The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

A visually intoxicating "film in music," Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964) pays homage to the Hollywood musical while undercutting the genre's candy-coated sentiment. Focusing on daily rituals and a typical story of young love and thwarted dreams, within an ultra-romantic riot of color and nonstop music and singing, Demy lifts the film above its mundane context while staying true to its unvarnished view of class divisions and youthful fantasy. With all the dialogue sung to Michel Legrand's score, from gas station business to the declaration of devotion between Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo, and the polychromatic costumes coordinated to match production designer Bernard Evein's ornate wallpaper and newly-repainted Cherbourg locations, Demy creates the ultimate musical dream world. Yet that world is ruled by bourgeois prejudices that no adolescent romance can subvert, even on a snowy Christmas night. Winner of the Palme d'Or and Best Actress prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg became an international sensation, turning neophyte Deneuve into a star and garnering Oscar nominations for Demy's script, Legrand's score, and the transcendent ballad "I Will Wait for You." Badly faded by the 1970s, it was re-released and restored to its original brilliance in 1992, after years of effort by Demy, Deneuve, Legrand, and Demy's widow, Agnès Varda. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide