The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Also known as Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg
1964 film by Jacques Demy
Film · TMDB
7.4This simple romantic tragedy begins in 1957. Guy Foucher, a 20-year-old French auto mechanic, has fallen in love with 17-year-old Geneviève Emery, 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.
Released: 1964-02-1993 minDir: Jacques DemyDrama, RomanceBudget: $200,000Box office: $7.6M
Cast
- Catherine Deneuve as Geneviève Emery
- Nino Castelnuovo as Guy Foucher
- Anne Vernon as Madame Emery
- Mireille Perrey as Tante Élise
- Marc Michel as Roland Cassard
~14 min read
Article
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (French: Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) is a 1964 musical romantic drama film written and directed by Jacques Demy, with music by Michel Legrand. Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo star as two young lovers in the French city of Cherbourg, separated by circumstance. The film's dialogue is entirely sung as recitative, including casual conversation, and is sung-through like some operas and stage musicals. It has been seen as the second of an informal tetralogy of Demy films that share some of the same actors, characters, and overall atmosphere of romantic melancholy, coming after Lola (1961) and before The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) and Model Shop (1969). The French-language film was a co-production between France and West Germany.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg won the Palme d'Or at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival. In the United States, it was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 37th Academy Awards and four more at the 38th ceremony including Best Original Screenplay (Demy), Best Original Score (Demy and Legrand), and Best Original Song for the film's main theme, "I Will Wait for You". It was later adapted into an English-language stage musical.