Jacques Demy - 3 early films of Jacques Demy (1944

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Quote:
To be able to show today these short animations is the result of an adventure.
When Agnes Varda was preparing the film "Jacquot de Nantes" in 1990 she was able to film in the small apartment and even the garage, where Jacques had been brought up.
In the course of emptying out the attic so as to recreate the small studio which Jacques had set up at that time, Mireille Henrio, the archivist, and Agnes found scraps of 9.5 mm film stock, dry, creased and almost ruined, and two small cutout cardboard figures. It turned out to be impossible to project the original films, so an attempt was made to remake them.

LE PONT DE MAUVES (THE MAUVES BRIDGE)
This was the simplest film to remake since it consisted of just an animated design, and was not an animated film like the two others. The bombardment of the Mauves bridge at Nantes was redrawn, image by image, and it is sufficient to project the result at a suitable speed.

ATTAQUE NOCTURNE (NIGHT ATTACK)
This film only existed in Jacques' memory, for all that remained were the cardboard cutouts of the two robbers. With the help of a designer Jacques drew on his memories to recreate the decor and the characters. The camera operator then photographed each image so as to reconstitute the film.

LA BALLERINE (THE BALLERINA)
When the film fragments were shown to Jacques he immediately identified it as La Ballerine. A student from the Fine Arts college at Nantes then resigned each scene, image by image, on new 16 mm film stock. The movements could thus be visualised. Then the characters were recreated based on the Attaque Nocturne designs, and the decor was similarly recreated. The camera operator then photographed each image so as to remake the film. We were able to show these three films in "Jacquot de Nantes", and now preserved on this DVD, keeping to the original style which Jacques designed, then produced and filmed. This miraculous restoration allows us to see how
Jacques, right from the beginning, maintained his extraordinary passion for the cinema.

Le Pont de Mauves (1944)