Jacques Brel Is Alive And Well And Living In Paris

Once again the American Film Theater adapts a stage play (or in this case a musical) for the screen and comes up with a fairly tedious end product that saps the life out of the original work. This is a revue of the words and music of Jacques Brel, the internationally known Belgian singer-songwriter-actor. The off-Broadway production on which this was based had over 1,800 performances at New York's Village Gate Theater. The show (and the film) contains 26 Brel songs as performed by three singer-actors who take turns relating the various aspects of the composer's works. Brel's songs spanned the emotional realm, from sweetly sentimental to disarmingly cynical. Unfortu...