No story epitomizes romanticism better than the heroic comedy Cyrano de Bergerac. A perfect blend of romance and comedy, this quintessentially French masterpiece has given humanity three of its most eternal and archetypal characters: Cyrano, Roxane, and Christian. Cyrano, especially, lives in the imagination of all people who are romantics at heart.

Historical Background: The character Cyrano de Bergerac was based on a real life person, Hector Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655). He was a French soldier who fought valiantly in the Spanish War and later wrote stories about magnificent voyages to the moon and the sun. One of the lines in Cyrano’s death soliloquy may very well be a reference to these works by the real life Cyrano, “I must go up to the opaline moon.” His life was cast into immortality when the playwright Edmond Rostand wrote the play “Cyrano de Bergerac” in 1897. Although the play suffered from structural weaknesses, its central character so captured the imagination of audiences that he will likely continue to cast his spell for centuries to come. The play has been transposed into film at least six times, including a 1925 silent film version, a film version from 1950 featuring an Oscar winning performance by Jose Ferrer in the lead role, two made-for-television versions, the 1987 comedy Roxane starring Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah, and, the 1990 French version under review here. The 1990 film was directed by Jean-Paul Rappaneau, based on a screenplay by Rappeneau and Jean-Claude Carreire. They reconstructed each of the scenes from the Rostand play, but retained much of his witty verse. This version is the least theatrical and most cinematic of the six.

The Premise: Cyrano de Bergerac (Gerard Depardieu) is a nobleman and a member of the King’s Guard. He is the best swordsman around as well as a brilliant poet and wit. Deeply loyal to his friends, he wounds his enemies as readily with his words as with his sword. He is full of bluster and swagger in manly matters but, when it comes to women, he is plagued by deep-seated self-doubts. You see, Cyrano – dare I mention it – has an usually large nose. A magnificent proboscis! Cyrano masks his ugliness of countenance with his divine eloquence.

Cyrano is deeply in love with his distant cousin and childhood acquaintance, Magdeleine Robin (Anne Brochet), known simply as Roxane. She is lovely and radiant with youthful innocence. Due to his ridiculous appearance, Cyrano has never received a look of affection from a female in his life, and dares not speak of his love to Roxane for fear that she will laugh or be disgusted. He imagines her as Beauty and feels himself as the Beast.

Cyrano is thrilled with anticipation when Roxane’s maid informs him that her mistress wants to meet privately with Cyrano. Cyrano discovers the next day, when they meet, that she wants to discuss a matter of the heart – that she is secretly in love. Momentarily, Cyrano almost dares to hope, but it is about another whom Roxane speaks: Christian de Neuvillette (Vincent Perez). Christian is a young baron and a new cadet who will be joining Cyrano’s regiment that day. Roxane asks Cyrano, as her dear friend, to watch over Christian and to protect him from the torment usually meted out to regimental greenhorns. Roxane, like her cousin, is a romantic, in love with love and especially with its verbal expression. She assumes that any creature as lovely as Christian must also be eloquent and intelligent. She asks Cyrano to tell Christian to write her a letter.

Christian is a handsome young man indeed and able enough to express himself among his male peers, but is completely inarticulate with women in matters of love. While Cyrano lives in fear of rejection by women for his ugliness, Christian fears rejection for his inability to find words. Cyrano and Christian settle on a deal: Cyrano, the magnificent poet and romantic, will write the letters and Christian will deliver them. The combination of Cyrano’s words and Christian’s good looks proves so effective that Roxane is soon driven to swooning. Inevitably, however, Roxane wants to meet Christian face to face. When he is unable to deliver in person romantic sentiments of any eloquence, she disappointedly dismisses him. This leads to the most famous scene of the story – underneath Roxane’s balcony. Cyrano, hiding in the shadows, feeds romantic lines to Christian, who then speaks them aloud to Roxane on the balcony above. When the resultant romantic exchange proves too intermittent, Cyrano takes over the conversation directly, still from the shadows. Nevertheless, it is Christian who collects the kiss that is ultimately won by Cyrano’s eloquence! Roxane falls in love with Cyrano’s soul thinking that it is Christian’s.

Roxane and Christian are soon married but just as soon separated when Christian (and Cyrano) are sent off to fight in the war against Spain. Christian continues to send letters to Roxane from the front penned by Cyrano, including one final one when he is close to death from wounds. Roxane, in mourning, with Christian’s last letter forever next to her breast, retires to a nunnery where Cyrano remains her faithful friend and visitor for the next fourteen years. Cyrano is mortally wounded by hired assassins in a cowardly ambush but just manages to make it to the nunnery for his weekly meeting with Roxane. In a virtuoso death scene, Roxane learns at last that it was Cyrano’s soul with which she fell in love. Cyrano then meets death’s specter on his feet, sword drawn, utterly defiant to the end, with his characteristic aplomb.

Why is Cyrano one of our most cherished romantic heros? Cyrano’s splendor as a larger-than-life romantic hero is based on a concurrence of several marvelous qualities. First among them is his inner beauty that contrasts so starkly with his outward ugliness. Cyrano’s soul is beautiful even if his face isn’t. Cyrano courageously owns his ugliness: “Know that I glory in this nose of mine, for a great nose indicates a great man – genial, courteous, intellectual, virile, courageous – as I am.” Yet, behind that bluster, he knows all too well that the size of his nose has denied him female companionship throughout his life. When asked by a dear friend whom it is that he loves, Cyrano replies:

Whom I love? Just think a moment
I can never be loved even by the ugliest.
My nose precedes me by fifteen minutes.
Whom do I love? It should be clear.
I love the prettiest far and near.
The prettiest? The finest, the wittiest, the sweetest, the wisest.

He dares to love the fair Roxane, yet, he dares not tell her for fear of rejection:

Sometimes, bemused by the night,
I see far off in the silver light
A lady on the arm of her knight.
I dream of walking out in the silver glow
With a lady so.
I get carried away,
I pray.
I forget all,
Then see my shadow on the wall.

Most of us have experienced unrequited love at one time or another. We are made for it, in a way. I remember when I was a freshman in high school, discovering that about three-quarters of the guys in my class were all in love with the same girl – the most beautiful, sweetest, wittiest, practically-perfect girl in the class. Simple arithmetic dictated that among those 100-plus would-be suitors, all but at most one were destined to experience the pang of unrequited love. I imagine something in reverse operated for many of the girls as well. Cyrano, however, gives us comfort by having perfected the concept:

I knew not womanly sweetness.
My mother found me ugly. I had no sisters.
Later, I feared the mistress with mockery in her eye.

Even his mother could not love him! Cyrano, says, in his death scene, “Remember that night when Christian came to your balcony? That moment sums up my life. While I was below in the dark shadows, others climbed up to kiss the sweet rose.” That moment did indeed sum up Cyrano’s life. It is the scene of Cyrano’s life that we most remember. Yet, Cyrano is not precisely right when he says, “My life’s work has been to prompt others and be forgotten.” Cyrano will be remembered by all, for all time, because it was only the ugliness of his exterior that necessitated his settling for the prompting of others.

We also love Cyrano for his bravery. He is an enemy of cowardice and compromise. He confronts, in front of an assembled audience, the over-inflated actor who dared to catch the eye of his beloved Roxane, “Lug your guts away, salami, or stay and I’ll remove you slice by slice.” When a friend and fellow poet is threatened because of a verse written in mockery of a powerful man, he sees his friend safely home, single-handedly taking on and defeating one-hundred soldiers, wounding thirty of them. Yet, he is braver still in another sense. As Roxane is departing from him after asking him to watch over Christian, she says, “A hundred men? Farewell. We’re friends, aren’t we? He must write. A hundred men! You must tell me about it. A hundred! What courage!” When she has scampered out of ear shot, Cyrano says dolefully, “Oh, I’ve been braver since then.” He has suffered hearing that Roxane loves another, has hidden from her his own wishes, and out of his unselfish love for her, has agreed to watch over the one she loves.

We admire Cyrano also for his brutal honesty – to himself and to others. He cannot even deny truth out of envy, as so many of us do. “I say, as death has me in its hooks, Molière has genius and Christian had good looks.” Even his rivals get fair treatment in Cyrano’s mind. There is only one subject and one person that cause Cyrano to flip-flop from perfect honesty to perfect dishonesty. He dare not, cannot, speak his deep love for Roxane. Even, in the end, he resists with every ounce of denial he can muster, in this incredible duet:

Roxane: “Read it!” [handing him Christian’s last letter, which Cyrano had actually penned.]
Cyrano: “Roxane, farewell, for I must die.”
Roxane: “Outloud?” [Startled, having only expected him to read it to himself.]
Cyrano: “Later, today, I think, my dove. My heart is heavy with unexpressed love. And I’m dying. Never more, never more will my captivated eyes, that gaze . . .”
Roxane: [moved] “How you read it!”
Cyrano: “which adored such moments, will no longer embrace your every movement. I can see one now you often make when you brush your hair away. I cry out . . ."
Roxane: [overwhelmed] “You read it in such a way . . .”
Cyrano: “And now I cry out, ‘Goodbye!’”
Roxane: “You read it . . .”
Cyrano: “My dear, my darling . . .”
Roxane: “with a voice . . .”
Cyrano: “my love . . ."
Roxane: “with a voice that I’ve heard somewhere before.”
Cyrano: [no longer even looking at the letter] “My heart never left you for one second. I can and will be in the next world the one who loved you with all his soul. The one . . ."
Roxane: [realizing] “How can you read now? It’s dark.”
Cyrano: “It’s dark.” [changing meanings.]
Roxane: “It was you!”
Cyrano: “No, Roxane, no!"
Roxane: “The way you said my name . . .”
Cyrano: “No, it wasn’t me.”
Roxane: “It was you.”
Cyrano: “I swear.”
Roxane: “I can see your generous imposture. The letters were yours.”
Cyrano: “No!”
Roxane: “The dear, mad words, yours.”
Cyrano: “No.”
Roxane: “The night voice . . .”
Cyrano: “I swear not!”
Roxane: “That soul was yours!”
Cyrano: “I didn’t love you!”
Roxane: “You did!”
Cyrano: “It was him.”
Roxane: “You loved me!”
Cyrano: [softly] “No . . .”
Roxane: “You’re less sure now.”
Cyrano: “No, no, my dear love, I never loved you!”

Cyrano has been reduced at last to the weakest of all falsehoods – one that denies itself. He calls her “my dear love” even as he tries to deny loving her. We see in this dialogue the depth of Cyrano’s insecurity in matters of love, and women, and, most especially, his beloved Roxane. He still fears that his love will be scorned and cannot admit it as he sits dying.

Another wonderfully romantic quality of Cyrano is his independence, which is not for sale at any price. This beautiful freedom of thought contrasts in utter poignancy with the repression of his romantic feelings for Roxane. Here he states his philosophy of life:

Sing, dream, laugh, move on, be alone, have a choice,
Have a watchful eye and a powerful voice.
Wear my hat awry, fight for a poem if I like and perhaps even die.
Never care about fame or fortune and even travel to the moon.
Triumph by chance on my own merit.
Refuse to be the clinging ivy nor even the oak or the lime.
Perhaps I’ll not get far, but I’ll get there alone.

We love Cyrano also for his intelligence and wit. He duels a pompous nobleman while inventing an extemporaneous poem, promising to hit the gentleman on the last line. Yet, it is the intelligence and depth of romantic passion that he brings to his disguised love for Roxane which most sparks our admiration: “My soul next to the paper I sit. All I have to do is copy it.” And what young maiden’s heart would not flutter at this love letter:

In your presence confusion grips my heart.
My tongue is in a fetter.
If kisses could be sent by letter
You could read my words with your lips.

We love Cyrano also for his loyalty. Contrast Cyrano’s behavior when asked by Roxane to watch over Christian with that of so many other male protagonists of film or literature. He hides his jealousy, his deep personal pain, because he truly loves Roxane rather than merely wanting to possess her. He will make the ultimate sacrifice of protecting his rival and advancing his cause with Roxane out of his loyalty to her. Later, he reveals an extraordinary example of loyalty even to Christian. Roxane asks him, “Why keep silent for fourteen years since on that letter the tears were yours?” To which Cyrano replies simply, “The blood was his.” For fourteen years after Christian’s death, Cyrano has protected Roxane’s memory of him by not revealing the truth. He understands that what Roxane loved was Cyrano’s soul but also Christian’s youth and gallant good looks. Cyrano refuses to steal the part of that love from Christian that was rightfully his.

NOTE: SKIP DOWN TO PRODUCTION VALUES TO AVOID SPOILER!

Yes, we love Cyrano for all of the foregoing reasons, but one thing more separates Cyrano from other great romantic heroes: his panache. It is Cyrano’s flair and grand gestures that most haunt our memories. Asked to explain his disruption of the play, spoiling the enjoyment of the audience, he says grandly, “The work is worth less than naught. I silenced it without a thought.” Cyrano wants nothing more from life than to go out with a flourish, but fate, that has so cruelly denied him love, tries its best to cheat him of his grand finale as well. In Cyrano’s words, “On Saturday the twenty-sixth, one hour before dinner, Monsieur de Bergerac was foully and ignobly murdered. Fate’s a jester! I always wanted to die in battle and here I am killed in an ambush from behind, by lackeys with a beam. So be it. I made a mess of everything, even my death.” But the great pyrotechnic Cyrano is not to be so easily cheated. He will go out with a flourish:

I’m leaving now. Sorry, I can wait no longer.
See? The moon beam is here at my door.
No one must help me. Only the trees. He’s coming.
I feel myself shod in marble. Gloved in lead.
As he’s on his way, I shall go to meet him sword in hand!
What? It’s useless? I know. A man doesn’t fight to win.
It’s better when the fight is in vain.

Who are they all? There’s a hoard of them. Ah, I know you.
All my old enemies! Falsehood. Cowardice. Compromise.
I know you’ll get the upper hand.
Never mind. I’ll fight on, and on, and on!
You take everything, the laurel and the rose, too! Go on, take them!
But, in spite of you, one thing goes with me now
And tonight, when I, at last, God behold
My salute will sweep his blue threshold with something spotless --
A diamond in the ash which I take in spite of you --
And that’s
My panache.

Production Values: This 1990 version of Cyrano de Bergerac is the most lavish one ever made. The sets are beautifully detailed, including cannon and hundreds of muskets for the battle scenes. More than 2000 thousand extras were employed, all decked out in handsome costumes with exquisite period detail. This was one of the most expensive French films ever made.

The casting was superlative. Gerard Depardieu won the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990 for his performance and was also nominated in the Best Actor category at the Academy Award ceremony. Depardieu literally transformed himself into Cyrano by his acting genius. He played the part large, with all the swashbuckling enthusiasm and defiant pathos that the part demands. Anne Brochet was all that one could ask for as Roxane – all beauty and grace. Her swoons on receiving the first letters from Christian/Cyrano were magnificently rendered. She provides the perfect foil for Depardieu in the extended final death scene. The blue-tinted cinematography of that final scene established the perfect ethereal feel. All of the secondary characters were also well delivered.

Usually, subtitles are mentioned in relation to foreign films only as a kind of warning for those who are intolerant of reading while watching a film. In Cyrano de Bergerac, however, the quality of the translation that then provided the English subtitles is a major consideration in the worth of the film – given the importance of the poetry to this story. Anthony Burgess has provided intelligent subtitles that maintain the poetic rhythm. Not being conversant with French, I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the translations, but they serve the story well.

Cyrano de Bergerac received a total of five Oscar nominations, which is remarkable for a foreign film. The running time of the film is 138 minutes and it is rated PG for violence (swordplay and battle). This is a magnificent tear-jerker film for all who have an ounce of romanticism. I highly recommend it.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from France:

Alphaville
Amélie
The Battle of Algiers
La Belle et la Bête
Bob le Flambeur
Le Boucher
Boudu Saved from Drowning
A Bout de Souffle
La Cage aux Folles
Céline and Julie Go Boating
La Cérémonie
La Chèvre
Children of Paradise
Cléo from 5 to 7
Un Coeur en Hiver
Contempt
Delicatessen
The Dinner Game
Diva
The Earrings of Madame de . . .
Entre Nous
Eyes Without a Face
La Femme Nikita
Forbidden Games
French Cancan
Grand Illusion
Harvest
Hate
The Horseman on the Roof
Jean de Florette/Manon
The King of Hearts
Last Year at Marienbad
Life and Nothing But
Madame Rosa
A Man Escaped
Le Million
Monsieur Hire
The Mother and the Whore
La Nuit de Varennes
Pépé le Moko
Peppermint Soda
Playtime
Providence
Rififi
La Ronde
Round Midnight
The Rules of the Game
Le Samourai
Summer
A Sunday in the Country
The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe
Three Colors
Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Vagabond
Wages of Fear

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older