The Model Shop was released by Columbia Pictures on April 1, 1969
Director: Jacques Demy
The Model Shop cast: Gary Lockwood, Anouk Aimee, and Alexandra Hay
Due to its failure at the box office, the low-budget film, The Model Shop, was French, new-wave director Jacques Demy’s only American film. But since its original release, it has been generally re-evaluated as a 60’s era classic. It’s not that the film has improved with age—it hasn’t! Some of the performances are amateurish, and the story (involving two alienated drifters who can’t connect) didn’t connect with viewers in 1969, and is unlikely to now. The film’s, now nostalgic, charm comes mainly from its listless style and hippie era L.A. setting. Demy, (who was quite taken with L.A.) takes his camera through a string of odd-ball, Hollywood localities in a near continuous traveling shot that barely strays more than a mile from the Sunset Strip, which is really the star of the show.
Featured Califormulants
Throughout the film (which provides drive-by glimpses of several mid-century L.A. landmarks including the Playboy Club, the Carolina Pines restaurant, and even stops in at a rehearsal of the L.A. rock band, Spirit. Throughout the film, Mr. Lockwood tools around in the same model of MG sports car that I referred to in chapter 20 as having launched the sports car craze in the U.S. Other scenes of interest include a dilapidated Huntington Beach, beach house with adjoining oil derrick, and a side trip into the high-dollar hills above the strip.