The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

The majority of the principal actors' voices were dubbed.

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).[5] 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.

Since the cast were not trained singers, most of the actors' voices were dubbed and lipsynced:[6]

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.

Covers of "Watch What Happens" include ones by Tony Bennett,[7] Ed Ames,[8] and jazz pianist Oscar Peterson.[9]

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg was met with critical acclaim and is often regarded as one of the best musical films of all time.[10][11] On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 97% based on 69 reviews, with an average rating of 8.8/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "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."[12] On Metacritic, it holds a weighted score of 86 out 100, based on 9 reviews indicating "universal acclaim".[13]

In a review for Empire magazine, Kim Newman awarded the film 5/5 stars and praised the "depths of operatic emotion under the hum-along singspiel" delivered by the films leads.[14] Nigel Andrews, writing for the Financial Times awarded the film 4 stars out of 5 calling the film "a body of work slim but exquisitely styled".[15] Kevin Maher for The Times, in a review of a re-release of the film in 2019, also lauded the film, awarding it 5/5 stars.[16] Significant praise has also been directed to the entirely sung through nature of the film, with both James Berardinelli of reelviews and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times praising this aspect of the film in their reviews.[17]

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.[18]

Filmmaker Damien Chazelle listed it as one of his favorite films, and as a major influence on his 2016 musical La La Land.[19][20] Greta Gerwig cited the film as an inspiration for her 2023 fantasy comedy Barbie.[21]

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 Émery. 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 Émery, cabaret artist Meow Meow as the Maîtresse, and Andrew Durand as Guy.[28] 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.[28] It was due to run until October 2011, but closed on 21 May 2011.[29]

The West End cast:[30]

The film version released in 2004 on DVD by Koch-Lorber Films is a completely restored version of the original.[6]

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 separations 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, released in 2014.

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.[31]

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 the TCM Movie Database
• 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