It’s no secret that the Hollywood Comet loves musicals.
In 2010, I revealed I had seen 400 movie musicals over the course of eight years. Now that number is over 600. To celebrate and share this musical love, here is my weekly feature about musicals.

This week’s musical:
Peau d’âne/Donkey Skin (1970) – Musical #760

Studio:
Cinema International Corporation

Director:
Jacques Demy

Starring:
Catherine Deneuve, Jean Marias, Jacques Perrin, Micheline Presle, Delphine Seyrig, Fernand Ledoux, Henri Crémieux, Sacha Pitoëff, Pierre Repp, Jean Servais, Georges Adet, Louise Chevalier

Plot:
The king (Marias) lives happily with his beautiful queen (Deneuve) and their only daughter (also Deneuve). When the queen dies suddenly, she asks that if he remarries because he still needs a male heir, to marry someone more beautiful and virtuous than she. After shutting himself off in grief, the king decides to find a beautiful princess to marry. When portraits from all over the land are brought, he discovers his own daughter is the most beautiful and more charming than his mother, and he proposes marriage to his own daughter. The princess seeks help from her fairy godmother (Seyrig), who instructs her to ask for seemingly impossible gifts of the king before they will marry. When he fulfills each task, the princess asks the king to kill his prize donkey that produces gold and jewels. The princess disguises herself in the donkey skin, fleeing to a distant land where she is known as a dirty scullery maid who smells bad. When Prince Charming (Perrin) visits the village and sees Donkey Skin/the princess out of her disguise, he falls in love and wants to marry her.

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