The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) honors the great French composer Michel Legrand, who died in January this year, with a special CinéSalon series devoted to his life and work. Curated by one of his longtime collaborators and greatest interpreters, singer and actress Melissa Errico, Summer of Michel Legrand brings together seven of his films from his best-known triumphs such as The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort to lesser-known gems including the enchanting fairy-tale musical Donkey Skin. Screenings take place on Tuesdays in July at 4:00 pm and 7:30 pm in FIAF’s
Florence Gould Hall.
Errico, who starred in Legrand’s 2002 musical Amour which spurred a prolific and fulfilling artistic collaboration over two decades, will take part in a Q&A following the screening of The Thomas Crown Affair. She will also perform the film’s Oscar-winning song “The Windmills of Your Mind.”
Tickets are $14 ($7 for students, free for members) and can be purchased online at fiaf.org or in person at the Florence Gould Hall box office, 55 East 59th Street.
“I was so honored to be asked to be the curator of this series, and help celebrate the legacy of the great Michel Legrand, whose beautiful, joyful, sometimes melancholy but always affirmative, melodies will live forever,” Errico said. “The hardest thing was choosing the films since there is something musically entrancing in every one—some of them because of his songs, some because of his always original background scoring. I think we have a wonderful selection to give lovers of both Legrand and French movies many memorable summer nights.”
The series centers on Legrand’s output from 1962 to 1970, one of the most prolific periods of his career when he composed the aural landscape for a new generation of filmmakers who in turn revolutionized cinema. His particularly fruitful collaboration with Jacques Demy, which produced 10 films, is represented by four titles: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Bay of Angels, Donkey Skin, and The Young Girls of Rochefort. FIAF will also screen Cleo from 5 to 7 by Agnès Varda—a fellow French icon who died this year—for which Legrand not only scored the film but appeared in a cameo. Jean-Luc Godard’s landmark Vivre sa Vie rounds out the French offerings in the series. The Thomas Crown Affair, one of the composer’s most beloved scores which launched his career in Hollywood, is the sole English-language film of the series.
For more information and tickets, visit FIAF.org.