The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964; 1965)

 

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les parapluies de Cherbourg) is a gorgeously shot film from France’s Jacques Demy, who wrote the screenplay and directed the film. It’s a sung-through musical, meaning no one speaks any dialogue; they sing everything. I’ve often found this approach to musicals – both film and stage – annoying at times, but not here. This is a charming love story about a failed romance between two exceptionally beautiful characters: a garage mechanic named Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) and a shopkeeper’s daughter named Genevieve (Catharine Deneuve in a career-making role). As is (too) often the case with young lovers in the movies, they want to marry but face opposition from their respective families. Genevieve’s mother (played with a flirtatious passion by Anne Vernon) and Guy’s aunt/godmother (played by Mireille Perrey) seem to want their charges to stick around and help them rather than live separate lives. It doesn’t matter, though, because Guy receives notice that he must complete his required military service, and at the time of the initial scenes of the film, Algeria is attempting to gain its independence from France. The plot is simple yet universal: Genevieve becomes pregnant after she and Guy make love, and then she doesn’t hear from him for long periods of time while he is away in Algeria. She misses Guy but is quite lonely. At the urging of her mother, she meets another man, the slick diamond merchant Roland Cassard, and begins contemplating marriage to someone other than her beloved Guy. The ending of the film is sad, not a typical Hollywood ending, but then many romances do actually end sadly rather than happily ever after. The cinematography is first-rate; this is a simply beautiful film to watch, and all of the pinks and blues on screen just dazzle the eye. Likewise, the musical score by the legendary Michel Legrand is touching and funny and perfect. It seems to rain a lot in Cherbourg, perhaps fitting the title of the film a bit too much, but that rain serves as a consistent reminder of the undercurrent of sadness that permeates the film’s narrative.

NOTE: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg was submitted by France for Oscar consideration for Best Foreign Language Film of 1964 and then released in U.S. theaters later. That’s why it was also nominated for several Oscars the following year. It happened rather frequently in the past that foreign language films would span a couple of years of Academy Award consideration.

Oscar Nomination (for 1964): Best Foreign Language Film

Oscar Nominations (for 1965): Best Story and Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, Best Original Song (“I Will Wait for You”), Best Score: Substantially Original, and Best Score of Music: Adaptation or Treatment

Zorba the Greek (1964)

Zorba the Greek, a nominee for Best Picture of 1964, primarily revolves around the charismatic performance of Anthony Quinn in the title role. Quinn, who had starred in so many Hollywood films over the years, truly shines as an unorthodox charmer who coaxes a repressed English writer (played by Alan Bates) into allowing him, essentially, to take over the writer's life. I know you're going to accuse me of being of a one-track mind when I say this, but Zorba the Greek is really focused on the attraction that Zorba and Bates's Basil have for each other. It's one of the most homoerotic of mainstream films of that era; it just never addresses its obvious homoeroticism.

Zorba and Basil meet while waiting for a ship to leave port. Basil is on his way to the island of Crete where his late father owned some property. He's thinking of starting up the mine on the land again, and Zorba begs Basil to let him go with him. As he puts it, "I like you. Take me with you." (Yeah, I don't know how I could read anything homoerotic into those lines, especially after Quinn's Zorba picks Basil out of a crowded room of passengers to strike up a conversation.) Zorba says he can cook for Basil and even claims to have some experience working as a miner. After the rain that has delayed the boat trip finally stops, the two endure a choppy ride to Crete together.

Almost immediately after their arrival, token love interests appear, both of them destined to end unhappily. Irene Papas, who sports one of the most striking visages in film, is a local widow whom all of the men of Crete seem to be lusting over. She, however, only has eyes for Basil, who (unsurprisingly, at least to me) seems to lack interest in starting a relationship with her. Zorba's love interest is Madame Hortense (played with gusto by Oscar winner Lila Kedrova), the proprietor of a rather shabby hotel where the two men initially stay when they get to the island. Of course, Zorba has first tried to get Basil to flirt with Madame Hortense but has to take over the "duties" himself when he realizes how inept Basil is at interactions with women. He won't even go to the widow's home to ask for the return of an umbrella he loans her, despite repeated prodding by Zorba.

Zorba and Basil reopen the mine, enlisting the help of several local men. Basil tries to help at first. However, he just isn't strong enough to do the physical labor. After all, he is a writer, a composer of poems and essays, not a laborer. The film is trying to make a rather obvious point about a life of experience versus a life of reading and writing, and I'm not sure that anyone who watches the film wouldn't know that you are supposed to follow Zorba's example and choose the life of experience. Zorba has so much more energy, so much more appreciation for life. Working in the mine is dangerous work, though, especially after the timbers holding up the ceiling collapse. That's when Zorba hits upon a scheme involving the trees in the forest belonging to a monastery and an elaborate, almost Rube Goldbergian contraption for transporting them down a hill. He takes some money to go purchase cables and other equipment for his idea, and when he gets to the town, he meets a young prostitute whom he tries to impress with champagne and flowers; it's almost as his pride is more important than his sexual prowess at this point. He stays in town a bit longer than expected to spend money on his new girlfriend, and even Basil begins to suspect that Zorba has betrayed him by taking their money and leaving for good.

While Zorba is gone, Basil does start a tentative relationship with the widow. They have one night together, but their relationship is doomed because one of the young men of the village, someone hopelessly in love with the widow, drowns himself. His body is carried through the village for everyone to see; naturally, they carry him right past the widow's home. At the young man's funeral, the villagers surround the widow and throw stones at her, and several men attempt to assault her. The young man's father cuts her throat, a horrific moment witnessed by Basil and Zorba. That is pretty severe punishment either for sleeping with a foreigner or having sex outside of wedlock or whatever "crime" the villages feel she has committed. Of course, the film needs to have fewer distractions from the relationship between Basil and Zorba anyway, so the widow's death conveniently leaves Basil without a love interest.

Zorba's relationship with Madame Hortense ends no better. She is rapidly declining in health, and she eventually pressures Zorba into marrying her. I'd imagine it's her death scene that won Kedrova the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, even though I think it could have been played with more subtlety. After she passes, the women and other townspeople ransack the hotel, taking everything of value with them. Madame Hortense's room is picked bare, with only her body left untouched on her deathbed and a bird in a cage beside her. She's even refused a proper burial because she is French, not Greek. Again, that's appalling behavior on the part of the villagers, and I don't really care how ethnocentric that sounds. Still, it frees Zorba to spend more time with Basil and carry out their plans to make a fortune with the reopened mine.

We first have to see, of course, if Zorba's contraption works. Each attempt is a failure, and the apparatus is quickly destroyed by the logs slamming into the framework. You can make of that what you will, all those phallic logs banging into what is obviously a symbolic vagina and knocking it over. After this defeat, Basil and Zorba are left alone on the beach, and Basil asks Zorba to teach him how to dance. The two men are side by side, arms clutching, having a great time. It's interesting how many of the moments involving dances in the film are men-only moments. Zorba admits to Basil, "I've never loved a man more than you," but by this point, we know that their relationship must also end now that Basil no longer has any financial prospects in Crete. It almost seems as if no bond can last in this film, regardless of the couple involved.

Quinn played so many different roles during his long film career. Although born in Mexico, he was often asked to play men of other ethnicities. He played Greek characters, Italians, Cubans, even Arabs. He won two Oscars for supporting roles in the 1950s, but he was never better than in Zorba the Greek. He was nominated for Best Actor of 1964 for the role, but he lost to Rex Harrison's Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. It's a tough call. When you watch Quinn's Zorba drink a little too much (or a lot too much) and dance with gusto to the hypnotic music by Mikis Theodorakis or when you hear that laugh, that inimitable laugh, you start to think he just might have been a better choice.

My Fair Lady (1964)

Despite having been made and distributed by Warner Bros., My Fair Lady always feels to me like one of those old MGM musicals. It won a ton of Oscars in 1964, including one for Best Picture. It's a lavish entertainment, with art direction and costume design at their best. The wonderful Lerner and Loewe music is familiar to almost everyone, and many of the performances are first rate. I've seen this film several times and I've always enjoyed it, but it has always struck me as odd that during a decade when big budget musicals were on the decline, the Academy kept giving awards for Best Picture to them. In fact, four musicals won during the 1960s, and another five were nominated.

I won't rehash old Hollywood lore about why Audrey Hepburn was cast over the woman who originated the part on the stage, Julie Andrews. I will only say that as much as I have always loved and admired Hepburn as an actress and for her humanitarian work, the role of Eliza Doolittle is not one that she is suited to play. At the beginning of the film, when she is meant to be a simple Cockney flower girl, you can't help but see the luminosity of Hepburn's presence shining through what is meant to be grime on her face. She can't help it, I suppose; she just wasn't truly meant to play someone as common as Eliza. The great transformation that allegedly occurs after Professor Higgins takes her into his care just doesn't seem all that great, frankly. Whether she's wearing a ragged coat and battered hat or one of those amazing Cecil Beaton gowns, she's still the same to me. The only real difference is the application of some soap and water.

A few years ago, on an episode of Will & Grace, Will made the assertion that My Fair Lady is really about two gay men who like to spend time together and dress Audrey Hepburn up in fabulous gowns. I can certainly understand where he's coming from after this viewing. Rex Harrison's Professor Higgins never seems to show the slightest interest in Eliza until the very end of the film. Instead, he's too busy talk-singing about why women can't be more like men. And his closest relationship is with Wilfrid Hyde-White's Colonel Pickering; they have a sort of mutual admiration society. I suppose I shall be accused of reading too much into this film, but the script itself calls for him to have a dramatic revelation ("I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face") that is surely one of the more roundabout ways of expressing one's love for a woman.

No matter. Whether you want to read this as a gay-coded love story between Higgins and Pickering or a heterosexual love story involving Eliza and the clueless Higgins, you'll probably spend much of your time singing or humming along to the musical score anyway.