The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (English Subtitles)
	Rating
	Type	Video On Demand
	Release Date	2007-11-28
	Actor	Catherine Deneuve; Nino Castelnuovo; Anne Vernon; Marc Michel; Ellen Farner;
	Director	Jacques Demy;
	Length	92 minutes
	Special Price
	Lowest New Price	$2.99
Categories
Drama  Romance  Love & Romance  Musicals  International
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Description
Geneviève, 16, lives together with her widow mother, who owns an umbrella shop in Cherbourg. She and Guy, an auto mechanic, are in love and would like to marry. But her mother does not agree. She thinks Geneviève is too young and Guy is not wealthy enough. Guy leaves for two years in the army, and Geneviève is pregnant. She still loves Guy, although she has little news from him. For the reason that the baby needs a father she marries Roland Cassard, a rich gem dealer, who fell in love together with her at first sight and promised to get up the kid as his own... A movie whose dialogue is entirely sung.
Customer Reviews
Better than I expected....   2010-07-08
By Matthew David Sweat (Charleston, SC)
I had been avoiding this film for a long time because I knew it was entirely sung from start to finish. In french, no less! On top of all that, people keep on telling how tragic everything was. Now that sounds like a sure-fire formula for a movie no American would ever watch! Yet many have seen & loved it, so I decided to get a copy & find out why. Amazingly enough, after the first 5 minutes, the singing no longer seems like singing but just like a kind of talk. Only it sounds a lot prettier. When you think of it, "The Sound of Music" with Julie Andrews comes awfully close at times to having some of the same qualities. The color photography also seems natural, only prettier. Jacques Demy constructs this film so skillfully that it moves right along...after seeing half the film, I felt like I had only been watching it for a very short time! As for tragedy, there is not enough to worry about here. Personally, I find a kid's tv show like "Little House on the Prairie"(at times) more tragic than this! Demy tries to tell the truth about life, how things do not go right all of the time. But in the end everything gets resolved in a satisfactory manner, even if it is not in the way the main characters would have thought. The ending had a nice, wistful kind of melancholy. Overall the entire movie had a very romantic & pretty quality to it. I thought this was going to be a strange film, because nothing like this had ever been done before. Now, I'm wishing there were more movies like this.
Never gets old...   2010-02-12
By Peter Hawthorn Binkley (VA USA)
I love this film. I teach high school French, and show this film at least once a year. I am spellbound every time I watch it. The music and choreography are brilliant and the story is thought-provoking. When you start the film, it looks like another sappy romance, but... Well, I don't want to spoil it for you. Watch this film!
Simply Beautiful   2009-12-30
By Amos Lassen (Little Rock, Arkansas)
"The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" ("Les Paprapluies de Cherbourg") Simply Beautiful Amos Lassen It was 1964 when I first saw "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" and it has always been on my list of favorite movies. It is a beauty of a movie with a wonderful score and beautiful color--it is a feast for the eyes and the ears. Michel LeGrande wrote the score which replaces the dialog and Jacques Demy ably directed this work of pleasure. The film stars Catherine Deneuve (when she was 20) and she plays an ingénue who falls in love with a mechanic. He is called to war in Algeria after she becomes pregnant and we are there with her while she must decide whether or not to wait for him. There is, as I said, no dialog. The entire film is sung and we are taken to a world filled with bright colors, joy and sadness. The script is direct and to the point. Some may find the singing silly but I found it delightful and although I cannot put my finger on what it is, there is something quite beautiful yet unrealistic. For one thing everyone is quite beautiful and the sets are wonderfully colorful. The world is turned on its head--poor people wear beautiful colored and expensive clothes, the clothes match the sets. The plot is quite ordinary but it is straightforward and not complicated. The real charm of the film is in the way the story is told. This has to be one of the most romantic films ever made with fascinating color and exquisite music.
un' etoile   2009-12-19
By E. M Oreta (quezon city, m.m. Philippines)
A gem. In a scaen, there is a song that starts, "Quelle beaute.." and it is. Michel Legrand's and Jacques Demy's first collaboration is a visual dream. Such beautiful people, Catherine Deneuve and Anne Vernon. They seem to eat ponly carrots and lettuce and although financially hard-up, dress in such beautifully expensive clothes. The story line has been described to death, so let me just describe the physical beauty of the characters, the sets and the songs. If everyone looked and dressed like them (I guess though that everyone will have to eat like them,) la vida es un sueno. Catherine Deneuve, like a flower, is blossoming into the beauty that she is. Anne Vernon,a mother is as chic and graceful as no mother can be. Marc Michel and Nino Castelnuovo are dreams. There is no Cantinflas in this movie. There are musical scenes of particular beauty where you feel the music, the singing and the characters as they act it out, to be so good, that it touches you in the deepest part of your mind and emotions. The scene in the jewelry shop, which starts with "What beautiful things..." as jewels in a box are shown and in comes the most beautiful jewels, Catherine and Anne. The poignant scene of departure which has become a hit song, translated as "If it takes forever, I will wait for you." And a softly shimmering song where the jeweler sings of a prior love named Lola, "Autrefois..." The movie is a beautiful gem that will fascinate and satisfy you in all its color,music and the physical beauty of the characters. I only wish I was in that movie and looked like any of them. Unfortunately, I am real life, but then, that's why we go to movies.
I will wait for you...   2009-11-21
By Muzzlehatch (the walls of Gormenghast)
A quick bit of personal history: I first saw this in May 1996 theatrically, in a newly-restored print. It was about a month after breaking up a 6-year relationship which I didn't want to end, though I should have. She was probably the least-romantic person I've ever met - not that she didn't have "romantic" notions in the larger sense, nearly everyone does, but the romantic part of relationships she didn't get. Or her idea of romance was just so remote and unexplainable that I could never figure it out, and she could never have told me. Why it took us 6 years to know for sure that we weren't meant for each other, I'll never know. She probably hated this film. I, on the other hand, am as enraptured by it now as I was on that first viewing 13 years ago and the couple of times in between. From the first shot of the harbour of Cherbourg panning gracefully down to an overhead shot of candy-colored umbrellas in the rain, to the final mirroring shot of an equally artificial-looking Esso station in the snow five years later, it's pure sentimental, stylized magic. Some have mentioned that there isn't much in the way of character development in this admittedly very simple story of young lovers parted by war and ultimately finding new relationships and lives apart from each other - but I think they're missing the point. It's not supposed to be terribly real, or rather it is suffused throughout with a sense of heightened reality, exemplified most obviously in the entirely sung dialog and in the brightness of the color scheme, but also in the intensity of emotions that could, after all, be experienced by any of us. It doesn't matter that I don't really "know" Geneviève or Guy - they are any young lovers and what the film is about, it seems to me, is that bittersweet feeling we all have towards our first loves. At the end of the film, both are married and it is fairly clear that they have made the right choices - one thing I find fascinating is that the two leads are both rather weak and passive, and in both cases they end up with stronger, more aggressive and more competent partners. Had they ended up with each other, what kind of future would they have had? The music - well, you can't take the music out, or it does, in fact, show its thinnness. Here's a great quote from Jonathan Rosenbaum's long review regarding composer Michel Legrand's contribution to the film: "Though Legrand isn't credited as the film's cowriter, his collaboration with Demy, who wrote the lyrics, suggests that he may well deserve to be, for this is a film in which the score and the narrative are inseparable, shaped to the same architecture. Demy once noted that Umbrellas should be described as a film "in song" the way that some films are 'in color'." If one can't get past the notion that this is, in fact, a romantic fantasy amped up to the nth degree through color, through its plot absurdities (one night of passion resulting in Geneviève having to marry the diamond merchant, Guy's beloved godmother dying on the same day he learns of Geneviève's marriage and quits his job, etc) and most of all through the hyper-romantic music which runs the gamut from jazz to chanson, then there's not much I can say. You have to fall under the spell and take it as it is, not ask for what it doesn't provide - asking for more realism in the relationships seems to me to be missing the point. For me the only real flaw in the film at all is Deneuve - not at all bad, but at 21 she really is a little too old for the naivete of Geneviève; this though is a very minor point in a film that I can never grow tired of. I like Demy's next musical, THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT, possibly even more -- and I'd suggest all who love this to make that a priority. All who hated this of course should avoid it like the plague, unless they can find a way to put themselves under the spell that they somehow missed in watching this sublime confection...