Review of Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) by Filipeneto — 15 Dec 2019

One of the best French films of the late twentieth century.

This film is the story, largely dramatized and fictionalized, of the poet Hector Savinien of Cyrano de Bergerac. The film actually brings to the cinema an adaptation of a play based on the life of the adventurer and poet by Edmond Rostand. So while most of the characters we see have existed, it is not your life that we are seeing.

This is probably one of the most famous and classic swashbuckler movies in European cinema. Set in the mid-17th century, the film blends a passionate romance and the political context of France, which at that time was experiencing a real civil war at the expense of conflicts with the Huguenots and other European powers, such as Spain. The hero of the film is the irascible poet, buck, whose greatest feature is a prominent nose of which he himself is ashamed, though he shows no such thing. His desperate love for Roxane is so great that he considers himself unworthy of her, and decides to promote her relationship with another man whom he will protect during the military campaigns in which both will participate.

The film is fully supported by the mastery and talent of Gerard Depardieu, one of the great French actors of our times. He was brilliant in his role as Cyrano, and his dialogues, loaded with poetry, are the best European cinema has ever seen. It is worth seeing the film in the original language, and with a well done subtitle, to appreciate the quality of the speech of this character, and the way he speaks. At this point, the movie is very theatrical, but that's something that looked good on screen and turned out to be a good movie. The rest of the cast is limited to supporting the lead actor and doing what they need to do. Anne Brochet, however, is quite pretty and seems very suited to the role she played in this movie.

On a technical level, the film is equally well made. Jean-Paul Rappeneau was brilliant and guaranteed excellent direction as well as a good adaptation of the original play to the cinema. The scenery is magnificent, the costumes exquisite, everything is excellent and totally in keeping with the season and the context in which it goes, with a truly almost perfect historical rigor. Photography also helps a lot, with very appealing light and shadow games that make the movie visually beautiful. A word also for the elegance of the film logo, with that very red heart pierced by a rapier sword, and also for the beauty of the soundtrack, which is truly a pleasure to hear.