Jacques Demy

Bay of Angels

Bay of Angels

This precisely wrought, emotionally penetrating romantic drama from Jacques Demy, set largely in the casinos of Nice, is a visually lovely but darkly realistic investigation into love and obsession. A bottle-blonde Jeanne Moreau is at her blithe best as a gorgeous gambling addict, and Claude Mann is the bank clerk drawn into her risky world. Featuring a mesmerizing score by Michel Legrand, Bay of Angels is among Demy’s most somber works.

Film Info

  • France
  • 1963
  • 84 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.66:1
  • French
  • Spine #715

Special Features

  • New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • French television interview from 1962 with actor Jeanne Moreau on the set of Bay of Angels
  • New interview with journalist Marie Colmant, coauthor of the book Jacques Demy
  • Restoration demonstration
  • Trailer
  • New English subtitle translation

Available In

Collector's Set

The Essential Jacques Demy

The Essential Jacques Demy

Blu-ray Box Set

6 Discs

$99.96

Special Features

  • New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • French television interview from 1962 with actor Jeanne Moreau on the set of Bay of Angels
  • New interview with journalist Marie Colmant, coauthor of the book Jacques Demy
  • Restoration demonstration
  • Trailer
  • New English subtitle translation
Bay of Angels
Cast
Jeanne Moreau
Jackie Demaistre
Claude Mann
Jean Fournier
Paul Guers
Caron
Henri Nassiet
Jean’s father
Nicole Chollet
Marthe
Credits
Director
Jacques Demy
Written by
Jacques Demy
Original music by
Michel Legrand
Cinematographer
Jean Rabier
Set decoration and costumes
Bernard Evein
Editor
Anne-Marie Cotret
Sound
André Hervée
Assistant director
Costa-Gavras
Costumes
Pierre Cardin

Current

Jacques Demy and Nantes: The Roots of Enchantment
Jacques Demy and Nantes: The Roots of Enchantment

A friend and longtime scholar of Jacques Demy ruminates on the great director’s career, as well as the port hometown they shared—which would become a magical movie location.

By Jean-Pierre Berthomé

Bay of Angels: Walking on Sand
Bay of Angels: Walking on Sand

Jeanne Moreau’s flighty, enigmatic Jackie in Jacques Demy’s poetic drama is in the great tradition of dreamy Demy heroines.

By Terrence Rafferty

Demy Monde
Demy Monde
Film scholar James Quandt created a nearly hour-long visual essay for our new collector’s set The Essential Jacques Demy. Titled Jacques Demy, A to Z, it elaborates on twenty-six concepts important to understanding the cinema of this singular filmm…
Downbeat Demy in Connecticut

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Downbeat Demy in Connecticut

One of French master Jacques Demy’s starkest films screens at the Avon in a series of Gallic classics.

Keeper of the Secret: Remembering Jeanne Moreau
Keeper of the Secret: Remembering Jeanne Moreau

French New Wave icon Jeanne Moreau possessed a stillness, a way of surrendering to the camera, that made her utterly unique among modern actors.

By Terrence Rafferty

Remembering Jeanne Moreau
Remembering Jeanne Moreau

In honor of one of the great leading ladies of French cinema, who passed away earlier this week, the Criterion Channel features ten of her most memorable performances.

Explore

Jeanne Moreau

Actor

Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau

With her mix of sultry glamour and no-nonsense wit, Jeanne Moreau has been the embodiment of intelligent French moviestardom for six decades. The Paris-born daughter of a Folies Bergère dancer and a restaurateur, Moreau started out as a stage actress at the Comédie-Française before earning supporting roles in B pictures and crime dramas in the fifties—the most often recalled now being Jacques Becker’s captivating 1954 heist thriller Touchez pas au grisbi, with Jean Gabin. Soon enough, thanks to the discerning eye of Louis Malle, Moreau was thrust into the spotlight—even if, in her breakthrough in Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows, it was the lack of a spotlight that made her stand out: Moreau’s star-making nighttime stroll through Paris was lit only by the windows along the Champs-Élysées. This unorthodox choice was a harbinger of the more casual shooting style that would define the coming French New Wave, of which Moreau would be a figurehead. Following her lead performance in Malle’s groundbreakingly explicit romance The Lovers, she provided cameos in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and Jean-Luc Godard’s A Woman Is a Woman, solidifying her status as an icon. Of course, it was Truffaut’s masterpiece Jules and Jim that cemented her place in the annals of film: her performance as the alternately coquettish and commanding Catherine made her a brainy sex symbol for the ages. In her varied and long career, Moreau has worked with such legendary auteurs as Luis Buñuel, Michelangelo Antonioni, Orson Welles (who once called her “the greatest actress in the world”), and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and she continues to work today, in films by some of contemporary cinema’s most revered names, such as Amos Gitai, Tsai Ming-liang, and François Ozon.