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MovieMail's Review
Cyrano is on one hand hugely eloquent, bold and dashing, blessed with a quick wit and equally swift sword. On the other, he is bitter and proud to a fault. This duality stems from his enormous nose – a prodigious protuberance which is so large that it uglifies him to the point that no women could ever love him, or so he believes.
Still, Cyrano is an incurable romantic. The love of his life is his cousin – the spirited, intelligent and beautiful Roxane, with whom he cannot share his feelings due to the aforementioned nose. So he devises a scheme to express his love through Christian, a handsome guard Roxane takes a fancy to. By writing Christian’s letters and coaching his speeches, Cyrano lives out the seduction vicariously, resigning himself to love by proxy.
Such is Cyrano’s eloquence, Rappeneau and Carrière’s’s excellent adaptation of Emile Rostand’s classic novel often resembles a musical. Depardieu’s superbly structured rhyming tirades (normally aimed at enraging his opponent) are endlessly entertaining, and he plays the character with tremendous verve; all this plus a spirited plot and evocative reconstruction of 17th century Paris. A supremely enjoyable piece of work.
Interview with Depardieu and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere
Jean-Paul Rappeneau discusses the influence of the 1923 version.
Film Description
Rappeneau excels at action-packed, scenically beautiful costume dramas (The Scoundrel, Horseman on the Roof) and the by-now legendary Depardieu excels at portraying larger-than-life characters (Germinal, 1492, Danton). The combination of these two in a colourful, swashbuckling version of the classic poetic drama is a tour-de-force.
