The Young Girls Of Rochefort -1967- Criterion -... May 2026

By: Senior Film Critic

Dorléac burned through the screen. She improvised physical stunts that terrified the crew. She chain-smoked between takes. She was, by all accounts, the heart of the production. When she died in a fiery car crash at age 25, the film became a eulogy. The Criterion edition captures this poignancy without wallowing in it. When Solange boards a train to Paris at the film’s climax, you feel the weight: she made it, but the actress did not. Michel Legrand’s score is not background music; it is a character. The main theme, “Rochefort,” is a bright, nervous waltz that modulates key every eight bars, never letting the listener feel safe in a single note. Demy insisted that every line of dialogue be recorded twice: once spoken, once sung. This creates a reality where singing is just an elevated form of conversation. The Young Girls of Rochefort -1967- Criterion -...

But if you need a reminder that cinema can be pure, unironic pleasure —that a camera can spin, that colors can sing, that two sisters in matching sundresses can dance through a French square to a jazz sextet—then there is nothing better. By: Senior Film Critic Dorléac burned through the screen

Their mother, Yvonne (Danielle Darrieux), runs a café-cum-creperie and is still pining for the dashing man who left her years ago. Meanwhile, across town, a traveling American painter named Maxence (Jacques Perrin) has painted the portrait of his ideal woman—not knowing she lives just down the street. And a wily, cynical musical instrument seller named Simon Dame (Michel Piccoli) tries to play matchmaker, all while a murder subplot (yes, a murder subplot) involving a mysterious stranger (Gene Kelly!) lurks in the background. She was, by all accounts, the heart of the production

In the vast, often somber library of the Criterion Collection—a canon filled with neorealism’s grit, Bergman’s existential dread, and Tarkovsky’s poetic melancholy—there is one title that stands apart like a pastel-colored firework against a grey sky. That title is .

Released on Blu-ray and DVD, the Criterion edition features a 4K digital restoration (supervised by cinematographer Jean Rabier before his passing). The difference is staggering. Rabier shot the film in Eastmancolor, a stock notoriously difficult to preserve. On older transfers, the pastels of Rochefort’s town square looked sickly. On the Criterion transfer, however, the oranges are electric, the turquoises are deep, and the primary reds of the twins’ wardrobe pop with three-dimensional depth.