The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is a unique, beautiful, fascinating and startling movie. It was directed by Jacques Demy and starred Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo. I just saw the new Criterion 4K disc and Criterion just does a terrific job on everything they touch.
It is such a good movie that “La La Land” uses it as a template for their movie.
With music by Michel Legrand, this movie is an opera, with no “speaking” parts. The actors sing their lines, in French, and we see the subtitles.
The story spends a seven-year period, beginning in France in 1957. A young couple plan their wedding, but before that happens, he is drafted into the French Service, tearing them apart. She is left pregnant.
I don’t want to give away what happens, but the ending is both satisfying and distressing. Happy and yet unhappy. I think. I change my mind each time I see it. And La La Land, coping Umbrellas, does the same the same with their ending.
Wonderful performances, imaginative scenery, great music and a compelling plot make this a movie worth seeing….over and over again.
4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, undertaken by Ciné-Tamaris and approved by Mathieu Demy, director Jacques Demy’s son, with 5.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- Alternate uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Once Upon a Time . . . “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” a 2008 documentary
- Interview with film scholar Rodney Hill
- French television interview from 1964 featuring Jacques Demy and composer Michel Legrand discussing the film
- Archival audio interviews with Legrand and actor Catherine Deneuve at the National Film Theatre in London
- Demonstration of the 2013 restoration
- Trailer
- PLUS: An essay by critic Jim Ridley
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