The Umbrellas of Cherbourg ( Les parapluies de Cherbourg )

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Blu-Ray) (*)

$34.99

Original Title: Les parapluies de Cherbourg
Screened, competed or awarded at:
Cannes Film Festival

Language Selections:
English ( Subtitles )
French ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )
French ( Dolby TrueHD )
French ( DTS 5.1 )
French ( Subtitles )

Product Origin/Format:
France ( Blu-Ray/Region B )

Running Time:
91 min

Aspect Ratio:
Widescreen (1.78:1)

Special Features:
Featurette
Interactive Menu
Trailer(s)
Remastered

Movie filmed in 1964 and produced in:
France ( France, Benelux )
Germany ( Germany, Central Europe )

Directed By:
Jacques Demy

Written By:
Jacques Demy

Actors:
Catherine Deneuve ..... Geneviève Emery
Nino Castelnuovo ..... Guy Foucher
Anne Vernon ..... Madame Emery
Marc Michel ..... Roland Cassard
Ellen Farner ..... Madeleine
Mireille Perrey ..... Tante Élise
Jean Champion ..... Aubin
Pierre Caden ..... Bernard
Jean-Pierre Dorat ..... Jean
Bernard Fradet ..... Gas Station Apprentice
Michel Benoist ..... Umbrella Buyer
Philippe Dumat ..... Garage Customer in 1957
Dorothée Blanck ..... Girl in Cafe
Jane Carat ..... Ginny
Harald Wolff ..... Monsieur Dubourg

Synopsis:

Jacques Demy's 1964 masterpiece is a pop-art opera, or, to borrow the director's own description, a film in song. This simple romantic tragedy begins in 1957. Guy Foucher (Nino Castelnuovo), a 20-year-old French auto mechanic, has fallen in love with 17-year-old Geneviève Emery (a luminous Catherine Deneuve), an employee in her widowed mother's chic but financially embattled umbrella shop. On the evening before Guy is to leave for a two-year tour of combat in Algeria, he and Geneviève make love. She becomes pregnant and must choose between waiting for Guy's return or accepting an offer of marriage from a wealthy diamond merchant (Marc Michel, reprising his role from Demy's masterful debut, Lola). A completely sung movie, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is closest in form to a cinematic opera. Composer Michel Legrand composed the score, modeling it around the patterns of everyday conversation.

Told in four acts, the lives of Geneviève Emery and Guy Foucher of Cherbourg France are presented. Act 1 begins in November 1957, when sixteen year old Geneviève, who works in her widowed mother's umbrella shop called 'Les parapluies de Cherbourg', and twenty year old Guy, who works as a mechanic at a gas station, are madly in love and want to get married. They are reluctant to tell anyone not only of their want to get married, but of their relationship. Geneviève believes her mother will think her too young, and would want her to marry someone with better prospects, especially considering her own tenuous financial situation. And Guy is more concerned now about not abandoning his ailing godmother, Aunt Élise, who raised him, and who he looks after along with a young woman named Madeleine. Act 2, told largely from Geneviève's perspective, begins in February 1958. Guy, drafted to fight for the French in Algeria, has been gone for two months, and is expected to be gone for two years. Geneviève rarely hears from Guy. In order to solve their many problems, Geneviève's mother wants her to marry Roland Cassard, a refined and well appointed diamond merchant who travels often for his work but who is devoted to Geneviève whenever he is in Cherbourg. Geneviève, who still loves Guy but who she is slowly losing in terms of him as a person in her mind, has to decide what to do about Roland, especially as it may become more difficult to accept his proposal as time progresses. Act 3, told largely from Guy's perspective, begins in March 1959 upon his military discharge and return to Cherbourg. Life circumstances, including what happened during the war, has changed Guy, and he has to figure out what the next phase of his life will look like because of his new perspective. Act 4 takes place on one snowy day in December 1963, when Geneviève and Guy are shown in their current lives, that based on what has happened in those previous three acts.

Geneviève, 17, lives with her widowed mother, who owns an umbrella shop in Cherbourg. She and Guy, a twenty-year-old auto mechanic, are secretly in love and want to marry, but when she reveals this to her mother, her mother objects on the grounds that Geneviève is too young and Guy is not mature or well-established enough, particularly since he has not yet done his required military service. Shortly after this, Guy is drafted to serve in the war in Algeria. Before he leaves, he and Geneviève consummate their love for each other, which results in her becoming pregnant. While Guy is away they drift apart, and Geneviève, strongly encouraged by her mother, accepts a marriage proposal from a well-to-do gem dealer named Roland Cassard, who has fallen in love with her at first sight and has promised to bring up her child as his own. (The character of Cassard is continued from Demy's earlier film Lola (1961).) Guy is wounded and is discharged before his two-year term is up, but when he returns to Cherbourg Geneviève has already married and moved away. He struggles with depression and anger, but eventually is healed by falling in love with and marrying Madeleine, a young woman who had been caring for his now-deceased aunt Élise. Using an inheritance from his aunt, Guy fulfills his ambition of opening a service station. Years later, the now conspicuously wealthy Geneviève, traveling with her daughter, Guy's child, accidentally meet Guy at his service station. While the two have only a brief conversation about the state of their respective lives, the conversation is clearly fraught with unspoken fondness and regret.

This product was added to our catalog on Monday 03 March, 2014.

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