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

is not just a film about happiness. It is happiness. It is the cinematic equivalent of a perfect summer day: fleeting, impossible to hold onto, but so beautiful while it lasts that you spend the rest of your life chasing the feeling.

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 . The Young Girls of Rochefort -1967- Criterion -...

The plot is not the point. The point is the universe of chance. Demy famously said, “Rochefort is a place where if you miss a rendezvous, the world will twist itself into a pretzel to get you back on track.” The film is a treatise on optimistic fatalism: the idea that if you desire something purely enough, the universe will listen. For decades, The Young Girls of Rochefort circulated in muddy, faded prints that did justice neither to the cinematography nor to Michel Legrand’s legendary score. The Criterion 1967 release changed the game. is not just a film about happiness

By: Senior Film Critic

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. In the vast, often somber library of the