MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Jacques Demy's 1964 masterpiece is a pop-art opera, or, to borrow the director's own description, a film in song. This simple romantic tragedy begins in 1957. Guy Foucher (Nino Castelnuovo), a 20-year-old French auto mechanic, has fallen in love with 17-year-old Geneviève Emery (a luminous Catherine Deneuve), 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 (Marc Michel, reprising his role from Demy's masterful debut, Lola). A completely sung movie, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is closest in form to a cinematic opera. Composer Michel Legrand composed the score, modeling it around the patterns of everyday conversation. Umbrellas was re-released in 1997. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 (Vistavision)
• Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital Stereo
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Subtitle: English
• Features:
  • • Excerpt from Agnès Varda's "The World of Jacques Demy"

AWARDS

• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

•     Nominated Best Adapted Score - 1965 (Jacques Demy, Michel Legrand)
•     Nominated Best Original Score - 1965 (Michel Legrand)
•     Nominated Best Original Screenplay - 1965 (Jacques Demy)
•     Nominated Best Song - 1965 (Jacques Demy, Michel Legrand, Norman Gimbel)
•     Nominated Best Foreign Language Film - 1964 (Jacques Demy)

• Cannes Film Festival

•     Won Grand Prix - 1964

• French Film Critics Circle

•     Won Prix Louis-Delluc - 1963 (Jacques Demy)

• Hollywood Foreign Press Association

•     Nominated Best Foreign Film - Foreign Language - 1965

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Director:

  Jacques Demy

• Producer:

  Mag Bodard, Gilbert de Goldschmidt

• Screenwriter:

  Jacques Demy

• Cinematographer:

  Jean Rabier

• Composer (Music Score):

  Michel Legrand

• Musical Direction/Supervision:

  Michel Legrand

• Editor:

  Anne-Marie Cotret

• Art Director:

  Bernard Evein

• Costume Designer:

  Jacqueline Moreau

REVIEW:

• 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, Rovi