Cyrano de Bergerac

I love silent films, yet am shocked that I hadn't heard about this film long before--since it is one of the very best silent films ever made. While the story of Cyrano itself didn't excite me all that much (having seen a few versions already), I am very glad that I took the trouble to see this wonderful film.

Why is it so wonderful? Well, first, it's so beautiful. It's the only truly full-length film I have ever seen that was hand-colored from start to finish. This means that assembly lines of people actually went to the trouble of hand painting each individual cell to give the film the appearance of a color film. Now in the silent era they did make a few 2 color-Technicolor films, but they really didn't have the same vivid look as this film--with "colors" really just being variations on red and green. They also made quite a few hand-colored shorts in the early part of the 20th century--but most of these were only about five minutes long--here we have a film that is almost two hours of surprisingly high quality painted images. That and the almost pristine print made for a truly luminous film--one that cannot be matched in the era. Secondly, the musical score accompanying this DVD release is one of the best I have heard--it's far better than the average score--with full orchestra and a score that fits the film.

As for the plot, it's about what you'd expect from a very good version of Cyrano and stacks up nicely compared to the Gérard Depardieu and José Ferrer versions. Interestingly, the lead in the 1925 version looks an awful lot like Ferrer.

The production is also quite grand--with expensive sets, large battle scenes and lots of wonderful period costumes. This was obviously a labor of love and actually took three years to bring to the screen (mostly due to the hand-coloring but also due to the terrific production values). See this film and see just how good a great silent can stack up against any film--including the excellent sound versions.

A curio? a museum piece? One despairs sometimes at the persistence of this ridiculous "anti-silent" prejudice. This is a fine film and easily stands comparison with other filmed versions of Rostand's play. It is one of the very few full-length features to be made entirely by the hand-coloured process (the 1912 Das Mirakel/The Miracle being in fact the only other that comes to mind). The colours in the restored version are a little washed-out but Pathéchrome by this time is perfectly comparable with the two main "natural" colour systems in use (Kinemacolor and 2-strip Technicolor) with the advantage in a costume-drama of providing a more "painterly" quality. For comparison see Toll of the Sea 1922, The Black Pirate 1926 or The Viking 1928 (Technicolor). As far as I know no films entirely in Kinemacolor survive.

While Augusto Genina is not the greatest of directors, he was at his best capable of some very fine work (the superb Prix de Beauté in 1930 with Louise Brooks) and this, the brief period when he ran his own production company with his cousin Mario Camerini, is his most creative period. His later films, especially during the fascist period, are rather pedestrian.

The evocation of the Paris streets and of the theatre with which the films begins are particularly fine, better I think than in any other film-version I have seen. (I have not seen the 1946 French version - said to be "faithful but flat").

The duel scene that follows is evidently tricky to do justice to in a silent version because it relies so heavily on verbal wit, which has to be severely cut back. Nevertheless it is intelligently achieved using a mixture of title-cards and (most unusually) superimposed titles. The scene is much shorter than in later sound versions which use more of Rostand's text and is probably the weakest point of this film.

The revelation of Cyrano's love is achieved much more economically (and much more cinematically) than in other versions. There then follows the magnificent scene of the bakery/rotisserie which easily outstrips later versions The defence of the baker against his assailants is in some ways better realised in the 1950 film. Oddly for a French film and such a lavish production in other respects, this Genina version puts very little effort into the fight-scenes. However the crowd-scenes that follow are excellent.

The garrison scene, strongly visual, is particularly good in this version. The balcony scene equally good (for different reasons) in the 1923 and 1950 versions. In the marriage scene, where Cyrano has to hold off de Guiche and tells stories of fantastic inventions, this version dramatises those stories on screen in a kind of dream-sequence. This is a very fine idea, because the allusion (intended by Rostand) to Cyrano's (the real Cyrano) science fiction (a sort of earlier version of Münchhausen) is made here very graphic and clear, but also incorporates an entirely appropriate visual allusion (obviously not intended by Rostand) to the films of Georges Méliès (exactly oontemporaneous with the play although very probably quite unknown to Rostand). So this very clever scene actually works better in this film than in any other version but also rather better than in the play itself by profiting from an effect that only cinema can achieve.

The war scenes are much better in this film including a flute-playing scene that relies - as "silent" films often did - on sound accompaniment. Despite some good cinematography, the fake sets of the 1950 film cannot really compete.

In the final scene, Cyrano and his baker friend are genuinely old and impoverished (a rather nice insert shows the baker's new humble profession) while they seem little changed in the 1950 film. Magnier in fact contrives to make the older Cyrano resemble Don Quixote which is a very neat idea and shows again how much thought has gone into this film because it refers back to an exchange between Cyrano and De Guiche much earlier in the film.

The last line of the 1950 film is a disaster, as always when this translation is used, because of the inability to render the French play on words. Why on earth the French word panache (sufficiently comprehensible in English in both its senses) is not retained, I do not know.

The strength of the black-and-white 1950 film (a curio? a museum piece?) lies purely in the fine performance (but essentially a stage-performance) by José Ferrer. Cinematically and photographically it has none of the interest of the silent film. It suffers from the very obvious studio sets and also from the fact that it is not in French and that one has to make do with Hooker's pastiche seventeenth-century English semi-verse and occasional mistranslations. Despite Ferrer, it is often tediously over-talkative for a film and the support-cast, of much more importance in a talking version, is rather mediocre. The film is also rather humourless, which the play is not intended to be.

The 1950 films is the record of a fine (if somewhat single-toned) performance (Ferrer first plays Cyrano on Broadway in October 1946 in the same year as Ralph Richardson played the part in London - September 1946 - and his performance constantly puts one in mind of Richardson) but this film of 1923 is a film, making use of the particular virtues of the camera. Neither version shows Roxanne as the intelligent and sensitive woman she is supposed to be although the French actress looks rather more the part. The young man is hopeless in both films, far too goofy in the silent, far too nondescript in the talkie.

The 1990 film with Depardieu is very fine and more difficult to compare but it was nearly seventy years before the cinema produced a version that could match this silent film and, even then, there remain good things here that one does not find in any other version.

Though not as good the 1950 version due to an imperfect by the guy playing Cyrano, this movie needs to be seen to study its basque tones and exquisite look which captures 17th Century France perfectly. The love story is good and the look on Roxanne and Cyrano's face in the final scene is priceless. The make-up artist deserves a special acknowledgement for that alone. As, I said, watch to see an example of how the cinematogaphy, art design, costume design and make-up of a movie can help to elevate it.

twice this year i have been able to watch this magical film on television. I thank not being able to sleep for this, also i think that this film should be watched by anyone who is interested in cinema. the love story makes me feel all warm inside. the actor who plays cyrano is quite amazing. I particularly enjoy his wit and emotion and the story beyond the love story is magnificant. the photography is wonderful, hand coloring is amazing, it honestly makes me want to return to photography. the musical score is neat.. it sure beats all the crap at my blockbuster.

Although I am a dedicated watcher of old movies, including silents, I must confess some are more of a trial than a pleasure. But that is certainly not the case with this 1925 Italian produced silent film of Rostand's famous play. Sure, doing a silent version of a very talky play like CYRANO DE BERGERAC presents considerable problems for the director. Here, they are partly solved by very frequent, some might think incessant, title cards, presented simultaneously in Spanish and English. The bilingual presentation suggests that the single surviving copy which provided this restoration was probably an export print.

For the silent era, the acting here is rather restrained, suggesting that maybe the cast were stage trained people. Since I presume almost everyone knows the "Cyrano" story, I'll skip over any synopsis attempt, and comment upon what for me was the most intriguing aspect of the film. I refer to the colour process used. It was called the "Pathe Stencil Process", and I confess to an imperfect understanding of exactly how it was worked. It appears that individual frames were projected on ground glass slides, hand coloured by artists, and these plates then used to produce the individual "colour" frames in the final print. This was a painfully slow process. Witness that the film was started in 1922, and release prints were not available until 1925.

If you find the editing choppy at times, probably the blame lies on how exhibitors handled the single surviving print when it was in general release. In those days, it was not uncommon for an exhibitor to edit out portions of a film which he did not like, or perhaps to simply shorten the film. See, the shorter the film, the more audiences you could run by it. Anyway, this old film is worth a look. The hand colouring is used mostly on the costumes, sometimes on faces and backgrounds. The idea, perhaps, was to recreate the feeling of old paintings, not real life colour. Note that in the period 1922 to 1925, the 2-strip Technicolor process was under development, and might have been available to the producers for testing or use. In any case, they didn't use it, and we have something unique as a result.