The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Analysis

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)

Written and Directed by: Jacques Demy
Won the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival.

The entire film has characters singing to each other - even normal conversation is made into the lyrics of a song and are sung by the characters - this idea feels so radical because even conversations at a garage are sung with rhythm and certain dialogue is given emphasis with the music, with a punchy upbeat music parallel to it - like where Guy quits his job in the garage in the 3rd chapter. The simplistic love story helps, because it would've been difficult to process that level of depth and layering, especially when our major chunk of attention is taken with the characters singing. At a point in the beginning, the technique felt like an extended joke, but after some more time - I kind of got used to it and since there is conflict throughout, the film would've worked even without the singing part, and the singing didn't feel like a gimmick - it just added a layer of escapism to the world of the film. It's ironic and funny when pragmatic conversations are happening through a romantic song.

The film has brilliant visual aesthetics - the color of the costume of a character matches the color of the background most of the times, especially Gene's costumes - it's either the entire wall of the background, or a major object with the same color. I think that this would've been a huge influence for Wes Anderson's work. I'm generally fascinated by vibrant walls and colors, because we aren't usually allowed to/encouraged to use vibrant colors in our daily lives - again reflecting the mundane - but why not? Guy's costumes are mostly designed in a way that they his and Gene's costumes have color contrast. Fill lighting is used in most of the film - matching the tone of the light hearted subject matter.