Frenchman, Swordsman, Poet and Lover

A classic tragic romance story that has been told over and over again in various forms, the 1950 film Cyrano de Bergerac brings to life the character's of French author Edmond Rostand's novel of the same name. We all know Cyrano as the man caught in a famous love triangle, a lot of which results from his embarrasment over his even more famous nose. The film is public domain and those who would like to view it can do so here, thanks to Classic Cinema Online and Google.

The film stars José Ferrer as the hero, Cyrano, who is a famed swordsman and poet who is in love with the beautiful and much admired Roxane (Mala Powers ). Because of his long, odd shaped nose, Cyrano is too ashamed and self-concious to declare his love for Roxane out of fear of rejection. Roxane is in love with the handsome but pretty dense Christian de Neuvillette (William Prince), devastating Cyrano. When Christian comes to Cyrano, asking him to help win Roxane with his dramatic tongue, and Cyrano faciliates their romance, despite his love for Roxane. Meanwhile, Cyrano's enemy Comte De Guiche (Ralph Canton ) is also wooing Roxane. Cyrano provides room for Christian and Roxane to elope. When the Comte hears, he forces Christian to join the army in the war against the Spanish. Roxane goes to the camp and tells Christian it was his wonderful words he fell in love with and Christian is heartbroken, knowing the words were Cyrano and not his own. He does not get a chance to confess this to her and it is up to Cyrano to confess everything and tell Roxane of his love. But will he be too late?

Ferrer won the Best Actor Academy Award for his performance in this film, though the film itself was not universally liked by critics. The role of Cyrano de Bergerac became the defining role of Ferrer's career. It has been estimated that the plastic nose Ferrer wore for the role cost United Artists $1,500 at the time to make. While producing this film, Stanley Kramer was having trouble getting another pet project produced, a film known as High Noon. The writers tried to keep the film as close to the book as possible, which is hard in trimming an epic novel down to a nearly two hour long movie.

For some reviews of this film, you can check out this one done by Turner Classic Movies. You can read this review from bestcyrano.org or this one from the Gold Old Movie Reviews blogspot. Another review can be found here at the Exporer of the Unknown blogspot.

Wanna See Some Great Movies?

For the month of February, Turner Classic Movies puts together perhaps one of the best themed film marathons, in my personal opinion. From February 1st until March 3rd, they put on their 31 Days of Oscar Marathon, saluting some of the most award-winning films, actors, and directors to grace the silver screen.

Rather than dividing the films up into Oscar category, such as Best Director or Best Cinematographer, TCM has come up with a more creative approach. The films are divided into themed or genre segments. For example, the segemnt called "The Southwestern United States" features the films Tulsa, Oklahoma!, and Cimarron. Each day is divided up into "departments", like a college, and the various departments have name like "The Education Department", "The Law Department", and "The Philosophy Department" and each "department" is subdivided from there.

For example, "The Foriegn Language" Department features segments entitled "Introduction to Italian" and "Intermediate French", including foriegn movies like The Four Days of Naples and Mr. Hulot's Holiday whereas the "Dance Department" features segements like "Advanced Tap" and "Introduction to Choreography", featuring various musical and dance films like Royal Wedding and 42nd Street. I'm not sure if this schedule will be better than the old standby, but it may help group together movies that will attract viewers with common interests in all of them.

For more information about what to expect with this year's 31 Days of Oscar, you can read this article twitchfilm.com did with Robert Osborne, who will be emceeing the majority of the event. Monstersandcritics.com has more on the set up of the marathon along with a schedule that will be more easy to access than downloading the pdf schedule from the TCM website. For those of you interested, here is TCM's press release about the event.

So, crack open those schedules and cancel all your plans for the rest of the month because some great films are coming to a television near you!

Here's to New Years

I apologize for the hiatus over the past month, but everyone knows that the beginning of the year always gets a little hectic. I would like to start out this year of blogging with a film about New Years, resolutions, and new beginnings. Part black comedy, part drama, part romantic comedy, Billy Wilder's 1960 film The Apartment has it all. It includes slick corporate businessmen in the Madison Avenue heydays, honest guys working their way up through not so honest means, adultery, divorce, deception, rowdy holiday parties, love triangles, the beautiful backdrop of New York City in the winter, and the quest to find true love.

The film stars Jack Lemmon, who would later be working under Wilder again in the steamy Marilyn Monroe film Some Like It Hot and female rat-packer Shirley MacLaine. Lemmon is C.C. Baxter, an honest guy who can't get ahead in corporate America no matter how hard or good he works. Baxter finds himself loaning out his apartment to the major company players (pun intended) who use his apartment as a place to take their mistresses so the wives don't find out. Baxter finds himself being chased out of his apartment at all hours of the night, sleeping on park benches, and catching colds while the high-powered bosses have their fun, messing up his apartment, drinking all his booze, and giving him a bad playboy reputation with all of his nice neighbors. Baxter almost decides to quit entirely when he is given a promotion, on the basis that he loans his apartment out to and only out to big boss Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) so Sheldrake can have his affair unbeknown to his wife and two kids.

Baxter realizes that Sheldrake's mistress is none other than elevator girl Fran Kubelik (MacLaine), who Baxter has been crushing on for quite some time. In a parallel plot, Fran wants Sheldrake to leave his family and marry her, though he said their relationship was only a summer fling. He rekindles the romance until Christmastime, when Fran hears at the part about all the past women Sheldrake has made a similar promise to. She tries to commit suicide and C.C. Baxter comes home in time to save her with the help of Dr. and Mrs. Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen and Naomi Stevens). Fran slowly starts to realize that C.C. Baxter might be the good guy she was always looking for while Baxter starts to think there is no such thing as a good woman. The entire film is centered around the holidays with Fran's suicide at Christmas. The last part of the movie has a great climax on New Years Eve and keeps you guessing if Sheldrake ever gets caught and if C.C. and Fran end up together.

For more information on the film, you can access the reviews, synopsis, and various information provided here, thanks to Filmsite.org. To read the entire script, if you would like to for whatever reason, you can do so here, thanks to DailyScript.com, which provides tons of movie scripts for free. Shirley MacLaine also did and interview/article about what it was like filming and working on The Apartment, which can be read here at the Cinebeats blog.

The film also has tons of acclaim. Premiere Magazine voted it as one of the 50 greatest comedies of all time and it made #80 on AFI's list of Greatest Films of All Time. Total Film ranked Jack Lemmon's performance as C.C. Baxter as #12 in its list of Greatest Performances of All Time. Oscar-wise, the film won for Best Picture, Art Direction, Editing, Best Director, and Original Screenplay. Jack Lemmon was nominated for Best Actor, Shirley MacLaine for Best Actress, Jack Kruschen for Supporting Actor, as well as Cinematography and Sound. The Apartment was also the last black and white film to win an Academy Award for best picture until Spielberg's Schindler's List .

The critics aren't the only ones who adore this movie; it's a big hit with film fans both old and new. The blog Twenty-Four Frames does a great review, critique, and synopsis of the film which can be read here. Another great review can be read here at the Tea at Trianon blogspot. Another positive review can be read here at The Distracted Globe. However, the Film Jock offers a contradictory view on the movie, which I could encourage you to read here and then think about while or after watching the film. As always, I encourage you to watch the film for yourself before letting critics help you make up your mind.