THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG Movie Review
Les Parapluies de Cherbourg
Die Regenschirme von Cherbourg
In Jacques Demy's brave and bittersweet love story, a 20-year-old Catherine Deneuve plays Genevieve, the teenaged daughter of umbrella shop owner Madame Emery (Anne Vernon). When the war in Algeria means that her adored boyfriend Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) is called to active duty, Genevieve becomes panicked over her discovery that she's pregnant. With the encouragement of her mother, Genevieve decides to marry a wealthy gem dealer who's smitten with her, rather than risk losing Guy during the war and thus having her baby be born fatherless. When Guy inevitably returns, all the parties involved are older and wiser, but their hearts are not convinced. The most immediately noticeable characteristic of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is not just that it's a musical, but that every line in the movie is sung. It's disconcerting at first, to the point where you think that a garage mechanic's warbling about an oil change is going to send you right out of the theatre. But Demy cleverly pokes a little fun at his own methods in an early scene: one of the characters sings about how singing at the movies drives him crazy. Suddenly you decide to sit back and let yourself take it in, and you're glad, because it turns out to be pretty glorious. he music—all 90 minutes of it—is by Michel Legrand, with lyrics by Demy. You'll recognize many of the tunes, two of which later hit pop charts in their English versions as “I Will Wait for You” and “Watch What Happens.” The lovely, fairy-tale-like cinematography is by Jean Rabier, and it looks better than ever in the new color restoration of the film that was completed in 1996. A double CD is available of the complete soundtrack as well. Grand Prize, 1964 Cannes Film Festival.
NEXT STOP … Lola, The Young Girls of Rochefort, Jacquot
1964 90m/C FR Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon, Ellen Farner, Marc Michel, Mireille Perrey, Jean Champion, Alfred Wolff, Dorothee Blanck; D: Jacques Demy; W: Jacques Demy; C: Jean Rabier; M: Michel Legrand. Cannes Film Festival ‘64: Best Film; Nominations; Academy Awards ‘65; Best Foreign-Language Film, Best Song (“I Will Wait for You”), Best Story & Screenplay, Best Original Score. VHS FXL, ART