J Paul Johnson
Jacques Demy’s timeless musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is nothing if not exquisite. Its star-crossed lovers are played by the impossibly winsome Catherine Deneuve and the rakishly handsome Nino Castelnuovo. Michel Legrand’s music is lovingly lilting and memorable. Demy’s mise-en-scène and set design is so impeccable that even six and seven decades on it continues to inspire contemporary auteurs like Damien Chazelle (in La La Land) and Greta Gerwig (Barbie). Previously available on Blu-ray in an elaborate Demy boxset, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg now gets a standalone 4K UHD special edition release from The Criterion Collection featuring a new and improved restoration. It’s sheer cinematic splendor.
Deneuve—who is still active as a lead today, even in her eighties—was on the cusp of international stardom at the time, with roles in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour, and a second Demy musical, The Young Girls of Rochefort, following her breakout performance in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Hers was as heady a debut as any actress’s. She was, of course, astonishingly beautiful, a blunt fact many of her films skillfully exploited, but in her best roles her beauty betrays a resolute determination. Her characters might be fragile, but they are not weak.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is a lively, lovelorn tale of Deneuve’s young Genevieve, an umbrella-shop owner’s daughter who has fallen for a local and equally smitten garage mechanic, Guy, played by Nino Castelnuovo. Demy’s plot dispenses with court and skips to spark. The first act is literally aglow with their seemingly effervescent young love and concludes with their first precious night spent together. But when Guy is conscripted into service in Algeria, and Genevieve discovers herself pregnant, the two learn their love will need to wait until they can reunite. Two full years pass as Genevieve settles into single-motherhood, and both she and Guy become the object of others’ affection, threatening to pull them ever-farther apart.
All of these events, and those of the film’s final act, are told through song: Umbrellas is a recitative musical in which all lines are sung, none spoken, giving its otherwise-rote plot an operatic dimension. There is, unlike in most Hollywood musicals, no dancing, although the film is constantly kinetic, its characters and camera moving in graceful tandem. The music, composed by Michel Legrand, is lilting and lovely throughout, highlighted by the hit main theme “I Will Wait for You” (aka “Devant le garage”) and “Watch What Happens” (“Recit de Cassard”) both later given new English lyrics by Norman Gimbel and frequently covered. Both are now jazz-pop standards. Most of the actors’ performances, including Deneuve’s and Castelnuovo’s, were dubbed—none were trained singers, and Legrand’s compositions demanded technical competence.
Rarely has there been such a perfect cinematic marriage of sound and image. Legrand’s memorable compositions are matched by the film’s vivid use of color. Its rich hues form a varied and stunning visual landscape where every element of the set and wardrobe functions to demand attention and elicit emotion. There is a turn from the frothy, candied pastels of the opening act to the more mature saturations of the second and, finally, to the wintry-cool whites and blues of the conclusion that mirrors its characters as they develop through life’s stages and complications. On this particular 4K remaster of the film, those colors practically pop through the screen with excellent balance and tone.
That new 4K digital restoration, which debuted at Cannes in 2024, was undertaken by Ciné-Tamaris, Eclair Classics, and L.E. Diapason laboratories in Paris, under the supervision of Mathieu Demy and Rosalie Varda-Demy using the original 35mm negative scanned in immersion. The sound restoration based on a three-track stereophonic mix of music and vocals and presented here both in a 5.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack and an alternate uncompressed monaural soundtrack.
Few films have been as complex to restore and remaster as The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Demy originally used an Eastman negative stock that was known to fade, and so created three main color separation masters (for yellow, cyan, and magenta, respectively) on black-and-white negative stock to protect against fading. Fortunately, his having done so allows today for the film’s exacting color scheme to be restored in this 4K UHD transfer in accord with the design of Umbrellas‘ original release.
Special Features
As has generally been the case with Criterion’s 4K upgrades of extant catalog titles, the full spate of special features is ported over from the prior release without change—and without anything new to motivate Demy boxset holders to spring for the upgrade. Fortunately, those special features include an excellent hourlong documentary, an intelligent interview with an articulate film scholar, and several set pieces with the director and stars.
That Criterion also ports over a featurette dedicated to the restoration of the prior 2K version of the film (from the Demy boxset) strikes me as odd. Restoration is itself such a complex art, and I am always pleased to see content dedicated to its practice. But why would viewers want to see a program on a restoration from ten years ago Criterion has decided is in need of upgrade? Oh well. Otherwise, the features are as comprehensive and informative as can be imagined.
Once Upon a Time: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg: This 55-minute documentary from 2008 is a comprehensive and exacting contextualization of the film, featuring interviews with director Demy, stars Deneuve and Marc Michel, composer Legrand, and Demy’s wife, the equally renowned filmmaker Agnes Varda. Directed by Marie Genin and Serge July, the wide-ranging documentary (produced in both English and French, with forced English subtitles for the French speakers) addresses the film’s production, historical context, and technique in detail.
Rodney Hill: This 22-minute interview, conduced in English (with no available subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, as per Criterion’s outdated policy), features Hill, a film scholar, speaking to Demy’s and Umbrella’s complex relationship with the Nouvelle Vague. Demy was of the same age as Godard, Truffaut, and the Cahiers group critics-turned-filmmakers, and was like them an idiosyncratic visionary, yet his films scarcely resembled anything like The 400 Blows or Breathless. Hill’s is an excellent and thoughtful explication of the extant scholarship on the New Wave as it was first defined and later reconsidered.
Cinépanorama: This short (11-minute) French black-and-white television studio interview from 1964 features Jacques Demy and composer Michel Legrand, the latter seated at and playing the piano. The two discussing the film with an emphasis in particular on Legrand’s score and the film’s use of music more broadly.
Michel Legrand: The composer is interviewed in 1991 a the National Film Theater in London about his composing for film generally and Demy and Umbrellas in particular. This 26-minute interview is in audio only, accompanied by a still behind-the-scenes image of Legrand and Demy on set. (The interviewer is not identified.) Here’s where Criterion’s stated policy of not providing SDH for English-language subtitles grates. The archival audio is of at best modest quality, with noticeable background hiss and occasional audience noise. Legrand, speaking somewhat quietly and hesitantly in a second language, is at best audible. Why can’t Criterion provide a simple courtesy that would take perhaps an hour’s worth of coding for their customers whose hearing simply can’t process each and every word of an archival audio interview like this?
Catherine Deneuve: This interview too is conducted at the National Film Theater in London, albeit from a decade earlier (in 1983). It’s just 11 minutes and here, too, the interview is unidentified. Deneuve is a little easier to understand, but prone to some hushed and occasionally rushed comments. This interview, like Legrand’s, is of modest audio quality, presented with a single still image from the film, and without subtitles available. Deneuve is charming and fulsome with her reminiscences, but again, it’s a fumble from Criterion not to provide SDH.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg: Chronicle of a Restoration: This 11-minute program, in French with English, provides a detailed history of the film’s technical production and later restoration, one that involved considerable attention to preserving Demy’s complex color design. Several before-and-after scenes are provided as are ones of the technicians removing artifacts; equal attention is given to the sound restoration. It’s an excellent featurette, especially given the complexity of Umbrellas’ initial use of a fade-prone Eastmancolor stock. The odd thing is that the featurette does not speak at all to the new 2024 restoration Criterion is selling. It’s the same featurette included in the 2014 boxset and dedicated to a decade-old restoration project.
Also included is the film’s original trailer. The 4K restoration of the film is presented on one disc, whilte the second (Blu-ray) disc includes the special features. The Blu-ray features the 2024 restoration, albeit in lesser resolution. Criterion’s packaging, as per usual, ensconces the two discs in a clear jewel case which also includes a 12-page full-color foldout insert with the essay “A Finite Forever” by Jim Ridley (also included in the 2014 boxset) with lovely new illustrations by Michael Phillip Dunbabin.
One can’t quibble at all with Demy’s delightful film or the brilliant new 4K restoration provided here by Criterion. As for the special features, they are plentiful, and the dedicated documentary and Hill interview together provide a deep contextualization of the film. Failing to provide SDH for archival audio interviews or an update of any kind to the new 4K restoration makes this special edition just a little less special, but for any cinephile desirous of seeing this timeless, effervescent film in its very best picture quality yet, Criterion’s remastered and restored version of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is the one to own.
