The most important figure in 20th-century French music? Erik Satie or Pierre Boulez? Serge Gainsbourg or Édith Piaf? The Messieurs Schönberg and Boublil?
This exuberant documentary by David Hertzog Dessites makes a persuasive case for another name: Michel Legrand. Composer, pianist, arranger, occasional actor, television personality and jazz heavyweight, Legrand’s exceptional gifts and restless musical energy seem to fizz in every frame.
Drawing on archival footage from the early 1950s and performance material from Legrand’s final concert tours before his death at 86 in 2019, Once Upon a Time Michel Legrand charts his journey from prodigy to polymath. As a teenager he studied under the formidable Nadia Boulanger at the Paris Conservatoire before launching a career that would encompass jazz, orchestral music and some of the most memorable film scores of the modern era.
Once Upon a Time Michel Legrand. Photo supplied
Among the film’s delights is rarely seen footage from the making of The Young Girls of Rochefort. We see the teenage passion for jazz – sparked by a concert by Dizzy Gillespie – resurface in the sleek cool of his score for The Thomas Crown Affair, which produced his enduring song The Windmills of Your Mind.
There are glimpses of Legrand leading the band for Maurice Chevalier (his arrangements revived the veteran entertainer’s career), jamming with Stan Getz and Oscar Peterson, and collaborating with cinematic heavyweights including Jacques Demy (with whom he revolutionised the screen musical on the films The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort), Orson Welles, Joseph Losey and Andrzej Wajda.
The star power is irresistible, but Dessites is equally attentive to Legrand’s mercurial personality. He emerges as exuberantly charming, boundlessly enthusiastic and a relentless perfectionist who could be exacting with collaborators who failed to meet his standards. Just as striking, though, is the joy that erupts when everything clicks. In those moments Legrand seems almost to sparkle.
Edited with musical precision and a keen sense of rhythm, Once Upon a Time Michel Legrand is an engaging portrait of a musician whose talent seemed to know no boundaries.
Once Upon a Time Michel Legrand is screenings nationally, part of the 2026 Alliance Française French Film Festival.
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