THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG) Cinema's Legacy

One of the most popular musicals of all time, THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG is a passionate expression of the emotionalism of the everyday. Taking its cue from opera, all of the dialogue is sung to Oscar®-winner Michel Legrand’s nearly wall-to-wall, lush orchestration, which shifts in tone from sophisticated jazz to sweeping romanticism. In archetypal, broad strokes, writer/director Jacques Demy tells the story of lovesick Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve in her first major role), who works at her mother’s umbrella shop in the port town of Cherbourg. The constantly moving camera invests each scene with energy boosted by the vivid colors of Bernard Evein’s production design, but Demy grounds the sentiment in a sober rendering of the quotidian tasks and concerns of a city at work. Photo-chemically restored in the 1990s by Demy’s wife, Agnès Varda, this new 2K digital restoration, partly crowd-funded, was supervised by Varda and her children, filmmakers Rosalie Varda-Demy and Mathieu Demy.