Bay of Angels (1963) User Reviews

Well crafted, slow character study, microscopic quality.

[DAHLRUSSELL · 8/10 · 25 March 2008]

This film enters with a spectacular high speed tracking shot matched by the hyper circular theme song by Michelle Legrand that sounds both like spinning and falling, and which does indeed represent both the spinning of the roulette wheel and falling in love.

Here we have the side of Jeanne Moreau I don't care for, posey, game playing and artificial... the kind of woman men like and women hate... and that made her perfect in this role. (And her performance her is Infinitely BETTER than in EVA, same type role.) What I like a lot about her casting here is that she looks quite a bit like Marilyn Monroe, but is as different internally as anyone can possibly be - which a lot of the world was doing at this time, being bad Marilyn Monroe wannabees. I love that the platinum hair makes her look much more harsh, older, and very false, and that is, of course, the essence of the character. And this film is mainly a character study, with little story and little explanation.

Our leading man is the young naive everyman sucked into her world in all respects. We feel for his every bad decision, and this is a true and real representation of both the allure and the tawdriness of the gambling world.

Without giving anything away, the ending feels contrived, but in this time period, films wanted "endings"... today a truer ending would just go on spinning like the roulette wheel. Michel Legrand's score is great. Like many of Demy's films, this is a dark story of the current day told with musicality and attention to the games we play with ourselves.

Luck be a lady..........

[brogmiller · 8/10 · 16 May 2020]

Although it may not go down too well with Jacques Demy devotees who enjoy seeing his characters burst into song, I consider this to be his most accomplished work. Not only is it close to perfection and technically flawless, no other film has managed to capture so well the agony and ecstasy of gambling.

Jean is introduced by a friend to the roulette tables in Nice and gets the bug. Initially he exercises great self-contol and quits when he's ahead but all that changes when he meets an addictive gambler named Jacqueline. They become lovers and the high and lows they experience in the casino are reflected in their relationship. Here Jeanne Moreau, one of the greatest of French actresses, complete with dyed blonde hair, cigarette holder and outfits from Pierre Cardin, is utterly riveting as Jacqueline and is perfectly complemented by Claude Mann whose first film this is. Excellent script by Demy although by all accounts he had little experience of gambling. Camerawork, editing and production design are exemplary. Unsurprisingly the score is by Michel Legrand whose partnership with Demy is one of cinema's most rewarding.

The gambler's life with its cycles of euphoria and despair and its dramatic fluctuations of luck, is very often frowned upon. Demy does not stoop to moralising but simply presents gambling as a metaphor for living. What this tender, bittersweet and entertaining piece does is to remind us that in the world of the gambler one law reigns supreme:THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS.

some interesting direction, and Jeanne Moreau, but nothing very special

[Quinoa1984 · 7/10 · 19 June 2009]

First a note of interest: Jeanne Moreau is in the movie, and she's the star, of course, but she's also a blonde here. Usually, from what I can remember from say The Lovers or La Notte or Jules & Jim it's dark or at least brunette. I wonder if she was already blonde at the time or if it was a deliberate and specific choice on director Jacques Demy's end. Because, somehow, it does add something extra to the character. When we first see her on screen she's being 'escorted' (kind word for kicked out) of a casino that Jean and Caron are at to start gambling, and it's a big scene where we see her arguing and stomping her feet and we barely see her face, just a fury of big blonde hair and attitude to match. It's not exactly the same cool presence one saw in some of Moreau's other big films of the period - and yet when we see her again she is lovely and with that face that charms immediately upon the smile, and makes one feel the gloom of after hours when looking serious.

Bay of Angels is a movie that works best when Demy focuses his theme on escapism, what would appear to be at first a film for escapists, about people going off to rich places like Monte Carlo and gambling away the life savings and having a great time in expensive suits and drinking champagne. But it's also about the nature of this escapism, the danger of it. It's predictable to see that Jean, who comes from a family where gambling is incredibly frowned upon, and Jackie, who at one point confesses that going into a casino is like going into Church, will lose a lot of money, maybe all of it, and keep going in dire straits throughout. What isn't expected is how Demy interweaves this seemingly endless back and forth of the bottomless pit that is a gambler's life (if only seeming like a lifetime in however few days Jean/Jackie are together) and how touching it becomes against the backdrop of glamour. At the least, his film is about something.

The only problems come with a few scenes in the script that drag - the dialog often works, but sometimes not quite enough to satisfy the emotional purpose of a scene. Maybe also contributing to this is first time actor Claude Mann as Jean. Mann would later be featured in Melville's Army of Shadows, among other notable films, but here he just can't hold his own most of the time alongside such a presence like Moreau. It was wise to cast someone young, and maybe not with the most experience, as this kid who goes on vacation from a small bank-clerk job to try and find himself by way of throwing away hundreds of thousands (albeit I pictured more-so, as the film went on, the actor who played the lead in Pickpocket). But Mann just doesn't really fit in, especially when he has to go into big dramatic scenes (i.e. the outbursts of anger against Jackie in the hotel rooms).

And yet Bay of Angels displays a director with an intuition with the camera, a grace and style, and a dazzling sense of music, precisely repetitive, over the shots of the roulette table spinning around and the faces dissolving in and out with it. There are beautiful moments, and it's hard not to take eyes ever off of Moreau, one of those actresses who keeps working today into her late 70s going on 80s but whom one thinks of in black and white only. She had/has one of the great faces in movies, and she's a damn good actress to boot. 7.5/10

'Je croyais que cette vie n'existait plus'

[Fiona-39 · 6 March 2001]

This is a kind of interesting film. It has been overshadowed by later, greater works by Jacques Demy, such as Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, but at its heart it has pretty much the same themes - the difficulties of translating American modernity into French provincial life. Moreau has an unusual turn as an Americanised film star, complete with bleached blonde hair -do a la Marilyn Monroe, playing Jackie, a gambler on the Cote d'Azur. Jean, on holiday from his strict father, falls in love with her. This slight plot (that really is it!)is the background for meditations on chance, love, luck, and life. There are some virtuoso cinematic moments, such as Jackie running toward Jean being glimpsed in mirrors at the end of the film. The overpowering score is slightly grating, but all in all it's a charming period piece.

Still Early Demy

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 28 August 2014]

Jean is a clerk in a bank. His colleague Caron is a gambler and gives him the virus. In the casinos, Jean meets Jackie. Their love affair will follow their luck at the roulette.

Jacques Demy was still early in his career at this point, having really only made one film, "Lola". He returns here to black and white and a non-musical, the second and last time he would do that. But he always told stories of love and this is no exception. (Some think he had his own take on Hollywood, but that is a whole other issue.)

Here gambling, especially roulette, is glamorized. At a time when gambling was run out of Cuba and was illegal basically everywhere in the United States besides Nevada, there is a sense of mystique about gambling that evokes thoughts of James Bond. This film captures that perfectly.

Jeanne Moreau at her best

[lqualls-dchin · 10/10 · 26 October 2001]

Jacques Demy's second feature is an amazingly fluid, vibrant comedy about love and luck, starring Jeanne Moreau at her (dazzling) best. And she is literally dazzling, in resplendent costumes (mostly by Pierre Cardin) and radiantly blonde. The music by Michel Legrand is one of his best scores ever, as it sweeps through the film, carrying everything along with two basic themes, one furiously accelerated piano theme, the other a softer, more lilting theme played in different variations, but mostly on the mandolin. It's a movie that sweeps you along, just as fast and unpredictable as a spin on the roulette wheel. This is a film in which "black-and-white" becomes a dazzling metaphor, so that the sun-drenched exteriors of the south of France are contrasted with the various interiors of hotel rooms and casinos. LA BAIE DES ANGES may seem slight, but only "seems": it's one of the most passionate statements on love and faith in the modern cinema, and it's a work of true enchantment.

Bleak but Enlivening Black + White Psychological Film

[ASuiGeneris · 7/10 · 23 May 2018]

Bay of Angels (French: La baie des anges) (1963) Director: Jacques Demy Watched: February 2018 Rating: 7/10

An immersive dance, Doomed love in bleak black and white, Lovely Legrand score, Eloquent warning against Wayward gambling lifestyle. ---- Tanka, literally "short poem", is a form of poetry consisting of five lines, unrhymed, with the 5-7-5-7-7 syllable format. #Tanka #PoemReview

Greatest sin of them all - not on video!

[Artemis-9 · 10/10 · 12 September 2003]

I was chilled to the bone, and mesmerized, by the dark crime of M (1931). Then, in the double-feature session, the 15-y-o boy trespassing as a 17-y-o, quickly changed his temperature when the 'great sinner' Jeanne Moreau appeared on La Baie des Anges (1963). «Actress Moreau forcefully demonstrates the verve, style and flamboyant femaless that make her the envy of European sex symbols much greener in years and cooler in blood. Her wicked, winning presence has saved a bad movie from utter oblivion, and at 36 she knows how to turn Bay of the Angels into a one woman show.» So wrote a reviewer (Time, November 27, 1964), and I couldn't put it better; I'm now copying this from my typewritten notes - no photocopier at home, then. That young boy would never enter a casino in his life due to this film, and he tried to see all the films starring Jeanne Moreau. I'm a winner on two counts, by money not given away to casino owners, and by a plethora of good films that were saved from oblivion by this great woman, and actress.

Between Chance and Control

[dmgrundy · 6/10 · 20 August 2020]

The black and white here may share the sun-drenched lighting of Lola, of Demy's favoured seaside towns, but its harder edges reflect the narrative of obsessive repetition, of a gambling addiction that trumps that other repetition addictive, romance. But romance is the wrong word here--this is a film interested in other kinds of exhilaration, of an interplay between ritualised control and improvised, chance derangement. Above, that astonishing opening shot, the sheer exhilaration of camera movement pulling away from Jeanne Moreau's assured/lost gambler on the bay at dawn, one of Demy's most impressive technical tricks, both echoing and repudiating the automotive shots that bookend Lola's narrative of lost and redeemed love. Perhaps too impressive: encapsulating so much of the film that follows that much of it seems somewhat redundant. Unlike the drive towards fulfilment or loss that characterises most of Demy's films, this is a film set in the most glamorous of limbos--as usual, without judgment. But--and this is where it suffers in comparison to Demy's other films--it's also largely without the bittersweetness, joy or melancholy he elsewhere strives so relentlessly to capture.

charismatic woman leads young man on a whirlwind affair toward death

[jbaileycine · 10/10 · 17 December 2000]

This is one of the more obscure masterworks of the French New Wave and is, I suspect, unavailable in America. It is a hauntingly tragic love story full of the bittersweet joie de vivre that is the trademark of Demy's work. Moreau is charismatic and enigmatic and has a siren like quality of foretold doom. If you can find it anywhere, get it.

Moreau is radiant

[gbill-74877 · 7/10 · 7 December 2022]

I'm generally not a big fan of addiction movies (it's gambling in this case), but count me in for Jeanne Moreau in the beautiful French Riviera anytime. She's as stunning as ever here, and gives her character a playfulness in living in the moment that makes her circumstances even sadder. Her marriage has fallen apart, she's lost custody of her three-year-old son (who she says she lost gambling too), she's sold her jewels in Monaco, and been kicked out of a casino in Enghien for cheating - and yet (of course) she's still bubbly and drawn to the roulette wheel. She's hooked up with a young man (Claude Mann) who's been bitten with the gambling bug after getting exposed to it from a friend, despite having at least a degree of common sense, a father who forbids him to gamble, and warning signs all around.

Between his idiotic system of tracking numbers that have come up, thinking they'll effect future outcomes, and her wild hunches and big wagers, the movie is filled with them playing one bet after another, and seeing their fortunes rise and fall. Along the way, beneath the glamor of a new sportscar and a room in a luxury hotel with a view, we see some ugly behavior, e.g. Her cozying up to other men for money, him calling her a slut, and him hitting her - but it never really feels like we get the gritty despair or pathos that is associated with gambling addiction. Maybe that's because these characters are dancing along the edge of the abyss, but haven't fallen yet. Regardless, the film really isn't saying anything new about the topic and the script is rather simple.

I was mesmerized nonetheless because of the place and time, and Moreau of course. It might have even gotten a higher rating from me, but director Jacques Demy hit me with Michel Legrand's jangling piano score a couple times too many, and the ending was as unbelievable as it was unsatisfying. The opening shot was absolutely brilliant, but the closing shot was as bad as something out of Hollywood. Overall, a beautiful film with a beautiful cast, but a mediocre script.

Gambling+Sex=Fun, as James Bond Would Say

[theognis-80821 · 8/10 · 19 June 2023]

At the tail end of the Blonde Bombshell Era, Jeanne Moreau bleached her hair and gave it a shot. And great actress that she is, she nailed it. Three years after "Breathless," Claude Mann, who bears a strong resemblance to Jean-Paul Belmondo, made his debut as a young clerk, who tags along as she gambles compulsively. Will it last? Can love triumph over the habit? The suspense is strengthened by Moreau blowing hot and cold and our sympathy for a young man on a spree, in defiance of his father. Michel Legrand delivers with a fine score and the bizarre game called "roulette" is well explained and fascinates.

for love and money

[ksf-2 · 7/10 · 7 April 2023]

It's kind of funny to think of a movie from 1963 needing a restoration. But they did a fine job of this one. It's in french, with english subtitles. Gripping story, story of love and addiction. The gambling and the relationship mirror each other, as jean and jacqie experience their ups and downs. Jean is in love, but jacquie is really only interested in gambling, and where she can get more cash to gamble. Poor jean was on vacation, and really falls for jacqueline. His only "in" with her seems to be to keep loaning her money, sometimes with even knowing it! Jean seems to be able to stop gambling when he wants to, but jacquie, has it bad. Jean is young and in love, but is that enough to keep them together? And isn't that a song by captain and tenille? Directed by jacques demy. He did this one right before the more famous "umbrellas". It's really well done! Umbrellas of cherbourg was told completely in song, which I personally did not enjoy.. bay of angels is so much easier to watch. Demy died young at 59.

2 boring predictable people spiraling towards pointlessness

[ikanboy · 5/10 · 20 November 2007]

The first fifteen minutes promise much. A young man is introduced to gambling and wins. His drab life is transformed, briefly. Then he decides to take off for 3 weeks to the coast and more Casinos. There he meets Jeanne Moreau, platinum tresses, and pouty lips, addicted to gambling, and as guileful as they come. Will he succumb to her flashy exterior or will he see sense and quit while his common sense is still intact? Well it's a french "new wave" movie so as can be expected, it's all about people's weaknesses not their strengths.

The movie then drags us around from casino to casino, from loss to gain, to loss. There is no passion here. This I hope was intended for wasting one's life for a turn in ones luck is a passionless existence. These kinds of themes are like movies about alcoholics. Who cares for these people? Who wants to watch people we care less for pissing away their lives? Don't waste your time. This "wave" laps on shore like a whisper.

My Bet Noir ...

[writers_reign · 6/10 · 4 November 2007]

... or one of them is the movement that pseuds insist on promoting to upper-case as The New Wave and I dismiss as the lower-case new wavelet but in life we can seldom pigeon-hole everything and Jacques Demy is a case in point; he is part of the hiccup only inasmuch as his early features were made just as the vague in question was retreating back into the ocean of mediocrity from whence it came. True, he made these early movies for a stick of gum and mostly on location but he possessed more flair for actual film-making than for intellectualising on celluloid. Nor was he above subtlety; there is, for example, a nice touch in this film when Claude Mann and Jeanne Moreau share a pint bottle of whiskey and the brand is Black and White reflecting the motif of the entire film; Moreau, the car, the beach are all white, Mann, the croupiers and virtually every other male are dressed in black. Plot-wise it's stripped to the bone; Mann is a straight-up guy, Moreau is Gamblers-in-yer-face. They meet. End of. On the other hand if you want to talk Theme how much time do you have. Nice makes a nice location, Michel Legrand weighs in with a pleasant jazz-inflected score and it's fine for one viewing and just for the record another of my bete noirs is wagering against the red at roulette.

bay of angels

[mossgrymk · 8/10 · 7 July 2023]

Boy, take Demy away from musicals and he becomes one rather somber director, huh? In other words, I disagree with the previous reviewer, theognis 80821, who described this very bleak study of two chronic gamblers as "fun". In fact, it's so un fun that I sedulously did not buy the tacked on happy ending when Jeanne Moreau's walking ad for gamblers anonymous suddenly and inexplicably decides to renounce roulette for stolid Claude Mann (who may look like Belmondo but does not resemble his acting).

However, until that cloying last scene Demy does not hit a false note as he relentlessly chronicles the toll this insidious addiction takes on a woman of intelligence and sensitivity to the point where husband and child are tragically renounced for momentary highs at expensive and tawdry casinos. And Moreau's great performance ensures that you experience the full ugliness of it. Give it a B plus which would have been higher without that sappy ending and a different actor in the lead opposite Ms. Moreau.

Great director, great star, no-so-great movie

[Red-125 · 6/10 · 27 March 2020]

The French film La baie des anges (1963) was shown in the U.S. with the translated title Bay of Angels. It was written and directed by Jacques Demy.

The movie stars Jeanne Moreau as gambling addict Jacqueline 'Jackie' Demaistre. Film buffs know that Moreau was a famous actor in the 1950's and 1960's. Some of the greatest film directors of that era starred her in their movies: Louis Malle, Michelangelo Antonioni, François Truffaut, and Luis Buñuel. The young director Jacques Demy knew that she was the star he wanted, and she accepted the role.

Unfortunately, Bay of Angels is not Demy's greatest movie. Moreau appears as a blonde, which really doesn't work. She always was a woman who would turn heads, but here she looks cheap and as artificial as her hair color.

Claude Mann played opposite Moreau, as Jean, the young man who catches the gambling virus from her. She tells him she can never love anyone as much as she loves gambling. My thought--trust her and step away. However, stepping away from Jackie isn't as easy as it might look.

Of course, I can't tell you how the movie ends, but let's just say that the ending makes absolutely no sense in the context of the 90 minutes of film that came before it.

We saw this film on DVD, where it worked well. The movie has a solid IMDb rating of 7.3. I didn't think that it was as good as that. I rated it 6.

A finely crafted drama, if less than revelatory

[I_Ailurophile · 8/10 · 11 June 2023]

On the one hand, as someone who has never gambled once in her life, this is low-key fascinating as it offers a glimpse into a world unknown to me. On the other hand, ill-advised, habit-forming, and kind of filthy as the vice is, I feel unclean even watching, like I may as well be watching people live in perpetual clouds of cigarette smoke and brush their teeth with nicotine. And on still another hand, 'La baie des anges,' or 'Bay of angels,' initially comes off as so direct - protagonist Jean's whole outlook changes after the very first time that he plays roulette - that the picture almost recalls exploitation flicks like 1936's 'Reefer madness' or 1954's 'Girl gang'; you know, the type of feature that posits a single puff of marijuana leads immediately to hard drugs and violent crime. Of course, it may be just as true that this is simply a drama that happens to center gambling, though I don't think the alternate perspectives are ameliorated by the fact that Jeanne Moreau, only 35 years old at the time this was released, is made to look significantly older in 1963 than she did in features released just before or even a few years after this. In any case, the movie is fantastically well made all around, and solidly engaging.

I don't know what is more rich and flavorful about this: Jacques Demy's direction, Jean Rabier's cinematography, Anne-Marie Cotret's editing, or Michel Legrand's original music. There's a smart dexterity to each of these facets that comes off as lightheartedness as they shape the film, and I wonder if they aren't the chief highlights above even the storytelling. With that said, Demy penned an engrossing narrative as Jean gets completely sucked into the gambling lifestyle alongside hopeless addict Jackie. The scene writing and dialogue is superb, and rather entrancing as the tale progresses. Above all, the two chief characters are complicated and intriguing in their shared ordeal, and the real focal point of both the writing and the picture as a whole. Jean and Jackie's personalities, and they way they're lit on fire by gambling, are the primary fuel for the proceedings, and I could stand for 'La baie des anges' to be longer than it is just on their account. To that same point, Claude Mann and especially Moreau give excellent performances befitting the variable dynamics of that central relationship and all that the pair go through, and it's a real pleasure as a viewer just to watch them ply their trade.

I can't say that this is perfect, as the ending is a tad too curt for my tastes, not to mention overly neat and clean; the cinematic journey isn't as entirely satisfying as it could have been if the destination weren't so close to where we began. Even setting that aside, for as well made as this is, there's no singular stroke of brilliance at any point, and the feature is never so captivating (let alone impactful) as to demand viewership. Yet for however much one may him and haw about the particulars, by and large this remains an enjoyable, very worthwhile viewing experience. It's a fine credit to all involved, including those behind the scenes, and ultimately a classic that deserves remembrance and recognition. I don't think there's any need to go out of one's way for it, but whether one is a big fan of someone involved or just looking for a good movie, as far as I'm concerned 'La baie des anges' is well worth checking out.

Review - La baie des anges

[Maxence_G · 6/10 · 8 September 2020]

The characterization is barebone but well balanced with the film's theme of superficial wealth and Michel Legrand's score is almost a miracle considering its extreme simplicity, but La baie des anges remains a very typic French New Wave film, Jacques Demy didn't have the audacity that he will have only 1 year later for Les parapluies de Cherbourg or for Les demoiselles de Rochefort 3 years later.

Realistic and beautiful portrayal of gambling addiction

[skepticskeptical · 8/10 · 20 January 2023]

La baie des anges offers a terrifying glimpse into the reality of gambling addiction. Jeanne Moreau cannot stop and somehow manages to lure her young stud into the mesmerizing world of roulette, which, judging from what happens here, will eventually lead to their ruin. The female gambler is clearly older than her naive lover, and one has to wonder when her charm will wear thin. But somehow her frankness in admitting that all she really cares about is gambling entices him even more. If she actually loved him, he'd probably bolt after a few days, but she keeps him hanging on, just as the roulette wheel keeps pulling her back to the casino, over and over again, as she oscillates between opulence and destitution, elation and desperation.

Gorgeous film. Black and white suits it very well.

Drab, sleazy, no chemistry

[keithbolton · 6/10 · 31 August 2021]

Whilst the film does a good job of portraying the despair, tedium and pointless existence of the gambler, the lack of chemistry between the leads tarnishes and dulls the glamour and excitement that should be at the heart of why a gambler games.

It's both unbelievable and predictable at the same time, and time has not done it any favours.

a good director's look at human condition

[daflauta · 10/10 · 15 March 2013]

Kara, are you a film maker or just a philosopher? What a precise and concise analysis of one of the greatest early Demy's works! I agree fully, and make your words mine. Your photography skill is evident (I'm a photographer too). Furthermore, the photography is one of the high spots of this film. Superb B&W rendition, together with expert scene lighting, camera, decors, everything. The zigzag mirrors scenes in the casino are a treat! Never been into gambling, but I know a little about addictions. It's always a sad story. I've met Demy in Rio de Janeiro some 30 yrs ago. We became friends, but unfortunately he died in 1990. I highly recommend Agnes Varda's films. Not by accident she was married to Jacques, and their son Mathieu Demy is a very good actor.

Glamor and gloom

[evening1 · 6/10 · 17 July 2023]

A fascinating portrait of gambling addiction, marred by a simplistic and implausible happy ending.

Fresh off of her star turn in 1962's "Jules et Jim," Jeanne Moreau is riveting as Jackie, a casino habitué who has given up her husband and son for the thrill of the roulette table. She's as dead on the inside as she is sexy in her Pierre Cardin suit.

Joining in her debauchery along the French Riviera is Jean (Claude Moran), who, although initially reticent to part with his cash, gets sucked into the betting habit after a couple big, easy wins.

"Bay of Angels" examines this dysfunctional couple's appalling ups and downs, as they exult over a ball hitting lucky-number 17; walk away zombified when they lose hundreds of thousands of francs on a single bet, hock everything they own -- from a sportscar down to a watch -- for one more chance at luck, and alienate everyone they know as they grovel for a loan.

Director Jacques Demy is better-known for colorful musicals like "Les parapluies de Cherbourg," but this film showed his potential with more sober material. His taking a gamble on a happy ending parallels the poor judgment of his protagonists here. An earlier reviewer recommends "The Lady Gambles" as a better movie on the betting sickness, and I'm eager to see it.

Despite its serious flaw, "Bay of Angels" is worth seeing. As when one is in a real casino, you won't be checking your watch. It makes a good companion piece to the similarly themed "Tricheurs" of 1984.

After a while, it all becomes tedious....

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 17 September 2011]

If you are looking for a film to show your kids about the folly of gambling, then this film is worth your time--though I honestly think the film is trying to say the opposite! If you want to enjoy a film, then keep looking. The bottom line is that this morality tale is interesting at first but after a while it's relentlessly tedious--as the characters are about as likable as bed bugs!

Claude Mann plays a simple clerk. A coworker has a serious gambling addiction and manages to convince Claude to accompany him to the casino. Claude wins and gets gambling fever. With his winnings, he's able to go on a vacation to the Riviera. There, he meets a pathetic woman (Jeanne Moreau) who has abandoned her family in order to gamble. The two hook up, have sex and gamble again and again and again. As long as they are winning, they are in love. But winning, like their love, is shallow and fleeting. And by the end, you just want them to go away....

This really is all that there is to the film. The majority of the film shows them gambling. And, I couldn't care less about gambling, I couldn't care less about these unappealing characters. It really became a chore to watch after a while and although reasonably well acted and crafted, it's not particularly enjoyable or enlightening. I didn't need to see this film to know that gambling addicts are pathetic.

By the way, the theme music from this film is god-awful. Too intense and too invasive and doesn't at all fit the film.

Relatable and absorbing

[gridoon2024 · 8/10 · 27 November 2023]

Jacques Demy's "Bay Of Angels" may be the best movie ever made about compulsive gambling, along with the appropriately titled "The Gambler" (1974). It's not "realistic" in its technicalities (winning three consecutive times by betting on a single roulette number happens ONLY in the movies), but I don't think it wants to be; what it's trying to get at is the psychology of gambling, and at that it succeeds (in fact, it shows two different "types" of players: the wetting-his-feet and the full addict). This movie, which offers a rare view of the high and low life in and around the Nice and Monte Carlo casinos circa 1963, has the immediacy and spontaneity that the French New Wave often strived for, minus any of the pretentiousness (just compare it with Godard's not dissimilar "Pierrot Le Fou"). Jeanne Moreau sports an iconic look and plays a daringly flawed female character; the much lesser-known internationally Claude Mann is also very good. It's a minor classic. ***1/2 out of 4.