The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

When this movie began, I was madly in love with it. I loved the colors and the cinematography and the opening titles and everything about the first sequence. And then we meet the characters, and we are charmed by their voices and how adorable the movie is, and the entire film keeps you invested. I was really into it until the last 20 minutes when the charm sort of wore itself off after a while. And that is NOT saying that the ending is bad, it isn't; it's just that this film might be a little longer than it needs to be. But the beautiful colors and glamor of the actors make this movie enjoyable, and the music is very nice to listen to. It sort of is like a modern day (well, 1960s) opera. No words are spoken; they are just sung. And it works, and the characters are interesting and the scenario is interesting. It's just that as it god near the end, I was looking at my watch a little more and more. It is worth checking out, and it is adorable, and it is a piece of film history. It's a wonderful experience that I think I could enjoy once, but not again after that.

A young girl separated from her lover by war faces a life altering decision.This is the film that Jacques Demy will always be known for (his other films say "from the director of" this one on the cover). While not necessarily the best (that could be debated with "Donkey Skin"), this really exhibits Demy's sense of color and broad range of music that he had not really been able to express before and would go on to be known for.Catherine Deneuve as Geneviève Emery is the film's highlight, although Danielle Licari provided the signing (and with an all-singing musical, that makes Licari every bit as big a star as Deneuve). This film certainly helped launch Licari's career, as she did not release her first album until the following year with "La Geographie en Chansons".

I first happened on this exquisite jewel of a movie several years ago after my teenage son told me he'd watched an unusually poignant episode of Futurama featuring a song called "I Will Wait For You". Intrigued, i did some research and found that it was written by Michel Legrand and Jacques Demy and was from a cult French musical movie called The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, in which every word of dialogue was sung. This i had to see, so I ordered it up on DVD. From the minute i first started watching it i was entranced, and i still am today. My son watched it with me, and so was he. This unique film is almost beyond criticism. I don't agree with the often levelled objection that the central theme is slight. The pain of young love, and the dawning realisation of how the world really works, these are things of universal importance. I love the way the movie raises so many questions that could have so many different answers. Did Genevieve ever really love Guy? Did she/will she ever really get over him? Did he/will he ever really get over her? I love the way it creates the drama using believable characters who in their own ways, despite the mistakes they make, are all actually rather likable. The use of colour and attention to detail are amazing, the music striking and memorable, and the English subtitles are terrific. A lot of films are let down by their subtitles, but these are literate, witty and often quite subtle. (At least they are in one of the two versions I've come across. The other, which from its reference to gasoline rather than petrol I assume to be American in origin, is considerably inferior.)For all those reasons i would already have considered it my favourite movie ever, even before i recently and belatedly bought on DVD Demy's earlier film Lola. Watching that movie has brought a whole new dimension to Umbrellas. It features one of the characters in Umbrellas, Roland Cassard, and his love for a dancer, which is recapped briefly in the later film. We learn how although Lola has a good heart and cares for Roland, she can't return his love because her heart belongs to another man, Michel, the father of her child, who left seven years before and has never come back. She has never quite given up hoping that he will, but tells Roland she plans to go away for a couple of months to think about things, implying that there may be a chance for them when they meet again. Roland meanwhile is himself about to go abroad on business, so will also have a chance to put his thoughts in order. The situation is further complicated by Roland's friendship, mirroring what happens in Umbrellas, with an attractive widow who is obviously interested in Roland and has a precocious teenage daughter (though this one is 14 rather than 16).Lola the movie ends with Roland about to leave for Johannesburg, unaware that Michel has just returned unexpectedly and Lola has committed her future to him. Roland has spent most of his life up till now in his home city of Nantes drifting through a series of unsuitable jobs, and in desperation has agreed to a decidedly dodgy assignment involving the smuggling of diamonds. When we next see him a few years later in Cherbourg, 200 miles from Nantes, he's a rich and successful businessman in the jewellery trade who's always away on mysterious business trips. So what is he doing in Cherbourg? Has it got anything to do with the fact that the widow's daughter Cecile went there when she ran away from home? Was he bitter when he found out about Lola and Michel and how did it alter his view of the world? Is his wealth based on the proceeds from smuggling, and if so is Genevieve at any time aware of this? Why can't Roland aspire to anything more than a marriage of convenience? What's the real significance of the parallel between the two widows and their daughters? Could Umbrellas possibly have a darker subtext than is commonly suspected? You could keep returning to these questions again and again over the course of a lifetime, and that, more than anything else, is why i like this movie so much.

When I read the title for this film in the book of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die I knew it was a foreign film, from France, but I had no idea it was a musical, so I was most intrigued to watch, from director Jacques Demy (Lola, The Young Girls of Rochefort). Basically seventeen year old Geneviève Emery (Catherine Deneuve) lives in an umbrella shop in Cherbourg with her widowed mother Madame Emery (Anne Vernon), and she is secretly in love with twenty year old auto mechanic Guy Foucher (Nino Castelnuovo), and the two of them want to get married. She reveals this to her mother however, and she objects thinking that her daughter is too young and that he is not mature and well-established enough, and he may be required to do military service, and shortly later he is sent to Algeria after being drafted to serve in the war, but before leaving he and Geneviève consummate their love. Following this Geneviève is pregnant, while he is away he hardly communicates and they have drifted apart, so she listens to her mother's strong encouragement to accept a marriage proposal from Roland Cassard (Marc Michel) (he previously appeared as the same character in the film Lola), the affluent gem dealer who is in love with her and promises to bring her child up as his own. Guy is discharged from service before his two year term is up due to being wounded, he returns home and finds out Geneviève is married with a child and has moved away, and following this he sinks into deep depression and anger, which he struggles to control. But Guy recovers from his state when he falls in love and married young Madeleine (Ellen Farner) who had been caring for his aunt Élise (Mireille Perrey), who is now deceased, and she left him an inheritance which he uses to fulfil his ambition to open a service station. Years pass, and Geneviève, who is now discernibly wealthy, has returned home with Françoise (Rosalie Varda), her and Guy's daughter, and have an accidental meeting at his service station, their short conversation is obviously filled with unuttered fondness and regret, and in the end they finally part ways. Also starring Jean Champion as Aubin and Harald Wolff as Monsieur Dubourg. Deneuve is beautiful and gives a great delicate performance as the young woman longing for love from one man until fate changes everything, Castelnuovo is interesting as the man who is in and out of her life, and Michel is likable as the wealthy man with good intentions. The story is relatively simple, complicated romance, but what makes this musically distinctive is that every scene has singing, from the most mundane conversations to emotionally charging moments every word is spoken and sun in tune, and the picture has good use of vivid colour and design as well, it is a fantastic musical. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Song for "I Will Wait for You", Best Original Music for Michel Legrand and Jacques Demy, Best Music Adaptation or Treatment for Michel Legrand, Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen for Demy and Best Foreign Language Film, and it was nominated the Golden Globe for Best Foreign-Language Foreign Film. Very good!