Welcome to Jacques Demy weekend! To celebrate the 4 year anniversary of starting this project, we’re going to cover two more French musicals with a director who loved the medium so intensely he struggled through filming these movies in a country that had no infrastructure to support them at the time. Demy is perfect for the genre, rejecting realism and instead showcasing the character’s heightened emotions by allowing them to sing. In an interview featured in The World of Jacques Demy he defends his predilection to song, “It’s just love that you send out in a certain manner, a way of communicating that I find more interesting if it’s sung. It can be more tender, lavish, violent, aggressive, gentle, whatever. That’s what interests me.” In this particular case, Jacques favorite form of communication dominates the the whole movie, with the story more akin to a tragic opera like Carmen instead of Carmen Jones. That’s right – we’re starting with Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), the more experimental and depressing of the pair of pictures. But at least everyone’s really pretty so we’ll at least have something beautiful to look at while our hearts are being ripped out of our chests.
I joke because Catherine Deneuve stars in this movie, and in every single interview she is ultimately asked how she copes with being the most gorgeous person on the planet, which elicits the awkward responses you would expect. I neglected to realize how massive a star Catherine is in her own country and abroad because Dancer in the Dark was designed to be an absolute mess, and 8 Femmes’ musical numbers were, let’s be honest, a little awkward. Umbrellas, however, is the film that launched her into the public consciousness, showcasing her true range from playful, adoring, and witty to sorrowful, distressed, and conflicted.
Aside from Catherine, the colors in this movie are also stunning, and have only improved in quality over time thanks to the efforts of several restoration teams to return it to those reflected on the original reels. Most articles focus on The Sims-like bright and gaudy wallpapers to showcase the use of color, but I’m going to put my T Lo hat on and discuss how the costumes help in telling the story of the film. It’s incredibly basic and I’m a pretty big idiot when it comes to these things, so don’t worry – we won’t go too deep.
Part 1: The Departure
Umbrellas of Cherbourg tells the love story between Geneviève Emery (Catherine Deneuve), a 17-year-old girl who works at her family owned flower shop, and Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), a 20-year-old car mechanic. They sneak around to avoid Geneviève’s mother (Anne Vernon) since they rightly assume Madame Emery would have objections since her daughter is too young to be in a serious relationship. This is only proven true after Guy guilts Geneviève into confessing since they want to get married, and Madame Emery rolls her eyes at the age gap and tells Geneviève once this dude leaves for his conscription she’s never going to hear from him again.
As if on cue, the next night Guy sorrowfully reveals he’s being shipped off to Algeria. Geneviève is rightfully devastated since two years in her young mind is basically forever. They commiserate over drinks before Guy sneaks Geneviève into his Aunt’s apartment so they can bone.
This scene made me queasy to watch because it hit a little too close to home – being in a relationship where one person loves intensely and the other’s passion dies the further in distance they are away from their partner. The desperation in Catherine’s face, the tone in her dubbed voice, the reiteration of her feelings as the train pulls away from the station leaving her alone on the platform does well in conveying how empty Geneviève feels in Guy’s absence. No matter how silly I think Geneviève is to mourn a man she has only dated for a short time, her pain transports me back to when my heart was young and honestly believed that loving someone was enough to overcome any circumstance. I can ignore the harsh reality of Geneviève’s mother’s perspective and just, for a moment, understand Geneviève’s pain and commiserate with her.
The song Catherine and Nino are lip syncing here, “Je ne pourrai jamais vivre sans toi”, translated as “I Will Wait For You”, is the most recognizable from the movie to English speakers as it’s been covered by artists like Frank Sinatra and Kenny Rogers. Connie Francis’ version was used in this devastating scene from Futurama and oh my god Futurama how fucking dare you. The lip syncing isn’t just a necessity of the filming process – every single vocal performance in this movie was done by a hired musician – Danielle Licari for Geneviève and José Bartel for Guy. Some of the vocalists used in Umbrellas like José, Christiane Legrand, Georges Blaness and Claudine Meunier were also hired for The Young Girls of Rochefort a few years later. The actors collaborated with the singers to ensure the phrasing and inflection of the lines would match what they envisioned their characters would do, which softens my usual why didn’t they just hire actors that can sing? gut reaction. Demy took advantage of everyone’s talents and the melding of the two produced a beautiful product.
“Je ne pourrai jamais vivre sans toi” is an outlier in terms of singular importance – the great majority of the songs aren’t the typical verse/chorus structure and operate more like dialogue than musical numbers, with utilitarian titles such as “Devant le Garage”, “Dans le Magasin de Parapluies”, and “Guy au Café” to describe the scene and not the emotion being presented.
The clothes, however, are much more reflective of Guy and Geneviève’s state of mind and allegiance with each other. Guy is seen exclusively in blue, with accents like brown when he leaves for his conscription as if he’s covered in mud leftover from the rain.
When Geneviève and Guy are in their honeymoon period his accent color is her main color, pink. Geneviève’s dress on their date is especially pointed since it is pinned to her body as a last minute alteration. Guy is physically pricked when touches her, further highlighting the illicit nature of their relationship.
When the young couple are faced with hardships, like when Geneviève fights with her mother over her relationship with Guy and after Guy reveals he is leaving, Geneviève begins to wear his color, blue. The blue scarf specifically she clutches as if she’s trying to absorb Guy into her body.
Part 2: The Absence
After Guy leaves, Geneviève discovers their tryst resulted in a pregnancy. When she reveals this new development to her mother, Madame Emery’s mostly concerned about how other people will react to Geneviève’s situation, specifically Roland Cassard (Marc Michel), an older, wealthy jewelry salesman that helped them with their tax issues in the past. Roland has his own tragic backstory per the Jacques Demy Cinematic Universe, as his character in Lola had an unrequited love with a cabaret dancer who ran away with another man, and Roland’s hoping to get over his heartbreak by marrying Geneviève. Madame Emery has constantly advocated for her daughter to marry Roland which is fairly hilarious since he appears to be in his 30s and she thought Guy was “too old” for her daughter.
Geneviève is pretty annoyed with her mother’s ham-fisted attempts to hook her up with a man her mother talks about so fondly you’d think she’d want to marry him herself. This is especially grating as Geneviève’s resolve starts to crack as she begins to doubt Guy’s commitment to her as his letters become scarce. While her outfits are bright pink with her love early on in his service when she discovers she’s pregnant, they eventually become paler and more muted as time marches on, transitioning to blue the further she is into her pregnancy and the fewer letters she receives from Guy.
Several months after Roland’s initial proposal to Geneviève, she finally reveals to Roland she is pregnant with Guy’s baby. Her inner turmoil about abandoning Guy is printed all over her bright, busy blue dress as Roland assures Geneviève he will raise the child as his own. Geneviève, with her frontal lobe not fully cooked yet, ultimately succumbs to her mother’s pressure and accepts Roland’s proposal, wearing a wedding dress with all the color sucked out of her. Geneviève doesn’t wear anything bright for the rest of the film.
Part 3: The Return
A year later Guy returns from the war only to discover from his dying aunt Elise (Mireille Perrey) and her caregiver Madeleine (Ellen Farner) that Geneviève married someone else without telling him and moved to Paris. He reacts as expected to his girlfriend who swore up and down she would wait for him unknowingly leaving him for another man by getting in a fight with his boss, quitting his job, getting drunk and sleeping with a sex worker who also happened to be named Geneviève.
Upon the death of his aunt, Madeleine decides to leave their apartment as she can’t bear to watch Guy flounder in his grief. Afraid of being alone he pleads with Madeleine to stay and reform him, and she stays because this is literally the only attention Guy has ever paid her before and she’s down bad for him. Guy gets his shit together, opens his own auto shop using the inheritance money from Elise and marries Madeleine after placating her concerns he’s not over Geneviève.
The truth of this statement is dubious since we jump forward several years later and in a final devastating blow to Madeleine, it is revealed Guy named their son François, the baby name Geneviève confessed on their date to Carmen and in letters after she discovered she was pregnant she would name her future child (and ultimately did). Although they’ve both moved on to other people, it appears they still share the same dream of being with each other, giving it life to continue to live on after they are gone.
Guy and Geneviève have one final encounter as Geneviève serendipitously stops at Guy’s auto shop for gas on her way through Cherbourg. She’s cosplaying her mother, wearing a brown fur coat and a black dress as Geneviève mourns the somewhat recent death of her. With Madame Emery gone, Geneviève no longer needs to live up to her expectations, which is perhaps why we can infer she wandered into the city on the chance she may see Guy. Unfortunately for Geneviève, Guy has seemingly moved on and is uninterested in learning about Geneviève’s new life or their child. She pulls away from the station as Guy’s family returns from seeing Santa Claus, his son wearing a raincoat that mimics Geneviève’s juvenile outfit at the beginning of the film. The rain that represented Guy and Geneviève’s love in the beginning is now frozen into snow.
This film does a terrific job at illustrating the fleeting nature of young love. While it may burn brightly at first it flickers out when presented with hardship. Both Guy and Geneviève settled for people who brought them stability instead of passion, and the argument could be made that this is a consequence of maturation instead of circumstance. If Guy had stayed would they have remained happy, or would Geneviève be miserable because of her mother’s constant disapproval of Guy? Or without the money she obtained by marrying Roland? Perhaps so, but being so young made her vulnerable to the influences around her and ultimately she chose the path that would provide her the most options moving forward, no matter how loveless it may be.
As someone with no expectations before watching Umbrellas, I was surprised and somewhat delighted it leaned heavily into the operas it was emulating. With the sea of movies on this list made by directors who are ashamed by the musical format and do whatever it takes to inject realism into a genre that thrives in the fantastical, Demy is a director who understands song (and dance, but I’m getting ahead of myself) is the best way to evoke emotions and tell a realistic love story. The audience can connect with the subject matter because of the songs. If this movie would have been straight dialogue I know I would have rolled my eyes as I’m a grumpy middle-aged lady who knows what a terrible idea it is to marry your high school sweetheart. But seeing Geneviève desperately sing, “Je t’aime, je t’aime, je t’aime…” as Guy’s train leaves kills me. I can’t listen to the theme of this movie without getting teared up. It’s incredibly easy to see why Umbrellas of Cherbourg remains relevant and continues to influence movies made today.