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Cyrano de Bergerac (1990 film)

Cyrano de Bergerac is a 1990 French period comedy-drama film directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau, adapted from Edmond Rostand's 1897 play of the same name by Rappeneau and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière. It stars Gérard Depardieu as the poet-swordsman Cyrano, with Anne Brochet as Roxane, Vincent Pérez as Christian, and Jacques Weber as the Comte de Guiche.1 The film was released in France on 28 March 1990, competed at that year's Cannes Film Festival, and went on to win ten César Awards and an Academy Award for costume design.2 • 3

Key factDetail
Director and screenplayJean-Paul Rappeneau; screenplay by Rappeneau and Jean-Claude Carrière, from Edmond Rostand's 1897 play1
Principal castGérard Depardieu (Cyrano), Anne Brochet (Roxane), Vincent Pérez (Christian), Jacques Weber (Comte de Guiche)1
French release28 March 19902
Running timeReported as 2 h 15 by Larousse and AlloCiné, 137–138 minutes by several English-language sources, and 140 minutes on the CNC visa record1 • 4 • 5
French admissions4,732,136 in France6
Major awards10 Césars from 13 nominations (1991); Cannes Best Actor for Depardieu; Academy Award for Costume Design3 • 7 • 8
Key crewPierre Lhomme (cinematography), Jean-Claude Petit (music), Noëlle Boisson (editing), Ezio Frigerio (production design), Franca Squarciapino (costumes)9

Spoilers

Story and adaptation

The film follows Rostand's plot. Cyrano, a brilliant poet and swordsman in Paris around 1640, believes his enormous nose makes him unlovable and never declares his love for his cousin Roxane. When Roxane falls for the handsome but inarticulate cadet Christian, Cyrano agrees to write love letters and feed him lines, so that Roxane falls for words that are secretly his own.10 • 7

Rappeneau and Carrière kept the play's dialogue in verse. Rappeneau described the central wager of the film this way: "The real gamble of the film is that the characters speak in verse."2 The play was shortened in many places, but the versification was respected, and Carrière wrote additional scenes "in the style of" Rostand to bridge the cuts.11 • 12 Rappeneau later wrote in a letter to the actors that he could no longer tell what was Rostand's, what was Carrière's, and what was his own.13 Larousse's film dictionary called Carrière a "respectful pasticheur" who rearranged the play with intelligence and subtlety, and judged the result an example of popular artistic cinema that succeeded with both critics and the box office.1

The Google Play catalog entry describes it as the first feature-film version of Rostand's play in color and the second theatrical film version in the original French, and as more lavish and more faithful to the original than previous film versions.6

Production

The production was a large-scale undertaking. According to a detailed French film resource, it required 2,000 actors and extras, 2,000 costumes of which half were created specially for the film, an armory of 300 épées, 500 pikes, 150 muskets, 100 pistols, 2 howitzers and a dozen cannons, 40 sets built in studios or on location, several hectares sown to recreate the vegetation of the siege of Arras, the widening of a river, and the rearrangement of an entire forest.13 The film was produced by Hachette Première et Cie, Caméra One, DD Productions, and Films A2, with UGC, and was a co-production between French and Hungarian companies.9 • 6 René Cleitman was the executive producer.9

For English-speaking markets, the subtitles were written by the novelist and translator Anthony Burgess in rhymed couplets, using five-beat lines with a varying number of syllables, to mirror the verse of Rostand's original.8

Release and reception

The film opened in France on 28 March 1990 and drew 4,732,136 admissions there.2 • 6 It was shown in Competition at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival, where Depardieu won the Award for Best Actor and cinematographer Pierre Lhomme received the Grand Prix de la Commission Supérieure Technique.7

Critical reception was strongly positive. Rotten Tomatoes records a 100% Tomatometer from 28 reviews and a 90% audience score from more than 10,000 ratings.10 Metacritic assigns a Metascore of 79 based on 19 critic reviews, with 17 positive and 2 mixed and none negative.14 Roger Ebert, the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times and winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, gave the film a starred review, writing that the movie "acts as if it believes this story" and praising Depardieu's dying scene as a virtuoso performance.4 Variety called it "a winner by more than a nose" and wrote that Depardieu's performance "sets a new standard with which all future Cyranos will have to reckon."14 The Guardian noted that for a subtitled film it was a huge success both in London and outside, where foreign films usually receive short shrift.15

Awards

At the 1991 César ceremony the film received 13 nominations and won 10 Césars, including: Best Film, Best Director (Rappeneau), Best Actor (Depardieu), Best Actress (Brochet), Best Supporting Actor (Weber), Most Promising Actor (Pérez), Best Screenplay (Carrière and Rappeneau), Best Cinematography (Lhomme), Best Editing (Boisson), Best Music (Jean-Claude Petit), Best Sound (Dominique Hennequin and Pierre Gamet), Best Costumes (Squarciapino), and Best Production Design (Frigerio).3

Internationally, the film won BAFTA awards for cinematography, costume design, makeup, and score, a Golden Globe and a National Board of Review Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and the Academy Award for Costume Design, with additional Oscar nominations for makeup, art direction, and Best Foreign Language Film.8 Depardieu also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for the role.8 A Spanish-language account of that Oscar season notes that of the film's five Oscar nominations, only the costume design award materialized, with the Best Actor prize going to Jeremy Irons.16

Legacy

The film is widely treated as the reference screen version of the play. The Cannes Festival's own retrospective describes it as one of the great classics of French cinema, crowned by 10 Césars and 1 Oscar.17 A Turner Classic Movies essay by Rob Nixon writes that many critics and audiences place Rappeneau's 1990 version at the top of the play's many screen adaptations, with Depardieu's Cyrano arguably the finest of all.8 A 2K restoration was prepared for a 2018 re-release in French cinemas on 26 October 2018, and the restored version was presented in the Cannes Classics program.2 • 17

References

  1. Cyrano de Bergerac, Larousse, Dictionnaire mondial des films
  2. Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), AlloCiné
  3. Cyrano de Bergerac, Académie des César
  4. Cyrano De Bergerac movie review, Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, 25 December 1990
  5. Visas et Classification n° 66874, CNC
  6. Cyrano de Bergerac, Google Play Movies listing
  7. CYRANO DE BERGERAC, Festival de Cannes
  8. Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), by Rob Nixon, Turner Classic Movies
  9. Cyrano de Bergerac, Transmettre le cinéma
  10. Cyrano de Bergerac, Rotten Tomatoes
  11. Cyrano de Bergerac, Festival Premiers Plans d'Angers
  12. Cyrano, the great era of epic cinema: interview with Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Festival de Cannes
  13. Sur scènes et sur écrans : 1990 – Gérard Depardieu – Cyrano de Bergerac, cyranodebergerac.fr
  14. Cyrano de Bergerac Reviews, Metacritic
  15. Cyrano de Bergerac, The Guardian film page
  16. Ballet, gatos, viejos tuits y delitos del pasado: cuando la polémica te pilla en plena campaña al Oscar, El País
  17. CYRANO DE BERGERAC, Cinéma de Demain, Festival de Cannes (Cannes Classics 2018)

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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Cyrano de Bergerac (1990 film)

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