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The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)

Madame Emery: Where were you?

Geneviève: With Guy.

Madame Emery: What were you doing?

Geneviève: Mother, he's leaving. He'll be away 

for two years. I can't live without him. I'll die.

Madame Emery: Stop crying. Look at me. 

People only die of love in movies.

Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, one of the greatest and most beautiful and bittersweet romances ever made and my favorite movie musical by leaps and bounds, has been released by Criterion on luscious candy-colored 4K blu-ray today! No movie deserves the 4K treatment more -- even though I re-watched it just a few months ago I can't wait to toss this disc in and behold it in this new four-kay luxuriousness. What a movie! (As an aside it's pouring rain right now here in NYC today and I've got my soaking wet umbrella laying beside my desk, bright red and popped open to dry, so I feel as if the movie is stepping off the screen and saying hello in the real world. What a movie.)

May Showers Meet Umbrellas at Criterion

One of the most beautiful and romantic and perfect movies ever made, Jacques Demy's musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, starring Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo as perhaps the most gorgeous couple ever put on-screen, is getting a 4K upgrade from the Criterion Collection in May! We knew this was coming because the restoration of the film played theaters earlier this year but it's still banner news! They have released this film in a box-set of Demy's movies before but I don't think any of us who love it will be able to resist upgrading it to 4K -- if ever a movie was made for 4K it's this one, with its color-scape that will make your eyes explode.

I watch this movie about every six months and never grow tired of it and I could just post pictures from it all day honestly, but Criterion has a busy May release calendar -- they're dropping six movies! Seven actually since one of these is a double-feature! So we should move on and get to the rest of the month. That double feature is Richard Lester's two Musketeers movies from 1973 and 1974, which star Michael York, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, Richard Chamberlain, Raquel Welch, Faye Dunaway, Geraldine and Chaplin among many others -- these movies are a lot of swashbuckling big-cast 70s fun. 

Next up a pair of classics I've been meaning to see for a very long time but still haven't yet -- Charles Burnett's 1978 Los Angeles poetic race drama Killer of Sheep and Abbas Kiarostami's The Wind Will Carry Us from 1999. Killer of Sheep always make the "best movies ever made" lists while the Kiarostami film is sometimes called his greatest achievment and given the competition for that title that's really something. Any lovers of these two out here? 

Then there's Bruce Robinson's two Richard E. Grant showcases Withnail & I and How To Get Ahead in Advertising -- these I know are both fantastic movies since I've seen them both! I'm especially infatuated with the latter, which I only saw a couple of years ago and was blown away by. It feels super ahead of its time and is very very very funny. And then finally the sixth release is a 4K upgrade of In the Heat of the Night, because if there's one thing we need 200% more of in 2025 it's slapping white racists across the face. Gimme!

I Will Wait For You, Nino Castelnuovo

I don't feel as if I can write a proper memorial to Italian actor Nino Castelnuovo because I've only seen a very small handful of his movies. But his most famed role -- that of "Guy" in Jacques Demy's 1964 masterpiece The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, one of my all-time favorites -- is so crucial to my love of the movies that I can hardly not give him a loving mention here on the site. Especially since he's got his own wee little Archives, which I heartily recommend clicking through. Other films I've seen him include Luchino Visconti's very brilliant Rocco and His Brothers, which put him opposite Alain Delon...

... for which every gay for all of time owes Luchino a debt of gratitude. And then the 1975 giallo with the fabulously perfect giallo title of Strip Nude For Your Killer, a film I covered pretty thoroughly right here, at least gratuity-wise. 

Not too long ago Arrow put out a great blu-ray of that film, by the way, and if you have any affection for giallo it's one you should check out. It's not particularly scary but it's got that vibe in spades, you know the one, that giallo one. And then later in life I guess he had a small role in The English Patient...

... which I never knew or noticed until it got mentioned in his obits, not even when I watched that movie just a couple of weeks ago. Shame on me, but the role's really not substantial and we are talking twenty years since the last time I'd seen him. And I think that's all of his that I have seen? But Umbrellas is an annual watch for me, sometimes even more often than that, and his Guy remains the swooniest lead in any movie musical according to me, hands down. 

I re-watched the film for the ten millionth time last night in his honor (you can see the Twitter thread here to go along with that) and that first chapter of the film, as he and Catherine Deneuve fall in love and then are forced to separate, makes me cry every time just from the perfect exquisite beauty of it -- seriously my boyfriend looked over and laughed at me because at only the twenty-minute-mark I already had tears rolling down my face. It's probably the most romantic sequence ever put on-screen. Anyway if you've got more recommendations from his filmography please share in the comments, and I'll give you a few more worthwhile photos of him after the jump...

Strip Nude For Your Forbidden Photos

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Glorious news for horror-loving New Yorkers who'll want to burrow inside something cool and groovy to escape the July heat -- the Quad Cinema is screening six restored giallo films from July 19th through 25th and they're some real doozies! A couple of which I have covered here at MNPP before, like just recently The Fifth Cord starring a spectacularly mustachioed Franco Nero...

... more than just a mustache ride though this film is truly gorgeous to gaze upon, having been lensed by Vittorio Storaro right in between The Conformist and Last Tango in Paris. This sucker will look absolutely smashing on a big screen. Another one they're showing is the delightfully loopy and odd The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion, which I posted about right here...

... it's got pleather costumes and sheer walls and scuba men and pills, so many pills. It's a ton of fun. And as if that wasn't already enough they're screening 1975's Strip Nude For Your Killer, which might be my favorite giallo title of them all, and which stars (and gratuitously exploits over and over) the gorgeous Nino Castelnuovo of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg fame...

... and yes he spends half the movie half-naked, as we previously well documented in this old post here. Look upon that gif above and tell me you don't need to see that on a big screen! If you're not in New York all three of those films have been released on blu-ray recently, which is what got me to post about them at the time; click their titles to pick up a copy. Really you ought to do that even if you do live in New York, they're all worth owning.

Those three aren't the only films they're screening though, there are three more (including a Fulci) that I've never seen,  and if you hit the jump I'll share the info on all six of the films...

I Will Wait For Tahar

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First and foremost let us all take a moment to sit back and appreciate that beautiful photograph of Tahar Rahim. I mean... really. Good work, sir. Okay? We good? Good. Okay, moving on -- Tahar is apparently in talks to star in Whiplash and La La Land and First Man director Damien Chazelle's upcoming Netflix series called The Eddy (thx Mac). Here's how Variety describes it:

"A Paris-set musical series written by Jack Thorne (“National Treasure”), “The Eddy” will revolve around a club, its owner, the house band, and the chaotic city that surrounds them. The series is expected to start shooting on location in Paris later this year."

I am excited to know that Tahar can apparently sing! That's news one can use! Anyway if you'd asked me about the prospect of a musical series from Chazelle a year or so ago in the wake of the white hot horror that was La La Land you'd have seen a hole the shape of me in the nearest wall, but it turned out that I really dug First Man a lot (even though I never reviewed it) so I'll keep my mind open. Or opener than I might have, anyway. Tahar helps. Tahar singing helps. The thought of Tahar singing in French like he's Nino Castelnuovo in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg helps a helluva whole lot. Oh, Tahar. Oh, Nino! Oh my...

Great Moments in Movie Shelves #86

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It seems impossible that I have never seen the 1975 giallo Nude per l'assassino aka Strip Nude For Your Killer because... well the fucking movie is called Strip Nude For Your Killer first and foremost. But even more important than that, if you can believe that there's anything better than a movie being called Strip Nude For Your Killer, is the fact that the seemingly extra sleazy affair stars Nino Castelnuovo, aka the gorgeous dude who starred opposite the gorgeous Catherine Deneuve in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. (See previous Nino right here.)

And he is naked in it a lot, not just there upside down against bookshelves (be still my loins) but all over the thing, with that super duper extra special layer of 70s giallo sleaze and sweat and semen poured over every single frame.

Good grief. The entire movie is up on YouTube (you can watch that below but it was also released on blu-ray a couple of years ago and I think I'm going to order a copy and watch it in better quality -- so should you!) and I had to work really very hard to stop myself from skimming through the entire thing lest I spoil its every surprise.

I mean even besides all the naked Nino (as if you can just set that to the side) just read the insane (insanely incredible) plot description from the film's IMDb page:

"When a fashion model dies during an abortion, a series of murders begins, starting with her doctor. The next victims are connected to the modeling agency where she worked, Albatross, run by a hard edged and jealous bi-sexual, Gisella, married to a Farouk-like dissolute. One suspect is Carlo, a playboy photographer who has a hot temper and refuses to share information with the police. He becomes the lover of Magda, another photographer at the agency, who's probably in danger. The murderer wears a black motorcycle outfit and helmet. Will anyone discover the murderer's identity before the entire agency dies?"

The 70s were the greatest time 

in all of recorded human history. 

Looks like Nino agrees! So anyway like I said I had to quit skimming it before I ruined the whole thing for myself but I did make a few gifs from what I did watch and you can see them (and the lo-fi YouTube copy of the entire film) after the jump...

Today's Mood

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Today would have been the 84th birthday of Jacques Demy, the director of one of my most favorite films, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg with Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo as gorgeous doomed lovers. In his honor we all must agree to sing everything we say for the rest of the day. DO IT.
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The Fellas of 70s Skin Flicks

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I hadn't really been paying much attention to the upcoming retrospective of 70s softcore skin-flicks by director Randy Metzger that's hitting the Film Society of Lincoln Center next week because when I think of 70s softcore skin-flicks (say that ten times fast) I think of naked ladies first and foremost and naked ladies - though certainly fine, perfectly fine, more than adequate even, in their way! - don't really grab hold of me. I'm sure you're flabbergasted by that statement. Thing is, what a wanker I am - when I was at FSLC the night before last for that John Waters & Isabelle Huppert event the preview for the Metzger event made it clear - there are plenty of dudes being exploited up in these movies too! As you can see up top - that shot, which I judiciously edited to make my point, is of Nino Castelnuovo in Camille 2000, one of the skin-flicks they're showing; you might recall Nino as the quite gorgeous leading man in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg? We're a big fan anyway. 

So once I had this realization I went looking at the other flick they're showing - the one called Score sounds and looks promising on the guy front, too. They describe it as basically a porny version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, if Richard Burton had paired off with George Segal while Liz scissored with Sandy Dennis in another room. Only with people you'd actually want to watch have sex instead.

Good Morning, World

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Don't ask me why Nino Castelnuovo popped into my head this morning - perhaps this week's rainy Spring weather put my subconscious on Umbrellas of Cherbourg alert?

(I so want to be Nino Castelnuovo in Umbrellas of Cherbourg.) Anyway whatever the case, there he be. That top shot is from some 1975 movie called Quella età maliziosa (That Malicious Age); you can watch the NSFW (because of female parts, not his, unfortunately) here. And to make up for the lack of NSFW Nino in that clip, see a lil' NSFW Nino after the jump.

Pretty, Pretty

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I'm not much of a fan of musicals - if I listed off the musicals I've never seen (Um, I've never seen a Gene Kelly movie) you'd probably scream blasphemy - but I'll be goddamned if The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I watched last night, isn't one of the prettiest movies ever made.

It did help that the leads, Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo, are practically cartoons they're so perfect.

Yeah, yeah, everbody knows Deneuve is gorgeous... but who is this Castelnuovo guy?

IMDb says he was in The English Patient? I guess, you know, that being 40 years later, he'd aged some, so I wouldn't easily realize who he was.

Anyway, the film's the important thing here; I'd be commiting a grave injustice to just ramble about the pretty man. Pretty, pretty man. Ahem. The film is gorgeous, from start to finish; there are moments that just make your eyes bug out with the beauty of the colors and compositions.

The film is sung from beginning to end, and by far my favorite parts were the most mundane bits of daily conversation - saying hello to the postman, being told to get out of the way - being given operatic weight by the musical accompaniment.

I do believe that Bjork mentioned this film when talking about her "It's Oh So Quiet" music video, and the influence is clear.

Even the story itself is slight and realistic - boy and girl fall in love, get seperated, marry others, regret the loss of their idealistic first loves but have grown older and now have responsibilities - but by its being sung it becomes huge, transcendent. The final scene does feel operatic, like full-blown tragedy, but what it is about, what's actually happening, is minute and sad, yes, but hardly the stuff of Wagner. Yet the film manages to acheive that sort of weight anyway, and you feel knocked out by it in the end.