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Boomtown rats
Jacques Demy's interpretation of the Pied Piper fairy tale is deeper and darker than you might expect, says Tim Lucas
The Pied Piper
Jacques Demy; France/UK 1972; Legend Films/Region 1; 90 minutes; Aspect Ratio 1.78:1 (MFB 464)
Legend Films, a San Diego company specialising in film restoration and colourisation technology, has licensed a number of long-coveted cult titles from the Paramount vaults, including Phase IV (the only feature directed by revered graphic artist Saul Bass), Hammer's The Man Who Could Cheat Death, the Amicus classic The Skull (Freddie Francis' finest work as a director), William Castle's mob comedy The Busy Body, and George Pal's biopic Houdini, starring Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. The discs, available from the legendfilms.net website or through retail outlets, are remarkable for their unusually film-like transfers, which make one more conscious of the digitally overbaked, chromatically distorted standards of most other DVD releases.
Of particular interest among Legend's Paramount holdings is Jacques Demy's The Pied Piper, made in 1972 in the fairytale vein of his previous The Magic Donkey (1970) but with musical leanings carried over from his beloved The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967). Scripted by Demy and the unusual fledgling team of...