Word: cherbourg
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...this era of outrageous, genrebending, over-the-top films, it seems imposible that a mere "musical" first released in 1964 could shock our desensitized ninties selves. But the newly re-released "Umbrellas of Cherbourg," a sung-through, "faux technicolor" kitsch-binge, is downright obscene in its shameless, ecstatic campiness...
Totalitarian tackiness extends to every aspect of this lighter-than-air film. The plot is lovingly predictable. Sixteen year old Genvieve (Catherine Deneuve) is leered at by almost every male in the village of Cherbourg where she works in her mother's umbrella store. She falls for the earnestly handsome automechanic Guy(Nino Castelnuovo) who ruins everything by being drafted. Before leaving for Algeria, he somewhat deviously impregnates her, perhaps to be sure she'll 'wait for him'. But his plan backfires when the pregnant, helpless Genvieve is married off to the rich, wolf-like diomand dealer Roland Cassard (Marc...
...Several times the women are dressed in the same garish material as the walls before which they stand, so that their bodies appear to disappear and their heads and arms seem to bob like other-worldly banshees in midair. Visual indulgences like these are the delight of Demy, whose Cherbourg is a radioactive collection of tuqouise, yellow, red and lime-green. These colors radiate from the outsides and insides of the buildings and on the clothing of every man, woman, and child who passes on the street. Even the mechanics wear azure blue shirts under their coveralls. The effect...
Splashed color is not the only cinematic self-indulgence on the part of Demy. He also treats the audience to a variety of trick shots which to the contemporary eye seem comical in their overtness. As the lovers stroll through Cherbourg singing their famous duet, it is obvious from their utterly still arms and legs and their perfectly even gliding motion that they are not walking at all but being towed on a dolly, though the shot shows only their upper halves. An attempt to innovate on the diaolgue scene has one of the actors singing directly into the camera...
...hard to know with how much irony "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" was originally meant. At times, the film does have a sort of post-modern self-consciousness, such as when a merry mechanic sings that he can't stand singing and that he much prefers movies without singing, or in the final shot of the gas station marquis, which reads not "Cherbourg" but "Cherbourgeosie". Luckilly, theoretical issues like these cannot weigh down this proudly frothy film. Demy's Cherbourg was nearly lost to this world when the original negatives were damaged and the prints all faded to unintelligablity--his widow...