Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve) is in love with car mechanic Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), but her mother (Anne Vernon) has other ideas. Her umbrella shop isn’t doing well; besides, there’s the war in Algeria… In Demy’s bittersweet classic Michel Legrand’s achingly lovely score, the vibrant colour-coding of Bernard Evein’s art direction, Jean Rabier’s elegant, fluid camerawork and the uniformly rhapsodic performances are brought together to turn an unusually sombre – even dark – storyline into an enchanting fairy tale that muses wisely, and very movingly, on the workings of chance and fate.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
Jacques Demy’s all-sung tale of first love is a ravishing mix of music, romance and fertile cinematic invention.
- 1964 France, Federal Republic of Germany
- Directed by
- Jacques Demy
- Produced by
- Mag Bodard
- Written by
- Jacques Demy
- Featuring
- Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon
Who voted for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Critics
- Nellie Alston
- UK
- Rasmus Brendstrup
- Denmark
- Donald Clarke
- Ireland
- Jonathan Coe
- UK
- Jenny Darling
- Australia
- Laura Dos Santos
- UK
- Louise Dumas
- France
- Hazem Fahmy
- Egypt
- Sonia Genaitay
- UK
- Eckhard Haschen
- Germany
- Jonas Holmberg
- Sweden
- Thierry Jousse
- France
- Laurent Jullier
- France
- Riina Mikkonen
- Finland
- Carlos Muguiro
- Spain
- Andrei Plakhov
- Russia
- Louis Séguin
- France
- Yael Shuv
- Israel
- Iain Robert Smith
- UK
- Margaret Smith
- Andrej Šprah
- Slovenia
- Anna Swanson
- Canada
- Scott Tobias
- USA
- Carlos Valladares
- USA
- Mary Wiles
- New Zealand
Directors
- Frank Beauvais
- France
- Mark Cousins
- UK
- Walter Hill
- USA
- Juho Kuosmanen
- Finland
- Koji Yamamura
- Japan
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Nino Castelnuovo: remembering the Umbrellas of Cherbourg star, 1936 to 2021
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