Excellent, Without a doubt!!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

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.

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.

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

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.