One of the nation's most expensive productions ever, it is fairly jostling with musket-armed extras and details of the 17th century, in which the story takes place. The moral may be uniquely French, but the story remains a universal treasure. And Cyrano in the end repents the error of his ways.
Time passes, Christian dies and Roxane, who has lived in a nunnery since his death, realizes that she has been mourning the wrong man these many years. The terrible tragedy comes when Cyrano realizes he might have won Roxane, who has fallen in love with the soul behind the alexandrines.
Cyrano stands below, a trembling gallant, as Christian climbs up to take the kiss he has wooed and won. Seeing a chance at least to express his love out loud, Cyrano agrees to pen all of Christian's love letters, even to speak for him during the balcony scene. Christian is as numb-tongued as he is comely - and inarticulate suitors are definitely not one of Roxane's turn-ons. Roxane, his cousin, comes to him one day to tell him of her love for the handsome Christian de Neuvillette (Vincent Perez), a new cadet in Cyrano's Gascony Guard. Yet another beast, he would complete himself with beauty, and so he adores the exquisite but immature Roxane (Anne Brochet). With his grotesque nose, he has taken refuge in his eloquence, hiding his ugliness behind his wit. He pins his opponents with his sword, but it is his words that wound. Rather ungainly in his plumed hat and musketeer's cape, Depardieu is still adept at lending pride and pain to this formal poesy. An aggressively active interpretation of the antique work, it demands as much sword- as wordplay.
But unlike poor Cyrano, Depardieu wears the nose, the nose does not wear him.įirst performed in Paris in 1897, Edmond Rostand's romantic tragicomedy has been spruced up by Rappeneau and Jean-Claude Carriere, who dismantled, analyzed and reconstructed each act while leaving Rostand's witty verse intact. Though he doesn't really need it, Depardieu is equipped with a prosthetic proboscis, a palpable trunk that inspires both shame and swagger in France's enduring hero. Gerard Depardieu brings his considerable girth and flamboyance to Jean-Paul Rappeneau's burly adaptation of "Cyrano de Bergerac," a swashbuckling burlesque of negative self-image, cowardice and compromise.
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