Customer Reviews

Cyrano De Bergerac [VHS]

5 star:		(78)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Note: French with optional English and Spanish subtitles.

This French language film adaptation of the classic 'Cyrano de Bergerac' released in '90 is without question the most enjoyable 138 minutes in front of the television screen I've experienced in quite some time. Everything about this production is absolute perfection; cinematography, settings, music, screenplay and of course acting.

Gerard Depardieu is an unstoppable force of nature as the eloquent but hot-headed Cyrano. He thunders and rages about one moment only to suddenly turn ethereal and wax poetic the next. The lovely Anne Brochet is a wonderful complement to the blustering Cyrano as his unattainable Roxane and Vincent Perez delivers a strong performance as the handsome but slow tongued Christian.

The dialogue is crisp, textured and witty, however if you're French impaired as I am you'll probably have trouble keeping up with the subtitles. But that's OK, you'll just catch the missing parts the next time you watch and you will definitely watch again and again.

I'd been waiting years for this to be released on DVD, it's a fabulous movie, my absolute favorite adaptation of the original play - however, MGM messed up.

This edition is a matted letterbox, which means that it's actually a 4:3 TV image with the full image reduced to fit on the screen of a traditional TV screen and has black mattes on the top and bottom.

However, it should have been presented in anamorphic widescreen - which gives the same presentation on a 4:3 TV but also fits a widescreen television set.

As it is, it will not display properly on a widescreen tv - the image is either stretched out (so that everyone and everything is flat) or is enlarged beyond the border of the tv screen - thus cutting off the subtitles! My wide television has 6 separate display formats but I cannot format a full image on my screen that is not warped or severely cropped. Extremely disappointing.

I'm hoping for a new true anamorphic widescreen edition to be released eventually, but at least I have the film for now.

I take Cyrano seriously. For me, Rostand's play, as known to me through Brian Hooker's translation and Jose Ferrer's performance, is a force that has never ceased to inspire, sustain and enrich my life since I first came across it in high school. I show no patience for translations or productions that fail (as I see it) to convey the poetry and grandeur of both the language and the characters. Having said that, I thought this French production of Cyrano was magnificent and will be seen as the definitive modern version for many years to come.

As opposed to the 1950 Jose Ferrer classic, whose sets were rather bare, and whose supporting cast was somewhat cartoonish (which still doesn't detract from Ferrer's tour de force), this production achieves both realism and romance in its beautifully lavish and detailed sets and costumes, not to mention its expertly chosen cast. At all times, you are made to feel as if you were really there, watching real people converse in 17th century France (although I realize that real people don't speak in rhyming couplets), but at other times, such as with the balcony scene, you are transported into a dream or a poem, which is right and proper for this play. I had doubts about Depardieu, but I was able to see him as Cyrano, at least physically. However, he struck me as somewhat too blustering and not as refined as I would expect the character to be (Ferrer was much cooler and nobler, in my view), but I suppose Depardieu knows more about French panache than I do. Unfortunately, the English subtitles employ the execrable Anthony Burgess translation, but that won't be too much of an annoyance to anyone who already has the lines of Hooker rolling around in their head. This is a great movie which should be treasured by any fan of Cyrano, although I would recommend that newcomers should see the Ferrer version first.

I loved this movie. It's poetic, tragic, romantic and full of wit. Gerard Depardieu's Cyrano was perfect. He wasn't acting, he WAS Cyrano. His love for Roxanne tugged at my heart. It was a noble thing for Cyrano to help Christian woo Roxanne with his beautiful poetry. That kind of giving is a rarity. For fourteen years he kept his secret, all in the name of his love for Roxanne. Even as he was dying, he still denied that it was he who wrote the letters, but Roxanne realized the truth as her eyes were opened to what had been right in front of them for years. I highly recommend this film, whether you speak French or not(Thank goodness for subtitles). It's a tear jerker. And it will make you laugh as well. Cyrano's wit is without rival, especially during the duel scene. The movie was well-acted and well-filmed. And the costumes were great. "Cyrano de Bergerac" is just superb all around.

Seventy-five years ago, when I was 12 years old, I saw Walter Hampden play Cyrano on a New York stage. Now Depardieu has given me the ultimate Cyrano. The supporting actors also deserve praise, and the entire production merits a place in the top ranks of French cinema. Of course, Rostand's play lacks credibility, but when it is done this well we suspend our disbelief. Even beyond the superb acting, excellent photography and elaborate crowd and battle scenes, this movie's perfection is in the details. The English subtitles are credited to Anthony Burgess of "Clockwork Orange" fame; at the very least they are based on the Burgess translation of the stage version, and offer an Anglophone audience a graceful equivalent of the form, meter and rhyme of Rostand's original French poetry. The background music is noteworthy, but a final touch of perfection could be missed by most viewers. As the credits roll at the end of the film, the background music mirrors the typical closing form of many 17th-century French ballets and operas, and we hear a French Chaconne.

Jean-Paul Rappeneau's wonderfully cinematic version of Cyrano De Bergerac is one of the genuine high water marks of modern French cinema. Rappeneau is a director who really understands movement, and his far from static approach revitalizes the piece and frees it from the tyranny of the wonderful words to give it wings, while Gerard Depardieu's magnificent Cyrano keeps the film's emotions beautifully grounded. For once the supporting characters aren't played as idiots: Christian is no fool, merely an inarticulate man increasingly aware that his is a false victory, and the Comte De Guiche is allowed more dignity than you'd expect from a part that's usually reduced to mere comedy villainy.

Almost everything about the film is perfect, from Rappeneau and Jean-Claude Carriere's superb screenplay to Jean-Claude Petit's restrained score, which subtly underlines the emotions rather than play up the pathos (a shame his action cues use a thinly-disguised version of Danny Elfman's Batman theme: someone obviously fell in love with the temp track). Wonderful stuff, even if Cyrano takes longer to shuffle off this mortal coil than Brando did in Mutiny on the Bounty.

Sadly, there's still not a particularly satisfying English-friendly DVD release for the film - MGM/UA's Region 1 disc is disapppointing while even Arrow's UK PAL release only has brief interviews with Rappeneau and Depardieu as extras. One for Criterion to get round to, surely?

This film is one of my favorites.

However, this DVD is not anamorphic. The picture quality is only marginally better than LD. This takes away much of my viewing pleasure.

I suggest that Amazon should change the format from widescreen to letterbox. I also suggest a new edition of this great film with better picture and sound quality.

I had been a Cyrano de Bergerac fan for over 20 years, visiting 11 different performaces of the play in that periode, before I first saw this movie, with Gerard Depardieu. Cyrano was an old friend already, and Rostands lines were all to familiar to expect any surprises.

But the film swept me of my feet, nevertheless. It was very much more intense then I had expected it to be. I won't waste any time in describing the plot. Others will do that for me. But be assured that Rostands lines are full of emotional insights and the depth of longing, and that there is considerable wit and intelligent bantering, as well as high paced action, and battlefields. It's a statue for individuallity-at-all-costs, a monument for love unspoken. It's a masterpiece in it's own right. But this movie enhances the centuries old poetic lines, bringing the experience even closer to the viewer, by adding details that are impossible to add on a stage. Depardieu is truelly magnificent as Cyrano. And the film music is a gem in it's own right.

When the movie ended, I couldn't leave, tears running over my face, blinding me. I would have given more stars, if that would have been possible.

The last word in "Cyrano de Bergerac" is "panache." It's a single-word summation of all that came before. Cyrano -- like Falstaff, Captain Ahab or Robin Hood -- is a literary character turned worldwide phenomenon. He is the big-nosed, swashbuckling poet who embodies "panache," and has captured the hearts and imaginations of audiences everywhere. The name "Cyrano" conjures more than a Pinnochio nose and a floppy, feathery hat. Cyrano is synonymous with valor and bold romanticism: a brilliant, outsized soul, and selfless in his unrequited love for the beautiful but unapproachable Roxane.

He is, in short, the great Romantic hero: individualistic, poetical, brave -- but also tragic, lonely, misunderstood. His "deformity" has made him bitterly self-conscious, sensitive to insult, but also a man set-apart, the envy and enemy of many. He battles a hundred men, throws away a year's pay in one grand gesture, and composes sonnets while matching swords with dim-witted aristocrats. Talk about panache.

Who else could play this character but Gerard Depardieu? With his hulking frame and pudgy potato face, Depardieu's looks are hardly of the marquee-idol variety. But what charisma! Whether playing Danton or Rodin or Cyrano or the Count of Monte Cristo, Depardieu invests his roles with passion, personality, and, yes, panache. Listening to him speak Rostand's lines is like hearing John Gielgud intone Shakespeare: an aesthetic experience unto itself.

Rostand, who clearly loved Shakespeare, did not possess Shakespeare's poetic or dramatic gifts (that said: who does or did?), but he had enough talent to transform the legendary Hercule-Savinien De Cyrano de Bergerac into an indelible icon of the stage and screen. For such a famous part, Depardieu comes as close to giving a definitive performance as possible, and we are the beneficiaries of his, Rostand's, and Cyrano's irrepressible panache.

Sumptuous and poetic, this is a fabulous telling of Edmond Rostand's blank verse play, adapted for the screen by director Jean-Paul Rappeneau, with English subtitles by Anthony Burgess that are superb; This is not only a great film to watch, but a great one to read.
Gerard Depardieu is perfect as Cyrano. One of the most versatile actors alive, here he gives a many-layered, robust performance, with lots of sword fights, lots of wit, and lots of heart.
A winner of numerous international awards, "Cyrano" was a lavish production by French filmmaking standards, and we get authentic looking costumes and sets depicting 17th century Paris (the theater, with its chandeliers full of candles, is an amazing re-creation), cinematography that is a visual delight by Pierre Lhomme, and a lovely score by Jean-Claude Petit.

Roxane, played by the stunning Anne Brochet, is in love with Christian's form and Cyrano's soul, so typical of women throughout the ages, ever yearning for "the perfect man", both sensitive poet, as well as impetuous lover; she goads Christian into speaking and writing his love for her, and does not realize it is Cyrano who is responding. Vincent Perez is excellent as Christian...this part was what put him on the cinematic map, which he cemented two years later as the romantic lead in the extraordinary "Indochine", another film that should not be missed.
This is a film that has many marvelous aspects, but two that tower over everything, the language, and Depardieu. Total running time is 2 hours and 17 minutes.