Jacques Demy’s film carried by the music of Michel Legrand celebrates its 60th anniversary

The musical film starring Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo was released in theaters on February 19, 1964. Crowned with a Palme d’Or at Cannes, it has crossed the ages and borders.

Just 60 years ago, Umbrellas of Cherbourg flooded the cinema screens. Released on February 19, 1964, the musical drama directed by Jacques Demy (1931-1990) and sung entirely to the music of Michel Legrand, immediately found its audience. Crowned Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and crowned with the Louis Leduc prize, this film enjoyed immense critical and popular success, in France and around the world. “I was overjoyed because it means a lot in a filmmaker’s career,” confided Jacques Demy a few years later.

Considered avant-garde at the time, the film still moves spectators thanks to its old-fashioned charm and its universal story. “It’s a film where I would like to walk through the screen and stay the rest of my life and maybe the rest of my death in Umbrellas of Cherbourg“rejoices Xavier Leherpeur, film critic forObs And France Inter.

With Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Jacques Demy invents a new genre inspired by his childhood, at the crossroads between lyric tragedy and American musical comedies, including the famous Let’s sing in the rain. “His mother took him to see operettas at the Gralin theater in Nantes, and to American films at the cinema. He was influenced by this very lush and joyful cinema,” says Rosalie Varda-Demy, the daughter of Jacques Demy.

Flamboyant decorations and the condition of women

The scenario of Umbrellas of Cherbourg tells a love story thwarted by the Algerian war, all in songs. A first at the time and in France. Facing Nino Castelnuovo (spotted in Rocco and his brothers), Catherine Deneuve plays lightness, love, despair. “It’s a musical tragedy, it’s an enchanted film, it’s a film in scope as they say, a film in color”, said Jacques Demy at the time.

Despite an innovative staging, sets with saturated colors and elegant costumes, Jacques Demy does not confine himself to apparent lightness and addresses deep social issues. “It’s a very happy decor, it’s very funny. The women are dressed practically in the same pattern as the wallpaper. When you look closely, it says something about the woman who can’t extricate herself from her ‘domestic’ model, she blends in with the wallpaper because she is a housewife, whose function is defined by society and all that makes Jacques Demy bristle, all his cinema is extremely feminist”, analyzes Xavier Leherpeur.

The savior of “Umbrellas”

Before seeing the light of day on film, Umbrellas of Cherbourg yet struggled to find financiers. Described as a precursor, the project frightens producers, cooled by the failures of numerous American musicals in French theaters. Finally, a producer ended up accepting: Mag Bodard. “She fell in love with the film, because Michel Legrand and Jacques Demy both sang all the roles in the film in front of her and following this work session, she agreed to produce the film,” reveals Rosalie Varda-Demy.

Nobody believed it, nobody wanted it. Convincing someone is already very difficult. So, convincing someone of something that they are convinced they shouldn’t do is even more difficult. It took me a year and a half before I was able to produce “Les Parapluies de Cherbourg”!

Mag Bodard, producer of “Parapluies de Cherbourg”

The sequences are shot over eight weeks, in Cherbourg (Manche), in 1963. All the testimonies speak of a euphoric shoot, driven by collective enthusiasm. During its first year of theatrical operation, Umbrellas of Cherbourg bring together more than 1,300,000 spectators in France. The film underwent a complete digital restoration in 2013 thanks to donations from patrons and the collection of a kitty on the internet.