CYRANO DE BERGERAC
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1991 Frank Maloney
The French-language film CYRANO DE BERGERAC stars France's most popular actor, Gerard Depardieu. It is a handsome, affecting version of this nineteenth century warhorse, a verse play by Edmund Rostand.
Americans mostly, I assume, know Cyrano through the interpretations of Jose Ferrer (also called CYRANO DE BERGERAC) and Steve Martin (ROXANNE). Martin's pastiche of the source material is a pretty good vehicle for him, but not necessarily for the story or for his Cyrano-esque character, but especially not for his Roxanne played most ineptly by Daryl Hannah. Jose Ferrer's 1950s film, on the other extreme, is extremely stagy in its concept and execution, which is to say it looks and sounds like a filmed stage play, and Ferrer's delivery is smooth, polished, Shakespearean, and fluid--a gentleman's Cyrano.
The best quality that Depardieu brings to Cyrano is his roughness, his lack of smoothness, polish, and Shakespearean (or Comedie Francaise) delivery. Depardieu reminds us that Cyrano, despite his aristocratic lineage is a Gascon, practically a foreigner in Seventeenth-Century Paris, impecunious, a poet, and a soldier. His Cyrano has more in common with the pit than with the precieux in the boxes or sitting on the stage itself. This Cyrano is a populist rogue, a thief and a roughneck, a very angry man who makes us understand why he is so ready to fight. In fact, Depardieu's impassioned, angry, noble, and principled Cyrano reminded me most of that wonderful poet and scalawag Francois Villon (whose best-known poem is probably the ballade in "Le Testament" with the refrain "Mais ou son les neiges d'antan" or "Where are the snows of yesterday").
CYRANO is filled with wonderful scenes of great detail, texture, and brilliance. The opening sequence takes us into a primitive theater and down into the pit, a place so abandoned to its own chaos that bears would blush to be seen there. It is there we first meet Cyrano, who causes a glorious uproar that results in a duel with a precieu, a kind of literary dandy of the day. During the duel, Cyrano promises to extemporize a ballade and to finish his opponent with the last couplet.
I have not seen a costume flick that so evoked the nitty-gritty of early modern life since THE THREE/FOUR MUSKETEERS movies of Richard Lester. This Paris not only glitters, it stinks. War is not only brave charges, it's slowly starving to death in siege, it's dying in a suicide charge ordered by a supercilious and vengeful officer. The production values and the research behind them alone recommend the movie.
I regret I am not sufficiently familiar with the French cinema to know any of the actors in CYRANO except for Depardieu. I can tell you Depardieu has not been better since LA RETOUR DE MARTIN GUERRE and that his performance totally redeems his reputation from an extremely objectionable and hateful movie he appeared in four or so years ago, which I think was released in this country as MENAGE A TROIS. I can praise the actor who played Roxanne, but I cannot tell you her name, alas. As is the often the case in the best French movies, this one is densely populated with wonderful character actors, all of whom are worthy of praise, but who will remain anonymous masters of their craft for this poster.
And now a word about the subtitles. They are a verse translation by the English writer Anthony Burgess (A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, ENDERBY, etc.). At first, when a rhymed couplet appeared on the bottom of the screen I was a little distracted. But I quickly acclimated and forgot about them. CYRANO is a wordy play and movie, scenes consist of wonderful speeches more than action. The subtitles are, in fact, admirably succinct and easily encompassed without losing sight of the screen area above them.
This CYRANO works hard at not being a filmed play. The result is sumptuous, detailed, and lively camera work.
Allow me to recommend this CYRANO as the best ever filmed.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
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