Cyrano de Bergerac

Starring: Jose Ferrer, Mala Powers, William Prince, Morris Carnovsky, Ralph Clanton
Directed by: Michael Gordon
Rating: Not rated
Genre: Drama, Romance
1950

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A poetic swordsman (Jose Ferrer) helps another man (William Prince) woo the woman (Mala Powers) he loves.

Review:

Tim: I must admit I've thought about Cyrano de Bergerac more than is usual after watching a movie. After seeing over 2,775 movies, I have a pretty good process down. This movie proved difficult to make sense of in my mind. I certainly enjoyed it and would call it a good movie, but just how good was it? This was a tricky film to define.

The film certainly enjoys the benefit of excellent source material. There was the original 1897 and four earlier films based on that play (all in languages other than English). The source material is so good, so of course, this movie benefits just by telling the interesting story. As you dig into the background of the story, it's pretty interesting- Cyrano was a real person, did have a big nose (although no where near as big as depicted in the story), and the play was a fictionalization of his life. It's all very intriguing and I recommend doing some research if you're interested.

The film suffers a little because of a fairly small budget. This prevents the movie from leveraging any sense of scope. It feels like a small, intimate portrayal, which can be good as well as bad. The film looks fine, but there's nothing especially memorable about the look or feel of it.

Really, when you get down to it, the chief reason to see this movie is for the performance of Jose Ferrer. I've read some criticisms of the film, calling Ferrer's performance one of the worst ever to win the Academy Award for Best Actor (the film's only win). I cannot say I agree with that assertion. I actually found Ferrer's performance very effective. In some ways, the large prosthetic nose made the role more difficult- he's a bit absurd to look at, so it threatened to throw the entire character into the real of the absurd. Ferrer doesn't let that happen. He's loud, boisterous, proud, and occasionally obnoxious. It's a very strong performance of an interesting, complex character. I felt drawn to his character and intrigued by his portrayal. Ferrer is the best part of the entire film and I really, really enjoyed how he brought Cyrano to memorable life. I always feel a little disappointed when an Academy Award winner wins for a role they also played on stage. It feels like they have an unfair advantage. I don't feel compelled or qualified to state whether he deserved to win the Academy Award over his competition, but it's pretty exciting that he was the first Hispanic actor to win an Academy Award. So, yay for diversity!

The film really is all about Ferrer. Mala Powers was fine as Roxane- I didn't love her performance, but she certainly has her moments and delivered an adequate performance. William Prince was likewise fine as Christian, but he's not very memorable. The rest of the supporting cast worked well also, but really, the whole cast is shaded by the dark shadow of Ferrer's impressive performance. This film was only nominated for 1 Academy Award, which is further evidence that Ferrer's performance is what made this movie noteworthy.

The story itself is quite good, although director Michael Gordon could have pulled a little more emotion out of the story. I just find it especially heartbreaking- Cyrano is a brilliant, eloquent, courageous, loyal man. He has all the qualities that anyone could ever hope to find in a partner. The one issue is his very large nose, which he uses as a crutch (not literally, which would have been funny). He feels ugly and the shame about his large nose prevents him from declaring his love to his cousin (kind of gross, I know), Roxane. That's very sad by itself, but it gets worse when he agrees to help another man woo Roxane. Cyrano uses his gift of words and writing to speak what's actually on his heart, but give his words to another man so he can marry Roxane. That's incredibly sad. Some of this comes through in the movie, but Gordon should have made me weep and I never even considered shedding a tear. The movie is good, but greatness would have required far more emotion. I thought the conclusion of the film was sad and powerful, but again, it didn't tug at the heartstrings as much as it could have.

While I love the story (which was adapted) and I loved the performance of Jose Ferrer (who was able to hone his part on stage first)m these two elements alone weren't enough to really make me love Cyrano de Bergerac. I certainly liked the whole movie, but it didn't do quite enough to elevate it to the upper echelons of film. This is a good movie that very easily could have been much better.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 7



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