The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Umbrellas is the middle film in an informal "romantic trilogy" of Demy films that share some of the same actors, characters and overall look; it comes after Lola (1961) and before The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967).[3] The film was very successful in France, and was also shown internationally, introducing Deneuve to a larger audience. It was nominated for several Academy Awards, including for Best Foreign Film, Best Song, Best Soundtrack, and Best Original Screenplay. It won three awards at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival, including its top prize, the Palme d'Or. Jim Ridley has called Cherbourg "the most affecting of movie musicals, and perhaps the fullest expression of [Demy's] career-long fascination with the entwining of real life, chance, and the bewitching artifice of cinematic illusion."

The continuous music score and the brightly coloured photography had much to do with the popularity of this film. Formally the work is operatic, with the plot advanced entirely through dialogue sung with accompanying music. The colour photography is bright and vivid. The whole is united by an orchestral score of simple rhythms and tunes that are integrated with the story covering five years.

The actors' voices were dubbed for the songs in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg:[4]

The film score established composer Michel Legrand's reputation in Hollywood. He later scored other films, winning three Oscars. In North America, two of the film's songs became hits and were recorded by many artists: "I Will Wait for You" (the main theme, also known as “Devant le garage”) and "Watch What Happens" (originally "Recit de Cassard", "Cassard's Story"). Both were given new English lyrics by lyricist Norman Gimbel.

Tony Bennett's performance of the theme song was added to one version of the soundtrack CD. Harry James recorded a version of "Watch What Happens" on his 1977 album Comin' From A Good Place (Sheffield Lab LAB 6).

The film was well received by critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives it a score of 99% based on reviews from 67 critics with an average rating of 8.78/10, judging it "Certified fresh" with the site's consensus: "Jacques Demy elevates the basic drama of everyday life into a soaring opera full of bittersweet passion and playful charm, featuring a timeless performance from Catherine Deneuve."[5]

Some critics noted that the plot is similar to Marcel Pagnol's trilogy of plays entitled Marius, Fanny and César. The musical Fanny was based on Pagnol's trilogy.

A restored digital version of Umbrellas of Cherbourg was shown as part of the Cannes Classics section of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.[6]

Director Damien Chazelle listed it as one of his favorite films, and as a major influence on his 2016 musical La La Land.[7][8]

• Prix Louis-Delluc, 1963
• Palme d'Or at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival[9]
• Critics' prize for Best Film, by the French Syndicate of Film Critics, 1965
• Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 37th Academy Awards in 1965[10]
• Nominated for four more Academy Awards at the 38th Academy Awards held in 1966, three for Legrand and Demy: Best Song (for "I Will Wait For You"), Best Original Score, Best Scoring - Adaptation or Treatment, and Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen. It did not win any.[11]

In 1979, an English-language stage adaptation, with lyrics translated by Sheldon Harnick, premiered at the Public Theater in New York City.

In 2005 a major revision by Harnick was produced at the Two River Theatre Company in Red Bank, New Jersey. Musical director/conductor Nathan Hurwitz provided new orchestration. The cast included Max von Essen as Guy, Heather Spore as Genevieve, and Maureen Silliman as Madame Emery. Other cast members included Ken Krugman, Patti Perkins, Robyn Payne, Jonathan Kaplan, Steven Stein Grainger, Brett Rigby, and Sara Delaney. Direction was by artistic director Jonathan Fox and choreography was by Ginger Thatcher.

In 2011, the Kneehigh Theatre Company in London presented the musical, starring Joanna Riding as Madame Emery, cabaret artist Meow Meow as the Maîtresse, and Andrew Durand as Guy.[12] The production was directed by Emma Rice. It was given tryouts at Leicester's Curve Theatre from 11 to 26 February 2011 and began previews in the West End at the Gielgud Theatre from 5 March, officially opening on 22 March.[12] It was due to run until October 2011, but closed on 21 May 2011.[13]

The West End cast:[14]

The film version released in 2004 on DVD by Koch-Lorber Films is a completely restored version of the original.

The film was originally shot on Eastman negative stock, which had rapidly faded and thus had become almost unusable. The various copies of the film used in the cinema circuit gradually lost their quality. Umbrellas thus could not be seen with the rich colours which Demy had originally intended.

Knowing as he did that the Eastman stock would fade over time, Demy had made the three main yellow, cyan and magenta color separation masters on black-and-white negative films, which do not fade. These black-and-white prints had greater longevity.[lower-alpha 1]

In the 1990s, Demy's wife, film director Agnès Varda, headed a project to create a new colour-negative film from the three black and white separations. Restored full-color prints were made from this in 2004. The resulting film recaptured Demy's vision of a fantastically colourful Cherbourg.

Composer Michel Legrand assisted in restoring the original four-track stereo sound masters to digital. He remastered his score to produce a higher-quality version, now available on CD.

A digital version of the film was released on Blu-ray by Ciné Tamaris in 2013, on the 50th anniversary of its original release. This version was restored independently of the 2004 version with colour grading supervised by Demy's son Mathieu Demy.

The title of the film inspired a musical short subject, released in 1969 and titled Les Bicyclettes de Belsize, which essentially parodied it. Douglas Hickox directed the said short subject, and Les Reed and Barry Mason composed the music and wrote the lyrics to its title song, French and English versions of which charted in 1969 for Mireille Mathieu and Engelbert Humperdinck respectively.

• List of submissions to the 37th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of French submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

• The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at IMDb
• The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at AllMovie
• The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at Rotten Tomatoes
• Chicago Reader Review
• The Umbrellas of Cherbourg West End Musical
• The Umbrellas of Cherbourg: A Finite Forever an essay by Jim Ridley at the Criterion Collection