Donkey Skin (1970)

Donkey Skin is a 1970 fairy tale adaptation written and directed by Jacques Demy. The original French title of the film is Peau d’âne. It was released in English-speaking markets with a variety of different titles including Once Upon a Time and The Magic Donkey. Demy emerged as a director at the time when the Nouvelle Vague or New Wave was becoming a thing in French cinema. Demy’s movies do not however feel very much like the contemporary movies of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut.

Demy is best-known for Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 1964) and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort). Demy took a decidedly offbeat approach to the musical genre. Rather than actual songs there is dialogue which is sung, by actors and actresses who are not actual singers. It’s sounds like a catastrophically bad idea but weirdly it works and these two movies were international hits.

He uses a similar approach in Donkey Skin.

Donkey Skin is based on the fairy tale Donkeyskin, from Charles Perrault’s 1697 fairy tale collection which contained the original versions of so many of the most famous fairy tales.

Jean Marais plays the king and he is the happiest king of the happiest kingdom in the world. His queen is the most beautiful queen in the world, and they have a lovely charming daughter (played by Catherine Deneuve).

Then disaster strikes. The queen dies. On her deathbed she forces the king to promise that he will remarry (for the kingdom’s sake he needs a male heir) but only if he can find a princess more beautiful than his dying queen.

There is no princess in all the world who would qualify. None, except one. His daughter.

The king decides that therefore he should marry her.

The princess decides that maybe she likes this idea.

At this point her fairy godmother, the Lilac Fairy (Delphine Seyrig), decides that she needs to take steps to prevent this marriage. She suggests that the princess should stall by demanding impossible wedding presents, but the king manages to provide them. The Lilac Fairy then suggests that the princess should demand the skin of the king’s magic donkey.

Using the donkey skin to disguise her beauty the princess flees to a neighbouring kingdom. The young prince of that kingdom falls in love with her but then cannot recognise he. But he has her ring. No-one else can wear that ring, so if he finds a maiden who can wear it then he has found his princess.

There are a lot of things to like about this movie. The visuals are gorgeous and they’re gorgeous in interesting ways.

I like the fact that Demy does not succumb to the temptation to add an anachronistic modern political subtext.

I like the fact that he was not tempted to transpose the story to a more modern setting. This is a fairy tale world that mostly looks the way Charles Perrault’s readers in 1697 would have imagined it.

There are some clever moments referencing various poets and filmmaker, such as Cocteau.

But there are things that, for me, just don’t work. Having some of the dialogue sung is a gimmick he’d used before. It’s a gimmick that left me cold.

The big problem is that for all the visual splendours, it’s just a bit lifeless. The characters have all the vitality of wooden dolls. Perhaps, given his association with the New Wave, Demy was deliberately aiming for this and for extreme emotional distance. It doesn’t work for me.

And I hate to say this since I’m a fan of hers but Catherine Deneuve’s performance is a major weakness. She’s flat, lifeless, cold and charmless.

Before making this movie Demy should have sat down and watched Ernst Lubitch’s early masterpieces such as The Doll (Die Puppe, 1919) and The Wildcat (1921). Lubitsch shows how it should be done. Storybook characters come to life, but Lubitsch actually does bring them to life.

Donkey Skin does have some striking images but for me it was a movie to admire rather than a movie to love. There is however enough of interest here to make it worth a watch. Recommended.