Cirano di Bergerac (1923)

Tonight, the screening of the Franco-Italian historical film Cirano di Bergerac / Cyrano de Bergerac (1923) will be the opening event of Le Giornate del Cinema Muto or the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. We will follow the 44th Giornate during the whole festival. Director Augusto Genina based his film on Edmond Rostand's often-filmed play 'Cyrano de Bergerac'. Pierre Magnier starred as Cyrano de Bergerac, the gentleman with the unusually long nose, Linda Moglia played his beautiful but unreachable niece Roxane, and Angelo Ferrari played his friend and rival in love, Christian de Neuvillette. Will Cyrano ever find love? Enjoy the festival!


Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 226. Photo: UCI. Linda Moglia as Roxane and Angelo Ferrari as Christian de Neuvillette in Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923), based on Edmond Rostand's famous play 'Cyrano de Bergerac'.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Pierre Magnier as Cyrano de Bergerac in Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923). Caption: The witty remarks by Cyrano cause for hilarity among the populace present at the theatre.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Pierre Magnier as Cyrano de Bergerac in Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923). Caption: Before the duel.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Pierre Magnier as Cyrano de Bergerac in Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923). Caption: Jokingly, Cyrano ironises the presumptuous Gascogne noble, before duelling with him.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Pierre Magnier as Cyrano de Bergerac in Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923). Caption: A tale by Cyrano.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Pierre Magnier as Cyrano de Bergerac and Angelo Ferrari as Christian de Neuvillette in Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923). Caption: Cyrano addresses to Roxane his most ardent words of love by the lips of Christian, who, incapable of inventing such words, memorises them thanks to Cyrano.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Pierre Magnier as Cyrano de Bergerac in Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923). Caption: Hidden between the foliage in the garden, Cyrano suggests to Christian the magic, sublime words that the latter isn't capable of inventing and that, aside from Roxane's delicate inhibitions.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Linda Moglia as Roxane and Angelo Ferrari as Christian de Neuvillette in Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923). Caption: Christian joins the baluster, finally embracing Roxane. He bends towards her mouth to receive the kiss from her, who has bent because of the sweet words Cyrano lent him.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Linda Moglia as Roxane and Angelo Ferrari as Christian de Neuvillette in Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923). Caption: The nice phrases of Christian he learned from Cyrano, have conquered and seduced Roxane.

A brave and eloquent gentleman doted on an unusually long nose

Cirano di Bergerac / Cyrano de Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923) traces the classical story by Edmond Rostand about the strong, witty and eloquent gentleman, a poet, in 17th-century France. Cirano, a leader filled with plenty of charisma and bravado, has only one flaw: an unusually long nose. The play was inspired by a real person, Cyrano de Bergerac, Savinen (1619-1655), an author known for his swordsmanship and large nose, but the play is a fictionalisation of his life that follows the broad outlines of it.

Future film director Mario Camerini wrote the script for the silent film version. Cirano di Bergerac was shot in 1922. French stage and screen actor Pierre Magnier played Cirano di Bergerac (Cyrano de Bergerac). Magnier would act in over 100 films and was also known for La roue (Abel Gance, 1923) and La règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939).

Whoever challenges Cyrano for his nose will meet his sword. As Cyrano cannot have his beautiful niece Roxana (Roxanne) (Linda Moglia) because of his looks, he secretly helps young Christian de Neuvillette (Angelo Ferrari) to seduce her using Cyrano's poetic words. Christian and Roxane secretly marry before he goes to war, together with Cyrano. From the camp, Cyrano writes Roxane poetic letters in Christian's name, which increase her love for the young man, so much that she visits the camp and declares to Christian she would even love him if he were not beautiful anymore, hurting Christian's feelings.

Just as Cyrano is about to confess to Roxane his fraud, Christian is shot, and he dies in Roxane's arms, content that Roxane really loves him. Five years later, like always, Cyrano visits Roxane in the convent where she has retired. This day, his old enemies have mortally wounded him, but he covers the wound with his hat. When Cyrano is once more reciting Christian's last letter and can do so from the head, Roxane discovers Cyrano was the true author of all of Christian's poetry and understands. It is too late. Cyrano dies reciting his lines.

In 1923, the film won an award at the Turin festival. Afterwards, the whole film was stencil-coloured in Pathé-color. This took three years to complete, delaying the film's release until 1925. The colouring process involved cutting stencils for each frame of the film, one for each of up to four colours. This was done in Paris by Mme. Marie-Berthe Thuillier, the most famous stencil-colour artist. She projected each frame onto a ground glass screen and traced with a Pantograph. These stencils were then used to apply colours to black-and-white prints in a process similar to silk-screening. Each shot was processed separately, so different colour palettes could be used for each shot. In 1999, this colour version was fully restored by Film Preservation Associates for ARTE, in collaboration with Avid Shepard, and with post-production by Lobster. Kurt Kuenne composed new music, executed by the Olympia Chamber Orchestra led by Timothy Brock.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Publicity still for Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923) with Linda Moglia as Roxane and Angelo Ferrari as Christian de Neuvillette. Caption: Roxane and Christian de Neuvillette marry.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Publicity still for Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923) with Linda Moglia as Roxane and Pierre Magnier as Cyrano de Bergerac.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Publicity still for Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923) with Pierre Magnier as Cyrano de Bergerac. Caption: During the siege of Arras, Cyrano writes to Roxane on behalf of Christian the most ardent words an enamoured heart could have suggested.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Publicity still for Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923) with Pierre Magnier as Cyrano de Bergerac. Caption: Cyrano writes...


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Pierre Magnier as Cyrano de Bergerac in Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923), based on Edmond Rostand's play 'Cyrano de Bergerac'. Caption: Songs of a distant homeland.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Publicity still for Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923) with Linda Moglia as Roxane and Angelo Ferrari as Christian de Neuvillette. Caption: Defying danger, Roxane joins Christian at Arras, where he is camping with the soldiers.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Publicity still for Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923) with Linda Moglia as Roxane and Pierre Magnier as Cyrano de Bergerac.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Publicity still for Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923) with Linda Moglia as Roxane and Pierre Magnier as Cyrano de Bergerac. Caption: A few cronies of the Duke de Guiche have treacherously hit Cyrano. He still has the force to go to his beloved Roxane, and involuntarily, he reveals his heroic sacrifice.


Publicity still for Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2025. Credit: FPA Classics, Paris. Pierre Magnier in Cirano di Bergerac / Cyrano de Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923).

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb. For those who can't join the festival, a DVD of Cirano di Bergerac has been released by Absolute Medien, together with ARTE.

Pierre Magnier

Pierre Magnier (1869-1959) was a French stage and screen actor and director, known for such films as La roue (Abel Gance, 1923), and La règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939). He was the second actor to portray Cyrano de Bergerac in any film in Cirano di Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923). Magnier continued acting until the 1950s and appeared in over 100 films.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Pierre Magnier as Cyrano de Bergerac in Cirano di Bergerac/Cyrano de Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923). Caption: During the siege of Arras, Cyrano writes to Roxane on behalf of Christian the most ardent words an enamoured heart could have suggested.


French postcard in the Les Vedettes de l'Écran series by Editions Filma, no. 115.

Duelling with Sarah Bernhardt

Pierre Frédéric Magnier was born in 1869 in Paris in the Second French Empire (now France). He debuted as a stage actor in the 1890s at the Théâtre de l'Odéon, and afterwards at the Théâtre du Vaudeville.

In 1900, he debuted on-screen in Hamlet's Duel, a short dialogue between Hamlet and Laertes, with Sarah Bernhardt playing Hamlet. It was part of the Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre spectacle during the 1900 Paris World Fair. This was a series of filmed performances presented with sound via wax cylinder recordings, and dealing with famous French actors of the stage, opera, and operetta singers, Vaudeville performers, and dancers.

Pierre Magnier also acted with Sarah Bernhardt in the plays 'Théodora' (1902) and 'Théroigne de Méricourt' (1902) at Bernhardt's own theatre.

After performances at the Théâtre de la Renaissance and the Théâtre du Gymnase, Magnier worked with Bernhardt's rival Réjane, in 1906-1908. From the early 1910s, Magnier worked at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin, with occasional sidesteps to other theatres.

After his incidental 1900 short sound film, Pierre Magnier started a more substantial career as a film actor in 1909 at Pathé Frères, debuting in La Maison sans enfant (Georges Monca, 1909). He remained at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin until the late 1920s, and also did in 1924 a stage tour with Andrée Pascal and other actors of the Porte-Saint-Martin to French-speaking Canada.


French postcard. photo: Paul Boyer. Pierre Magnier as Andréas in Théodora (Victorien Sardou, 1884), performed in 1902 at the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt.


French postcard. Photo: Paul Boyer. Sarah Bernhardt and Pierre Magnier in Théodora (Victorien Sardou, 1884), performed in 1902 at the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt.

A spectacularly stencil-colored Cyrano de Bergerac

Apart from a few more incidental collaborations, Pierre Magnier's film career really took off in 1912. He then had the male lead in L'ambitieuse/The Ambitious (Camille de Morlhon, 1912) opposite Gabriel Signoret. It was the first of a whole string of films with de Morlhon, such as L'usurier/The Loan Shark (1913), La broyeuse de coeurs/A Thief of Hearts (1913), La Calomnie/Slander (1913), and La marchande de fleurs/The flower seller (1915). In these films, Léontine Massart often played the female lead. He also appeared with her in La reine Margot/Queen Margaret (Henri Desfontaines, 1914). Magnier was absent from the screen in 1916-1917, probably because of the war. In 1918, he returned to Pathé. There he made such films as L'ibis bleu/The blue Ibis (Camille de Morlhon, 1919) co-starring Paule Maxa. After a few films, he moved to Eclipse, where he made the film Le siège des trois K/The seat of the three Ks (Jacques de Baroncelli, 1919) with Suzanne Grandais.

In the early 1920s, Magnier continued to play male leads or the most important male antagonist in French films, of which he made several with the directors Gaston Roudès and Camille de Morlhon. Memorable was his supporting part as Jacques de Hersan in Abel Gance's film La roue/The Wheel (1922), starring Séverin-Mars, Ivy Close, and Gabriel de Gravone. The film used then-revolutionary lighting techniques, and rapid scene changes and cuts. The original version encompassed 32 reels, which ran for either seven and a half or nine hours (sources disagree). In 1924, Gance edited it down to two and a half hours for general distribution. Magnier had the male lead in the Franco-Italian co-production Cirano di Bergerac/Cyrano de Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923) with Linda Moglia as Roxanne, and Angelo Ferrari as Christian. The film was spectacularly stencil-colored from beginning to end, adding much to the grand period sets and costumes.

Wikipedia: "This involved cutting stencils for each frame of the film, one for each of up to four colors. This was done in Paris by Mme. Thullier, the most famous stencil-color artist, by projecting each frame onto a ground glass screen and traces with a Pantograph. These stencils were then used to apply colors to black-and-white prints in a process similar to silk-screening. Each shot was processed separately, so different colour palettes could be used for each shot." It took three years to complete this Pathé Stencil Color process, delaying the film's release until 1925. Then the critics praised the restrained performances by Magnier and the others. On IMDb today, several reviewers still praise the film and don't consider it outdated.

After a few more silent films, Magnier quit film acting and only returned in 1930, when the sound film had set in. From then on, he mainly focused on film acting, less on stage acting. By now, he had become the 'older man' in film plots, e.g. playing Metternich in Le congrès s'amuse/The Congress Has Fun (Jean Boyer, Erik Charell, 1931), the French version of the popular German musical film Der Kongress tanzt, in which Conrad Veidt performed this part. Magnier also shifted genre-wise, acting in many comedies, such as French musical comedy film Coups de roulis/Tossing Ship (Jean de La Cour, 1932) starring Max Dearly, and La Garnison amoureuse/The garrison in love (Max de Vaucorbeil, 1934) with Fernandel. More and more, his parts became smaller, sometimes even uncredited, even if he kept acting in many films.

In 1939, he played a general in La règle du jeu/The Rules of the Game by Jean Renoir, starring Nora Gregor and Marcel Dalio. Magnier has one of the film's more poignant quotes (and the film's final line) when he praises Marcel Dalio's character as one of "a vanishing breed." During the 1940s and early 1950s, Magnier kept acting in minor parts in films. His final film was the comedy Le Chasseur de chez Maxim's/The Porter from Maxim's (Henri Diamant-Berger, 1953) starring Yves Deniaud, Pierre Larquey, and Raymond Bussières. It is based on the 1923 play of the same name by Yves Mirande, which has been made into several film adaptations. Pierre Magnier died in Clichy-la-Garenne in 1959, at the high age of 90 years.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Pierre Magnier as Cyrano de Bergerac, Linda Moglia as Roxane, and Angelo Ferrari as Christian de Neuvillette in the Franco-Italian historical film Cirano di Bergerac/Cyrano de Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923), based on Edmond Rostand's famous play 'Cyrano de Bergerac'. The film was scripted by future film director Mario Camerini.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Pierre Magnier as Cyrano de Bergerac in Cirano di Bergerac/Cyrano de Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923). Caption: Hidden between the foliage in the garden, Cyrano suggests to Christian the magic, sublime words that the latter isn't capable of inventing and that, aside from Roxane's delicate inhibitions.


Italian postcard. Photo: UCI. Pierre Magnier as Cyrano de Bergerac, and Linda Moglia as Roxane in Cirano di Bergerac/Cyrano de Bergerac (Augusto Genina, 1923). Caption: A few cronies from the Duke de Guiche have treacherously hit Cyrano. He still has the force to go to his beloved Roxane, and involuntarily, he reveals his heroic sacrifice.

Sources: Wikipedia (French and English), and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 21 April 2025.