Country: France
Director: Jacques Demy
"Of all the New Wave directors who once professed their joy in cinema, Demy remained most faithful to the delights of sight and sound and to the romance of movie iconography."
—David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film
Bay of Angels opens with an iris shot of Jeanne Moreau striding purposefully down the seafront promenade at Nice early in the morning, the camera tracking in front of her and slowly away from her. After a few moments the iris opens out to a full-screen shot, lush piano-and-orchestra music wells up on the soundtrack, and as the credits begin, the camera speeds away in a burst of surging momentum that matches that of Michel Legrand's theme music until Moreau disappears in the distance. The whole shot, which lasts a little more than a minute, is one of those that makes you ask yourself even as you watch it, "How did they do ever that?" (My best guess: the camera operator was in the back seat of a convertible with the camera mounted on the trunk of the car as it raced down the promenade.)
After this opening credit sequence, the tone of the film changes completely as the location shifts to Paris, where we meet Jean Fournier (Claude Mann), a staid young man in his early twenties who works as a bank clerk and lives a sedate life with his widowed father. After a co-worker confesses to Jean that he is a compulsive gambler and invites Jean to accompany him to the casino at Enghien near Paris, Jean sees a means of escape from his dull, conventional life. When his vacation comes up, he seizes his chance to "break out" by defying his father and heading for the Riviera and its casinos for a gambling holiday. In the casino he meets Jackie Lemaistre (Jeanne Moreau), a chain-smoking, careworn-looking denizen of the casino who appears to be in her early thirties, and for the next two weeks the two embark on an impromptu love affair and gambling spree that takes them from Nice to Monte Carlo and back again.
