A complex, cerebral, unconventionally appeal- ing man strives to win a lady’s heart with poetry, but finds himself constantly over- shadowed by a handsome but intellectually inferior rival. The plot of the 1990 hit Cyrano de Bergerac is a neat metaphor for French cinema’s relationship with Hollywood. During the 1980s, film audiences had steadily dwindled, seduced away by video; those who stayed increasingly preferred the American product. The success of Cyrano, however, heralded a decade in which French cinema would execute a remarkable return to financial form, thanks partly to increased investment from television companies such as Canal+. Audiences picked up, and production went into overdrive, aided by generous state subsidies and fiscal incentives. France boasted the biggest distribution network in Europe, as well as a unique degree of governmental support.
Cyrano, starring Gérard Depardieu as the lovelorn, big-nosed swordsman, cost $17 million, but justified its price tag with a confident performance at home and abroad. Among the film’s massive international awards haul were ten César awards, an Oscar for costume design, a Golden Globe for best foreign film, and four Baftas. In a classy finishing touch, the English subtitles were provided by the novelist Anthony Burgess, who elegantly preserved the rhyming couplet structure of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play.
Romantic gestures and rapier wit weren’t the only seduction tools employed by French film-makers in 1990, however. Godard’s assertion that “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun” held true for the irrepressible Luc Besson when he cast his wife of the time Anne Parillaud (below, with co-star Jean-Hugues Anglade) as a slinky government hitwoman in the action thriller Nikita. Hollywood signalled its approval the best way it knows how: an English language remake starring Bridget Fonda came out in 1993.
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French stars were also proving increasingly exportable. One hit a year was rarely enough for Depardieu, and in 1990 he added an American film to his prodigious CV. Green Card, co-starring Andie MacDowell, was Depardieu’s first English language project, but familiar aspects of his screen persona remained firmly intact: he played a shambling, sensitive lunk pursuing an apparently unattainable female.
The upbeat American sensibility ensured a happy ending that poor old Cyrano would have killed for — as well as a far more positive model for future Franco-US movie-making relations.
HANNAH McGILL
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Talking points
ALAS ALAIN
Alain Delon was awarded the Légion d’Honneur — though it did little to salvage his faltering career. He would announce his retirement seven years later.
FALLEN FELINE
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Erstwhile sex kitten Capucine, who had co-starred with Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther movies, killed herself by jumping from an eighth-floor window.
VIGO UNCOVERED
Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante, made in 1934 and starring Dita Parlo, was screened in a fully restored version at the Cannes Film Festival, and duly greeted as one of the lost classics of world cinema. The director had died at the age of 29, only weeks after completing the film.
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NEXT WEEK
1991: The Year of Whimsy