The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)

Jacques Demy’s all-sung tale of first love is a ravishing mix of music, romance and fertile cinematic invention.

Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve) is in love with car mechanic Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), but her mother (Anne Vernon) has other ideas. Her umbrella shop isn’t doing well; besides, there’s the war in Algeria… In Demy’s bittersweet classic Michel Legrand’s achingly lovely score, the vibrant colour-coding of Bernard Evein’s art direction, Jean Rabier’s elegant, fluid camerawork and the uniformly rhapsodic performances are brought together to turn an unusually sombre – even dark – storyline into an enchanting fairy tale that muses wisely, and very movingly, on the workings of chance and fate.

1964 France, Federal Republic of Germany
Directed by
Jacques Demy
Produced by
Mag Bodard
Written by
Jacques Demy
Featuring
Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon

Ranked in The Greatest Films of All Time poll

Sight and Sound

Who voted for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Critics

Nellie Alston
UK
Rasmus Brendstrup
Denmark
Donald Clarke
Ireland
Jonathan Coe
UK
Jenny Darling
Australia
Laura Dos Santos
UK
Louise Dumas
France
Hazem Fahmy
Egypt
Sonia Genaitay
UK
Eckhard Haschen
Germany
Jonas Holmberg
Sweden
Thierry Jousse
France
Laurent Jullier
France
Riina Mikkonen
Finland
Carlos Muguiro
Spain
Andrei Plakhov
Russia
Louis Séguin
France
Yael Shuv
Israel
Iain Robert Smith
UK
Margaret Smith
Andrej Šprah
Slovenia
Anna Swanson
Canada
Scott Tobias
USA
Carlos Valladares
USA
Mary Wiles
New Zealand

Directors

Frank Beauvais
France
Mark Cousins
UK
Walter Hill
USA
Juho Kuosmanen
Finland
Koji Yamamura
Japan

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