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

The Great Race (1965)

 

The Great Race is a sweet if disjointed homage to the kind of slapstick comedies that were common during the silent movie era. Overacting is the order of the day, and Jack Lemmon (in a dual role) outdoes everyone else on the screen when it comes to scenery chewing. Sadly, at a running time of 2 hours, 40 minutes, The Great Race drags a bit too much to be consistently funny. The overall plot is a simple one: two turn-of-the-last-century daredevils join a race from New York to Paris, driving westward across the United States and crossing to Europe via Alaska. The villainous Professor Fate (Lemmon) and his sidekick Max (Peter Falk, not quite as funny here as he was as Columbo) face off against the Great Leslie (Tony Curtis, rather stolid when compared to his former Some Like It Hot co-star) and his sidekick Hezekiah (Keenan Wynn). The race quickly becomes a face-off between the Great Leslie, always clad in white, and Professor Fate, dressed in black. It’s very easy to pick sides when everything, even the cars, is color-coded so obviously. Along for the ride is Natalie Wood’s Maggie DuBois (an odd amalgam of Tennessee Williams character names, isn’t it?), a reporter for the New York Sentinel and an advocate for women’s rights. By the way, there is an interesting subplot involving a group of suffragettes led by the wife of editor of the New York Sentinel newspaper (the wife is played by Vivian Vance of I Love Lucy fame), but the emphasis on women’s rights fizzles as the movie progresses. Even Wood’s “emancipated” character is inconsistently presented, being grossly objectified throughout the last third of the movie. She’s wearing just undergarments, sometimes wet ones, but the closest to objectification of the male characters is when Curtis goes shirtless during a duel. Sometimes you wonder if Hollywood was directly trying to undermine the feminist movement. If you present the suffragette movement but also put your “leading lady” on display as a sex object for a significant amount of screen time, have you really helped the cause of women? Speaking of Wood’s character, where would she have acquired such a large and fabulous wardrobe? The Edith Head gowns are, as always, stunning, and Maggie always has an outfit to fit the occasion, no matter how small her luggage is. The race itself is an odd one, taking the cars through such out-of-the-way places as Boracho and Grommet and Potsdorf. Apparently, you don’t pass through any major cities when you drive from New York to Paris. The Great Race spends quite a bit of time in Potsdorf, primarily because Professor Fate is a doppelganger for Crown Prince Friedrich (also played by Lemmon), who is having his coronation as king the next day. He’s a bit of a drunk and rather loose-limbed in his mannerisms, and he has several people who are trying to keep him from taking control of the throne of Carpania. There’s an attempt to swap out Professor Fate for the Crown Prince, but it’s all rather silly stuff with a lot of unnecessary moments such as the attempted torture of Hezekiah and a change in equipment in the middle of a duel. The Potsdorf subplot ends with a rather epic pie fight that lasts for four minutes and must have taken a long team to clean up after. The film tries to cram a lot of stuff into its long running time, so we have a saloon brawl that lasts about seven minutes and a sequence on an ice floe that goes on for almost six minutes. Throw in a wandering polar bear and a car that emits tons of black smoke and even a sing-along opportunity, and you’ve got a muddled series of moments that don’t necessarily contribute to the impact of the film overall. There’s even a little bit of homoeroticism in a couple of places. It certainly seems like the Crown Prince is enamored with the Great Leslie; he looks as if he’d like Curtis’s white-clad daredevil to “tuck him in” at bedtime, particularly since he feels the General isn’t very good at that task. And Falk’s Max seems at times similarly infatuated with his boss. He tries to kiss Professor Fate when the Great Leslie and Maggie are kissing at the end of the race in Paris. As with most of the details, the movie doesn’t do much with those moments. They pass by quickly, requiring more attention than most moviegoers would give them. That leaves some interesting characters and performances will small contributions. I’ve already mentioned Vance’s role as suffragette Hester Goodbody (again, is this helping the feminist cause?), but her husband is played by the reliable Arthur O’Connell. Dorothy Provine has a small but bright scene as saloon singer Lily Olay, and her performance of “He Shouldn’t-A, Hadn’t-A, Oughtn’t-A Swang on Me!” is a real showstopper. Even Denver Pyle shows up in a cameo as the Sheriff of Boracho. The Great Race throws a lot at you as a viewer. Some of it works, but ultimately, there might just be too much to make it coherent overall.

Oscar Win: Best Sound Effects

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Color Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Film Editing, and Best Original Song (“The Sweetheart Tree”)

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

Doctor Zhivago, a nominee for the Best Picture of 1965, is a typical David Lean film in many ways. It presents the best in cinematography and art direction and costume design; it must have cost a fortune to make, and it looks like it did. It has a huge cast of characters who fill large expanses of space. It's primarily a romantic story threaded throughout a historical narrative. In other words, it's a big movie. Lean tended to specialize in such films, and he was frequently successful at bringing them to the screen with a great deal of style. Doctor Zhivago certainly qualifies as an example of his talent as a filmmaker. I just wish it moved at a somewhat quicker pace and had a bit more heart at its core.

The title character of Doctor Zhivago is played by Omar Sharif. It must have taken guts to have an Egyptian play a Russian doctor, but we moviegoers have always been willing to accept Hollywood's strange casting rules (e.g., Rita Moreno in many of the early roles of her career). Zhivago is an intriguing man. He's a medical student who also writes poetry. He even gains a measure of fame before the Marxists assume control of Russia. People like the lyricism and beauty of his poetry. All of that will change, of course, when men like Lenin and Trotsky assume power. By then, Zhivago's poetry will seem too self-centered and sentimental, at least by those in power.

Zhivago marries his childhood sweetheart, Tonya (played by Geraldine Fitzgerald), but he has been intrigued by Lara (the angelic looking Julie Christie) from the first time he saw her. And he gets several opportunities to see her before they begin their relationship with each other. Much of the film is really about how torn his emotions are between the women. Tonya is the stable choice, certainly. He's known her all his life. She's a devoted mother, and she has tried to keep her parents safe and by her side during the Bolshevik Revolution and all of its changes to the day-to-day life of the Russian people. It's perhaps a somewhat traditional way of life that she represents that seems to bore Zhivago.

Lara, especially as portrayed by Christie, offers a far more alluring romantic partner. He keeps crossing paths with her, and he begins to see the various entanglements with men with which she is struggling. For example, Rod Steiger plays Victor Komarovsky, Lara's lover who refuses to leave her when she falls in love with a younger radical, Pasha (Tom Courtenay). So Lara shoots Victor at a Christmas Eve party in full view of the other guests. The doctor has to take care of Komarovsky, who claims to give Zhivago Lara as a "wedding present." She instead leaves with Pasha and becomes involved in the revolution.

There's actually quite a bit about the revolution itself in the film, and I suppose it's good that Lean and his team have attempted to place this love story within a historically accurate framework. Yet it does make the film drag on. At times, I thought the movie was going to last longer than the actual revolution did. We even get to see battles between the Communists and the Tsarists over control of various parts of the country, all of which tends to distract us from the romantic plot. It's tough to think about romance when you're witnessing the burning of entire towns.

Zhivago and Lara meet again and start to work together, she acting as his nurse. There are the usual separations that come with romantic films (although being commandeered to work for the Red Army is, no doubt, an unusual twist), but eventually, he and Tonya move close enough to where Lara lives that he can begins an affair, one which his wife seems to acknowledge. There's one scene of him in bed with Lara at her home followed by him in bed with Tonya in their cottage that is meant to demonstrate just how difficult and frustrating the situation is for Zhivago. We follow Sharif's character throughout all of these difficulties, getting quite a full picture of this man's life.

I could mention a point that has been discussed elsewhere: how Zhivago begins to favor the blonde, fair Lara over his darker-haired wife. In the midst of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, I suppose you could make something of that choice (and the difficulties that he faces in making that choice). Certainly, his obligations to his wife seem like such obstacles to his relationship with the lighter-haired Lara, and the film certainly makes the issue of his making the right choice between these women into one of its major themes. Yes, I'm fully aware that this film isn't about race, but it's a film about a revolution that was made and released while there was another revolution going on in the United States. There must have been some resonance there for people of the time.

I wish I could say that I loved this film. The performances are good--how could they not be with such a strong cast?--and it is a very beautiful film, like watching a series of lovely postcards from Russia. And I do admire Lean as a director so much. One of my favorite of his films is Passage to India, and I have repeatedly stated that Lawrence of Arabia is perhaps the best film ever made. Yet Doctor Zhivago leaves me somewhat cold. I don't know. Perhaps it's all of those scenes of snow and ice and frozen rivers to cross, but the passion in the film is always fleeting, temporary, delayed. Yes, I know great romantic films are often about separating the lovers and having them reunite. I just don't need the Bolshevik Revolution to do it; revolutions tend to take too long.

By the way, my mother has always loved the theme music to this film. When I was younger, I bought her a music box with what has come to be called "Lara's Theme." I was only a kid, really, but I saw how much my mother loved that music box and the song it played. It's quite a haunting piece of music.

Oscar Wins: Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction (Color), Cinematography (Color), Costume Design (Color), and Substantially Original Musical Score--you have to love the specificity with which the Academy created its categories back then

Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Courtenay), Film Editing, and Sound