Jacques Demy knew his colors were going to die. He had shot the film in Eastmancolor, and everyone understood that Eastmancolor faded. The colors would shift, slowly, over time, until the print was a pink ghost of itself.

Most directors accepted this. Demy had three color-separation masters struck, one for yellow, one for cyan, one for magenta, on film stock that would last. He laid the foundation for his film's rescue decades before it would be needed.

THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (1964) looks like a candy box: pastel walls, wallpaper matched to dresses, umbrellas dancing overhead in the rain.

It won the top prize at Cannes and made Catherine Deneuve a star. Every line in the film is sung, floating on a haunting score by Michel Legrand. Deneuve's iconic vocal performance was dubbed by Danielle Licari.

MILD SPOILERS: Deneuve was nineteen playing a seventeen-year-old in love with a mechanic who gets drafted to the war in Algeria. Their love proves no match for the passing years.

The film itself is a different story. Demy died in 1990. Agnès Varda, his widow, took his three preserved masters and used them to restore The Umbrellas of Cherbourg to its original brilliance.

Damien Chazelle has repeatedly cited it as a core model for La La Land.