Paris — The legendary French film composer Michel Legrand was laid to rest Friday after a final standing ovation in a Paris theater decorated to look like one of his favorite movies.

The musician who scored such French screen classics as "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" and "The Young Ladies of Rochefort" -- both starring Catherine Deneuve and directed by Jacques Demy -- died on Saturday aged 86.

Legrand won three Oscars for his work in Hollywood, most famously for writing "The Windmills of Your Mind" for "The Thomas Crown Affair" in 1969, as well as the music for Barbra Streisand's "Yentl" (1984) and the "Summer of '42" (1972).

A magic forest reminiscent of another Demy film, "Donkey Skin" -- which also starred Deneuve -- was created inside the Marigny theatre in Paris where his coffin was taken after a funeral service at the Alexander Nevsky Russian Orthodox cathedral.

Clearly on the verge of tears, Demy's widow, the legendary French director Agnes Vardy, led the moving tributes to Legrand at the theatre.

After the audience had risen to give him one last standing ovation, she said, "Having to talk next to Michel's coffin is a little difficult. The last time we saw each other we held each other's hands and I felt transported back to our years together with Jacques Demy." — AFP