The score is composed of songs with music by Jacques Brel and his accompanist Gérard Jouannest and English translations of the original French lyrics by Blau and Mort Shuman.

Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris was produced and released by the American Film Theatre, which adapted theatrical works for a subscription-driven cinema series.

The film opens in a puppet theater, where three audience members—a military officer, a taxi driver, and a woman on a shopping trip—discover they are being depicted as marionette caricatures against a backdrop of newsreel footage from the 1920s through the 1950s.

They find themselves trapped backstage amidst bizarre circumstances ... the puppet master is found dead above the stage, a gigantic plaster hand drops from the ceiling to the floor, and a deafening siren blares endlessly.

A straightforward approach is for some songs: "Bachelor's Dance" finds a bartender singing out loud of his potential mate while eyeing the female patrons of his establishment, while "Amsterdam" places a weary inebriate in a barroom corner while he watches the mix of sailors and sexual predators pass by his table.

Other songs are interpreted in a surreal manner: with "Marieke", images of a large red ball bouncing off a cliff are mixed with that of Elly Stone, dressed in a suit and tie, pursuing a little girl amidst the headstones of a cemetery.

Glenn Erickson of DVD Talk wrote, "As interpreted here, the revue format has the same pacing problems that a stack of music videos would have if there were not enough variety.