Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), a 20-year-old mechanic falls in love with Genevieve (Deneuve) and they begin a relationship. Young love is interrupted by the Algerian War as Guy is sent abroad to fight. Genevieve is pregnant and faces the choice between waiting for Guy to return from abroad or marrying a wealthy businessman who can make her financially secure.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a Musical in Three Parts
Part 1 The Departure
Geneviève works at an umbrella store owned by her mother, who insists she must marry for money rather than love. By taking up with Guy she is going behind against her mother’s wishes. They profess the usual declarations of undying love, but Guy gets drafted into the army to fight in Algeria and is away for two years.
Part 2 Absence
Focuses on Genevieve as she copes without Guy and deals with the attentions of Roland (Marc Michel playing the same character as he did in Demy’s 1961 movie Lola), a rich suitor who promises to look after her. Naturally her mother directs her away from Guy and towards the well-heeled Roland.
Part 3 The Return
Guy returns and finds Genevieve has married Roland. Initially distraught, Guy soon pulls himself together and makes a life for himself with a new lover. The two meet again in the movie’s epilogue, but there is no chance of a reunion. They have both grown up and gone their separate ways, as people tend to do in real life, although rarely at the movies and especially not in musicals.
Jacques Demy, Director of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Demy may have been as inspired by Hollywood genre movies as his Nouvelle Vague contemporaries Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, but his style of filmmaking was entirely his own. Demy’s films are fairytales, but set in a recognisable world and with an element of realism present in their portrayal of the human condition.
Demy had the buildings they used in Cherbourg painted in bright colours so they looked slightly unreal, like the vivid Technicolor used in 1950’s American cinema. Demy and his composer Michel Legrand did something else that was unusual by having the actors sing every line. Even the most ordinary dialogue, such as a Gas Station attendant enquiring what kind of petrol a customer wants, would be delivered in song.
While Demy apes the style of Hollywood musicals The Umbrellas of Cherbourg tells a much more complex story. Genevieve is an unmarried and pregnant teenager; an unlikely character for a musical. Guy and Genevieve’s romance is young love, they move on with their lives afterwards and though their meeting at the end of the film is poignant they have accepted their new lives. Hardly the sentiment espoused in Hollywood movies where love traditionally conquers all.
Jacques Demy and Catherine Deneuve
Demy and Deneuve worked together on three other movies. Deneuve is regarded as something of an ice queen but Demy knew how to thaw her out. As well as The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, they made The Young Girls of Rochefort (1966), with Deneuve starring alongside her older sister Francoise Dorleac; Donkey Skin (1970) and the bizarre comedy The Slightly Pregnant Man (1973) with Marcello Mastriano.
- The Umbrellas of Cherbourg aka Les Parapluies de Cherbourg
- Starring Catherine Deneuve
- Written by Jacques Demy
- Directed by Jacques Demy
- Running Time 91 mins
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