The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les parapluies de Cherbourg)
Directed by Jacques Demy
Written by Jacques Demy
1964/France/West Germany
Park Film/Madeleine Films/Beta Film
First viewing/Netflix rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
Madame Emery: Stop crying. Look at me. People only die of love in movies.
Demy gave us a spectacular Easter basket full of color and music. I love this movie.
Seventeen-year-old Genevieve Emery (Catherine Deneuve) helps her widowed mother in the family umbrella shop. She is madly in love with Guy, who is twenty. He works in a garage and lives with his ailing godmother. They are talking marriage when Guy’s draft notice arrives, sending him away for two years to Algeria. Good-byes mean a night of passion and eternal vows of love.
Genevieve attracts another suitor – older, richer and more sophisticated – but her heart belongs to Guy. When she discovers she is pregnant, can her vows overcome reality?
I had seen the first 10 minutes of this before. I can’t believe I didn’t stay to see the whole thing. I may have been turned off by the sung dialogue. This time, its beauty blew me away. It has also got a wonderfully tender story and Michel Legrand’s fantastic score to accompany the eye candy. Highly recommended.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen; Best Music, Original Song (“I Will Wait for You”); Best Music, Score – Substantially Original; and Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment.
I was on the fence for a while, but the endning completely won me over. It feels right in a way musicals rarely do. There is an undertone in the entire movie that makes it stand out as different and I love it for it.
I was won over by the credit sequence. It just seemed magical. So far Demy is batting 1000 for me.
Surprisingly, perhaps, I really enjoyed this. Musicals like this one have a tendency to leave us with the sort of ending that defies reality, and this doesn’t. While the entirety of the production–everyone singing every line–does defy reality, the plot is based in the real world and the ending, while perhaps not the drippy romance that we want, is perfect for what this film is.
I think the ending they had, where the people stay faithful to the ones they are married to, is more beautiful than any drippy romance.
Last night, I revisited “Umbrellas” and am eager to read some contemporary criticism, as I have my own ideas about Demy’s intentions. The film has complex layers. On this viewing, it struck me that he begins with both an homage to and a comment on the Hollywood musical. We are bombarded with artifice, both with the recitative and the unnatural colors surrounding the main characters.Catherine Deneuve is amazing and delicious to look at. Gradually, the reality of their situation takes over and we are sucked in, forgetting the unnatural conventions of the musical and operetta, empathizing with the emotional reality.
After a few minutes, the recitative began to seem normal to me. Writing in a rush. More by email.