

DENEUVE: You know, it's something I always refuse to answer because I have the impression to say "no" was like saying to other women: aha, what you think, I haven't done it."

I think it's rude to, but now I think it's very difficult not to say that. You know, it start -- that started, you know, a few years ago. I started to be asked and I say I won't answer that because I find it rude, as if you know, women who have done it were in another world. And I feel very -- I sympathize very much for people, you know, who feel they have to do it. But today, I mean, the question comes back so often, I have to say that, no -- I have to say I didn't do it. And I didn't do it because of, like other people, you know, I think I would be scared for the moment.

But I don't -- I must say that I'm very reluctant to answer to that question because I feel, I think, you know, I mean one, that part of the woman and there is the other part. I don't like this idea that the ones who have done it, you know, it's like being -- to me, it's like...

GROSS: You don't want to be passing judgment on them by saying that you haven't done it.

DENEUVE: Good. That's the way I should have put it.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: You did Chanel perfume ads for years. How did you feel about doing those ads?

DENEUVE: Very well. I liked it very much. I'd worked with them and I was very -- I sympathize very much with the people. I think that if you do publicity as I did, you know, it's not something I do just to sort of hide it and put it away as if it was something I do on the side. It's really something I like, publicity. And I did enjoy very much to work with Avedon when we did that commercial for a few years. And I worked with the people who were writing the scripts. I felt very confident with that -- something I like very much.

GROSS: Do you still wear perfume?

DENEUVE: Do I wear perfume?

GROSS: Yeah.

DENEUVE: Yes, of course I wear perfume every day -- even in the country.

GROSS: Really?

DENEUVE: Yep.

GROSS: Does it give you pleasure to wear it?

DENEUVE: Yes, absolutely. I'm sure it gives pleasure to others, but it gives me pleasure first to me, as well.

GROSS: I have one last question for you. I know your younger sister died when you were, I believe, in your 20s.

DENEUVE: My ...

GROSS: Older sister, I'm sorry.

DENEUVE: Yes, slightly older.

GROSS: And I know you don't like talking about that, but I was just wondering one thing, if when you lost her, if it changed your life; if it made you think that life was so impermanent -- if that changed the course -- your course of direction, realizing ...

DENEUVE: Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely. Deeply. Forever.

GROSS: So how was the course of your life changed, do you think -- or the direction that you took yourself?

DENEUVE: I don't know what it would have been, you know, otherwise. What I know is that I will never, you know, forget the like -- the missing I have of her not being there. It's not something -- it's not that I -- I had to learn to live, you know, without her, but I supposed it's like -- it's an experience, you know, unhappily, that people have to have in life.

But as being as an actress, you know, and having children, and -- without marriage and without having a sort of life of sort of -- as an actress, you know, like -- not being alone, but having, you know, quite big responsibilities, very often I realize how much I miss her, because, you know, we were doing the same thing and I'm sure that I would have found a very nice shoulder to talk to if she had been there.

GROSS: Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

DENEUVE: Thank you.

GROSS: Catherine Deneuve, recorded in 1996. She stars with her late sister in "The Young Girls of Rochefort," the 1967 musical made by the same team as "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg." A restored version of "Young Girls" is playing in New York and will open in other cities beginning in September.

Here's composer Michel Legrand performing one of his best-known songs written for "Umbrellas." It's English version is known as "Watch What Happens." We'll hear from Legrand in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- COMPOSER MICHEL LEGRAND PERFORMING "WATCH WHAT HAPPENS," LYRICS IN FRENCH)

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Terry Gross, Washington DC
Guest: Catherine Deneuve
High: French actress Catherine Deneuve. Her 1967 film, "The Young Girls of Rochefort" has been re-released. On this occasion, we hear an interview from her two years ago, after the release of "Les Voleures" (Thieves). Some of her best-known films include: "Bell De Jour," "Repulsion," "Indochine," "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg."
Spec: Catherine Deneuve; Entertainment; Movie Industry
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: CATHERINE DENEUVE

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: AUGUST 28, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 082802NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: MICHEL LEGRAND
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:36

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

The 1967 French musical "The Young Girls of Rochefort" has been restored and will soon open in theaters around the country. It was made by the same team that had made "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" three years earlier. Michel Legrand composed the music for both films.

On this archive edition, we have an interview recorded with Legrand in 1996, after a restored version of "Umbrellas" opened in America. Legrand also composed the music for "Yentl," "The Summer of '42," and "The Thomas Crown Affair."

"The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" tells the story of two young lovers who are broken apart when the young man, Guy, is drafted and sent to Algeria for two years. In this scene, the broken-hearted Genevieve begs him not to leave her. He promised to love her for the rest of his life.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, SCENE FROM FILM "UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG," IN FRENCH)

GROSS: Michel Legrand told me that when he and director Jacques Demis first decided to do "Umbrellas" as a musical, they couldn't figure out how to make the transitions between dialogue and song. After abandoning the project, Demis suggested: why not set all the dialogue to music, like an opera?

I asked Legrand if he thought that was a great idea, or that Demis was crazy.

MICHEL LEGRAND, FRENCH DIRECTOR: No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, because Jacques wasn't a crazy man. No, no -- I said: do you know? Oh, I think it's a good idea. We should try it.

And then we tried, and I couldn't find -- because, you know, when I started to work on it, it was very complicated, you know, the classical, very modern classical music. And I said -- and Jacques and I, we said to ourselves that: you know, it should be -- if we do something like that, it should be -- music should be readable and understandable the first time. Jacques said to me: it should be like a song -- one song from beginning to end.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

LEGRAND: Like one aria, one theme. Because he said, people they have to -- they have to understand it the first time they hear it. You know, so, I change, you know, I change my mind. I change my pencil. And I tried, and finally we came up with what, you know.

GROSS: Yeah, and it's jazz and ballads, and...

LEGRAND: Yeah, but mostly it's melodic. You know...

GROSS: Very melodic.

LEGRAND: ... from beginning to end. Yeah.

GROSS: Beautiful chords, also.

LEGRAND: Yeah, because, you know, we have, we, you know, they exist, we'll have to use them.

GROSS: What's that?

LEGRAND: The chords, I mean, you know, we have to use the chords, which are existing, so we used almost all of them.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: Now, in a lot of ways this -- in a lot of ways "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" to me is like if -- if you made an ordinary life into an MGM musical and you took the sets of an MGM musical and combined that with the gas station on the corner, what would you get?

LAUGHTER

LEGRAND: Yeah.

GROSS: Because it takes -- it takes the scenes of ordinary life and kind of elevates it to the beauty of an MGM musical. Was that what you both had in mind?

LEGRAND: No. We wanted to do a very ordinary story, you know, the ordinary triangle, because you know this beautiful young girl, she does not wait for her lover to come back, and she marries someone else. At the same time, we wanted to use very ordinary, everyday language; simple, very simple.

So the music had to be very melodic, but exactly like one song from beginning to end, you know. And then the color will be very exaggerated, so it will be like a -- it -- you know, it's a huge dream in a very ordinary life. This is what we wanted to -- we tried to achieve.

Not -- we never thought of American musical nor MGM nor anything. Just a French -- typical French story in a provincial town with simple people, beautiful people, but simple.

GROSS: Now, was the dialogue written first? Did Demis give you the dialogue and say: OK, now you can compose a score around it?"

LEGRAND: Yeah. Because Jacques, you know, originally had written the dialogues and everything, since, you know. Since the time he wanted to shoot it as a normal movie, without music, without, you know, singing.

And so we took scene by scene, and up, you know, I come up with a tempo, with a melody. And then we would change, in every scene, we'd change all the dialogue. I say, Jacques: no, here I want:

(SINGING)

Da, da, da, da, da, da, da.

So, we adapted every scene. And then he put one syllable under every note that I was proposing to him. So we worked almost, you know, we worked both together from beginning to end.

GROSS: Now, I'm wondering if it was difficult for you to set the scenes that aren't the more romantic or disillusion scenes, but just the more everyday scenes. Like in the very beginning, there's a scene where Guy, you know, the romantic lead, is working at the gas station...

LEGRAND: Yeah.

GROSS: ... and he's just fixed a customer's car...

LEGRAND: Yeah.

GROSS: ... and Guy says "finished" and the customer says: "It rattles a bit when the motor's cold, but that's normal."

That's not the typical stuff that people set to music.

LEGRAND: No, absolutely not. No, this is why also, you know, when we decided to start the, you know, the film with jazz, with loud blaring jazz, you know, tune -- to really shock the people for a few minutes, and then come back to, you know, a nice, a more romantic melody.

We wanted to shock first -- to be able. Because, you know, it was -- we were always -- Jacques and I said that we know that our movie is not going to be commercial at all. We knew it.

So we said, we wanted to do, first of all, exactly what we -- you know, what we hoped to do; exactly, you know, he sees it. I was hearing it. And we, you know, we decided, on the emotion, you know, in every page, in every line.

GROSS: Why don't we hear the music from that opening scene in the gas station...

LEGRAND: Fine. OK.

GROSS: ... where Guy has just finished working on a car.

LEGRAND: Yes, and you know what's funny, because the movie starts with -- c'est termine -- "it's finished." So we laughed, you now, Jacques and I said we start with "it's over."

LAUGHTER

GROSS: Right. And he's saying "it's finished" to the customer whose car is just finished.

LEGRAND: Yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: OK. Here it is.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, SCENE FROM FILM "THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG," ACTORS SINGING IN FRENCH)

GROSS: That's music from the opening scene of "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg," which has just been re-released in a beautiful new print. My guest is the composer, Michel Legrand.

How else was writing the score for this movie different from writing more conventional songs? Were you just writing a regular song?

LEGRAND: No, no. It was very different, because first of all, you have to find the style, the overall style from beginning to end. So I used jazz. I used, you know, romantic things. I used, you know, many kind of ingredients, you know, in my cooking, to try to find the style. And it's -- sort of it's, it's sometime pseudo-classical sometimes. But I think it's -- everything is in one very serious and very rigorous style.

As soon as you find it, then you have to find the melodies which goes very well with the one before, you know, bringing the new one coming up. So it's not the song work, really, because a song has, you know, a beginning and an end; and it ends. And there, there is never any end, so it's a very different work.

GROSS: My guest is composer Michel Legrand. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

Back to our 1996 interview with Michel Legrand.

Even though you weren't setting out to write songs, there were a couple of songs from "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" that became very famous on their own and had a life outside of the movie. And I'm thinking from the main theme which is known, I think, to a lot of Americans as "I Will Wait For You," and "Watch What Happens."

LEGRAND: Sure. But I mean, you know, we can -- anyone can always, you know, extract from a score, I mean, one melody and use it, you know, as a separate item.

GROSS: Were you surprised that these became songs, and became hits on their own?

LEGRAND: Very much surprised, I'll tell you. Because, first of all, Jacques and I, we couldn't find any producer in Paris who would put one franc in an adventure like that. Nobody believed in it.

We went -- we auditioned, you know, to every possible producer in Paris, and nobody wanted to produce it, because they said: "no, you are a couple of young, you know, nice guys, but I don't believe that the audience will stay for 90 minutes, you know, in a dark theater while people on the, you know, on the screen are singing:

(SINGING IN FRENCH).

No, it will never work."

So hearing that for about a year, because you know, we auditioned about -- for a complete of years. Jacques and I, we knew that, you know, our movie, if by any miracle, we could make it, would be a flop for sure.

GROSS: And of course, the movie was not a flop, and neither was the music.

LEGRAND: Yes, it's very funny because you know at the opening night, you know, the opening night, right away, it was a success, and we were the first ones amazed about it.

GROSS: Now, I believe that none of the actors in "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" did their own singing. I believe each actor had a singer that dubbed for him or her. Is that right?

LEGRAND: Yes. Absolutely. Because Jacques wanted to have the exact, you know, actor or actress for each role, and I wanted to have the best singer, male or female, for each character.

But it was easy, you know, because nobody is speaking one word in that movie, so we could choose any kind of singing voice, you know.

GROSS: Now, when -- when you were shooting the movie, and the actors had to lip-sync to the singers...

LEGRAND: Yeah.

GROSS: ... was it hard for the actors...

LEGRAND: No.

GROSS: ... to get it just right...

LEGRAND: No.

GROSS: ... and to really be -- because so many movies where, you know, where it's dubbed like that, it looks really phony.

LEGRAND: I know. But I mean, you know, we had to -- I was very, very careful with it, because when we recorded the singers, we asked of the actors to be there at the recording studio. And we said to the actors: You have to do, you have to say:

(SINGING IN FRENCH)

How would you say that if you had to talk? So that:

"Bonjour, je'vais bien."

So we said to the singers: so you have to, you know, listen to the actor and try to sing in the speed that the actor would normally say it.

So we work very closely, you know, actors and singers together. All the actors were there when the singers were singing the parts in the studio, with the orchestra.

And after that, you know, we did some -- some acetate discs, and we forced every actor and actress, you know, in the cast to work for couple of months, every day -- and I was there with them almost every day -- to learn very well, you know, the music, the score.

And my job during the shooting was behind the camera, to look if every actor was in sync with their voices.

GROSS: Now, what...

LEGRAND: And they were -- and it worked beautifully. They knew it so well.

GROSS: What did it sound like when the actors, in order to be convincing, were actually singing, even though you weren't recording their voices, because their voices were being dubbed? But they had to -- they had to actually sing, so that they'd look convincing. Did they sing well? Or was it funny to listen to?

LEGRAND: No, it was very difficult, because they don't sing well, but I said: you know, you have to sing. Don't -- don't just, you know, move your lips. Sing -- scream, even if it's out of key. I don't care, but we must see, you know, you singing and acting. So they did it very well, very well.

GROSS: I wish I could hear what that sounded like.

LAUGHTER

I wish there was a recording of that.

LEGRAND: No, no, no. I'm glad that you never heard it.

GROSS: Instead, why don't we hear some more music from the original recording. This is one of the beautiful melodies from "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" that you composed. This is -- Americans will know it as "Watch What Happens."

But this was so interesting to me, because I knew the song first as "Watch What Happens" which, you know...

LEGRAND: Yeah

GROSS: ... was a very kind of popular pop hit.

LEGRAND: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: It's such -- the second time it's sung in the movie, it's a song of such longing and disillusionment and love. I mean, there's -- I'll just explain, there's a diamond merchant who's fallen in love with the leading lady. He knows that she's in love with somebody else.

But he knows that she was made for him, and he goes to her mother, and says this: "Once I loved a woman, but she did not love me. Her name was Lola. Once disillusioned, I tried to forget. I left the country, and went to the end of the world, but life was meaningless. Then I -- by chance, I met you and the moment I saw Genevieve, I knew she was made for me."

And it's sung to this melody, a beautiful melody. Why don't we hear it? And then I'll talk to you about writing it.

LEGRAND: Good.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "WATCH WHAT HAPPENS" FROM "THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG," LYRICS IN FRENCH)

GROSS: Michel Legrand, what did you think about when writing this lovely melody?

LEGRAND: You know, I thought of -- this is what the film wanted at that moment. You know, it was not just one melody. It was part of the entire work, and when I found it, I said: I think it would be very beautiful there -- so we tried and it worked.

That's very simple. I mean, it looks, you know, on surface very simple. It's not, but -- because that is the best way that I would like to explain it.

GROSS: You mean, like the intervals are more surprising than you'd think?

LEGRAND: Ah, sure. Yeah. I mean, it's funny because the score seems very simple, and it is, you know, it's like three notes, but it's very -- it's very complicated.

GROSS: Tell me why it's complicated?

LEGRAND: Because, you know, for me the quality of a melody should -- should, even if the melody is very complicated by itself, should sound to you like it existed for thousand years already. It should sound so natural. It should float naturally, like a bird singing a song.

So I always try to -- even if it's torn and, you know, if it's complicated, sophisticated, it has to sound to you very natural.

GROSS: Now, how did the song that we just heard in which one of the characters sings about his lost love -- how did that become "Watch What Happens" -- the American pop hit?

LEGRAND: Because, you know, when we finished the film, then I went to New York and I met a friend -- had a friend, his name is Don Costa. Don Costa was a very famous orchestrator in New York. Beautiful, very good musician.

And I said to him: listen to this -- so he said, oh, said: Michel, that's great. He said: why don't I publish it? And why don't, you know, we extract a couple, two or three tunes from that, and try to make some songs out of it?"

I said: fine, go. So Don called Norman Gimbel, you know, the American lyricist, and Norman wrote "I Will Wait For You" and he wrote "Watch What Happens." So we were very happy with it and this is how it became, you know, songs.

GROSS: Michel Legrand recorded in 1996, after the restoration of "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg." His follow-up musical, "Young Girls of Rochefort" is playing in New York and will open in other cities beginning in September.

Here's a song from his film "Young Girls." Its English version is called "You Must Believe In Spring."

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- ACTRESS SINGING "YOU MUST BELIEVE IN SPRING" FROM FILM "THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT," LYRICS IN FRENCH)

GROSS: Coming up, a review of the new film "Next Stop Wonderland."

This is FRESH AIR.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Terry Gross, Washington DC
Guest: Michel Legrand
High: French composer Michel Legrand. He composed the score for the 1964 classic French film "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg," which starred Catherine Deneuve. In the film, every bit of dialogue is sung to Legrand's music. Legrand also has won three Oscars for the song, "The Windmills of Your Mind," from the film "The Thomas Crown Affair;" best original dramatic score for "Summer of '42," and best original song score for "Yentl."
Spec: Michel Legrand; Entertainment; Movie Industry
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: MICHEL LEGRAND

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: AUGUST 28, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 082803NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: "NEXT STOP WONDERLAND"
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:50

TERRY GROSS, HOST: "Next Stop Wonderland" is a new off-beat romantic comedy starring Hope Davis. It made news at this year's Sundance Film Festival because it was bought for the most money, a reported $6 million.

Film Critic John Powers has a review.

JOHN POWERS, FILM CRITIC: At one time or another, everyone has probably wondered: is there someone out there I'm destined to meet? This question is the idea behind "Next Stop Wonderland," a charming trifle about two lonely Bostonians.

Hope Davis plays Erin Castleton, a 30-ish nurse and Harvard Med School dropout who's just been dumped by her activist boyfriend. After furiously removing all traces of his existence, she scrapes a "Think Globally, Act Locally" sticker from the fridge. Erin falls into a funk daydreaming about Brazil.

Meanwhile, over at the Boston Aquarium, an ex-plumber named Alan Montero, played by Alan Gelfant, is studying to become a marine biologist. Although he has troubles, such as owing money to gangsters, he also has the soulful decency to be the ideal match for Erin.

But as Alan and Erin go about their lives, often in the same place, yet never quite connecting, we wonder whether fate will ever let these dream lovers finally get together.

"Next Stop Wonderland" is the second feature by Brad Anderson, whose bristling debut, "The Darian Gap," was the smartest and most iconoclastic of the Gen-X pictures. The film was too grating for most audiences and quickly vanished.

This new movie is the kind of unambitious crowd pleaser that a talented young director might make to prove he isn't commercial death. And in fact, the plot echoes Claude Lelouch's 1975 hit "And Now My Love," a corny romance that two-and-a-half hours for its couple to fall in love at first sight, and ended the moment they did.

Luckily, "Next Stop Wonderland" has a scruffy tenderness that recalls other, better work -- the romances of Roemer or Truffaut; the irony-laced Czech films of the '60s; and the poetic comedies of Bill Forsythe. While some of Anderson's ideas fall flat, the movie has a lovely feel for its Boston setting. The "Wonderland" of the title is a local race track. And it keeps its characters tip-toeing the borderline between comedy and sadness.

Even the funniest scenes, like Erin's dates with the men who've answered a personal ad placed by her bullying mother, have an undertow of wistful mystery. Anderson is always concerned to reveal character, as when Erin treats a handsome Brazilian at the hospital.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- SCENE FROM FILM "NEXT STOP WONDERLAND")

HOPE DAVIS, ACTRESS: I need to give you a gamaglobulin shot. Would you take off your pants please?

ACTOR: I held my shorts yesterday.

DAVIS: Not this one.

ACTOR: Should I take off my pants?

DAVIS: Yes, sir. Where did you contract the malaria?

ACTOR: It was in Bolivia. I was on expedition. I'm a musicologist. I collect ethnic folk songs, you know. I'm going to Sao Paulo for holiday. You like my country's music, right? I can tell there is a little bit of Brazil in you.

DAVIS: Oh, yeah?

ACTOR: Mmm-hm. You are sad and happy. You don't smile, but you are content. You are sad and happy at the same time. In Brazil, we have a term for that -- it's "sao dage" (ph). It's like -- it's not uncommon nostalgia. It's very Bossa Nova, I think.

(SINGING IN PORTUGUESE)

Arrgh. It means...

DAVIS: "Sadness has no end. Happiness does."

ACTOR: Mmmm.

DAVIS: I like that song.

POWERS: It isn't just Erin who's suffused with "sao dage." It's the movie itself, whose mood is set by the wonderful Brazilian music that's nearly always in the background.

Neither glamorous nor pathetic, neither yuppies nor outlaws, Erin and Alan are unlikely '90s film heroes. They're ordinary people, confused, hard-working, aware of life's disappointments, yet curious whether their destiny may contain something magical. If Alan isn't very compelling, this is largely because Gelfont's performance is a bit too ordinary. As a friend joked, if this were TV, he'd be in the pilot, but not the series.

The opposite is true of Hope Davis, the funny, radiant blond from "The Daytrippers" and "The Myth of Fingerprints." Davis is a wonderfully appealing actress, and she could hardly be more vibrant as Erin, a brainy romantic who's pessimistic about finding happiness; a down-to-earth gal whose fantasy life plays out to the sounds of Bossa Nova.

Davis is one of those rare attractive actresses who's good at playing a character defined by intelligence. We chortled when Elizabeth Shue was cast as a nuclear physicist in "The Saint;" or Nicole Kidman plays a terrorism expert in "The Peacemaker." But we believe that Davis could have gotten into Harvard Medical School and then quit for personal reasons.

The movie's worth seeing for her alone. By turns lovely and haggard, witty and depressed, Erin has a moody integrity that should have viewers breathing a sigh of relief. Although she would love to be loved, she's not one of those cutesy man-obsessed career girls that dominate American pop culture. She's not Cameron Diaz's beaming fantasy girl in "There's Something About Mary." Nor does she whine and simper like the excruciating Ally McBeal.

Erin's feelings are deep and her mind has sharp edges. If a dancing baby ever appeared in her bedroom, she'd simply laugh in its face.

GROSS: John Powers is film critic for "Vogue."

I'm Terry Gross.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Terry Gross, Washington DC
Guest: John Powers
High: Film critic John Powers reviews "Next Stop Wonderland."
Spec: Movie Industry; Entertainment; "Next Stop Wonderland"
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: "NEXT STOP WONDERLAND"
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.