Cyrano de Bergerac (1950)

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

A great performance by Jose Ferrer highlighted by his receiving of the Academy Award for best actor of 1950 in this film based on the Edmund Rostand novel.A story of tragic love, Mala Powers played Roxane, the girl who admits at film's end that she has lost 2 loves.Set in the 1600's, the film tells the tragic tale of Cyrano, a poet playwright, philosopher, and swordsman who loves Roxane but feels rejection because of the size of his nose.When she professes love for Christian, he guides him through the words in expressing his love for the lady.There is politics in this film. I wish it had been stated even more. With war against Spain calling, Christian takes up his duties and his promptly killed.While a tragic fate awaits Cyrano at the hands of other conspirators, his death scene and acting throughout the film will be widely remembered as the part that was meant for him.

Being a big fan of the Gerard Depardieu version, I was all for seeing this film from 1950 with Jose Ferrer. And I found it excellent. I have seen more beautiful-looking films elsewhere, but the film is well shot and the costumes and sets do have a certain charm to them. Dmitri Tiomkin's music score is suitably rousing, the sword play is clever and never clumsy and the script is witty and poetic, while the story never fails to thrill or move me in the way it should do. It is well directed by Michael Gordon also. Of the acting, faring weakest was Mala Powers, she is beautiful but not much is done for me to make her beyond that. William Prince is more than adequate and Ralph Clanton sneers effectively as De Guiche. But the film, same goes with the story itself too, really belongs to Jose Ferrer. As much as I loved his performance in Moulin Rouge, it is in Cyrano De Bergerac where he is at his finest, really resonating with me by how dignified and moving he was. Overall, excellent and worth seeing for especially Ferrer. 9/10 Bethany Cox

It is curious that in the period that England, Scandanavia, and Russia pushed for more reality in their drama France went into a different direction. She produced two still living dramatists: Georges Feydeau the great constructor of farces, and Edmond Rostand, the last really impressive dramatic romanticist. Rostand was to write two plays that became international favorites. One was L'ANGLON ("The Eaglet"), a play about as Napoleon II, only legitimate son of Emperor Napoleon I of France. That play follows his attempt to escape the clutches of the Chancellor of Austria, Metternich, to reclaim his throne. That play was the last great role (and greatest "trouser part") of Sarah Bernhart. Because the Divine Sarah made it her favorite role L'ANGLON is rarely shown. However, a sequence from that play has appeared in one of the Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney films, when the youngsters are in a deserted old theater and pretend to be stars of the past. Garland as Bernhard recites the speech of Napoleon II (in French!) at the battlefield of Waterloo where he repeats the great victories of his father.Interestingly enough, Rooney in the same film portrayed Richard Mansfield in his performance as "Cyrano de Bergerac". He does a snippet of one of the play's high-points - the duel where Cyrano is constructing a poem that ends each verse with the words "thrust home!", until he ends the duel and the poem with the physical action against his foe matching the words.Rostand's CYRANO DE BERGERAC is constantly revived, as a tragic comedy about a great poet and swordsman/soldier, who was independent of the patronage game of the aristocracy of his time. Cyrano is fully honest, and fully prepared to criticize the hypocrisies of his days, and can protect himself due to his swordsmanship. However, he also suffers from a physical problem. He has a magnificently big nose. His swordsmanship makes it fully possible for him to confront anyone making fun of his nose: that was behind the opening duel regarding "thrust home". However, he is aware he is ugly, and it prevents him from being brave enough to offer his heart to his beloved cousin Roxane. As the play continues he learns that a new Gascon recruit in his regiment Christian de Neuvilette is the secret love of Roxane, and she asks Cyrano's assistance in getting Christian's attention about this. As it turns out Christian is equally in love with her. Christian is a brave and good looking young fellow, but he is tongue tied. The result is that Cyrano ghost writes a series of letters to Roxane (supposedly by Christian) that cements her affection for him. Cyrano's assistance eventually leads to another memorable highpoint in the play where he takes over in a moonlit garden for the nervous Christian, and serenades Roxane's ears (she is on her terrace) with his poetry, supposedly recited and created by Christian. Reading a description of the play (of any play) hardly prepares the viewer for it's stage effect. Let us just say if you have never seen this play, catch this film version, or the French one with Gerald Depardieu made in 1990. It is bittersweet, for we realize that with the growing success of Cyrano's ghosting for Christian, he is torn further and further away from ever getting Roxane from noticing him. Only at the tale end of the play, when it is too late, does the truth dawn on Roxane.In 1947 Jose Ferrer was appearing on Broadway in Cyrano de Bergerac. Ferrer was the first major star on Broadway of Puerto Rican ancestry, and proved adept at acting (he was Iago to Paul Robeson's OTHELLO), comic parts (he did a great job in a revival of CHARLEY'S AUNT), and directing. In fact, the character of "Geoffrey De Cordova" (Jack Buchanan) in the musical film THE BAND WAGON is based in part on Ferrer (also in part on Orson Welles). He dominated his production of CYRANO, and was signed to appear in the movie version in 1950. Thus we are lucky enough to see him on film recreating his stage performance. Ferrer did not overact - he seemed to instinctively know how to control that tendency by stage performers on camera. As a result he fit the cinema screen perfectly. His moments of bravura acting (as when he confronts and befuddles a rival in a dark garden by pretending he has just fallen from the moon) are neatly balanced when he realizes what he just can't get from Roxane.The others performers are not unknown types. Christian was played by William Prince (later "Young Dr. Malone" on television). Cyrano's more worldly wise friend Le Bret is Morris Carnovsky, who had a distinguished career on stage and on screen. Lloyd Corrigan played the cowardly Ragueneau (the pastry cook/poet) who feeds Cyrano and his friends, and witnesses the sequence where Cyrano beats back a set of armed thugs sent to attack the pastry cook. Mala Powers was Roxane. Even in the brief part of Cardinal Richelieu Edgar Barrier played that role (secretly admiring the swordsman who keeps sneering at him). But it is the central role that makes this play and film, and in the capable hands of Ferrer it was done well. It should have been a color film (which is why I have only given it a "9" instead of a "10"), but that doesn't weaken the film at all. Two years before Laurence Olivier won an "Oscar" as best actor for his HAMLET - really the first time a classic play role got the honor from the Academy. In 1950 the Academy gave the best actor "Oscar" to Ferrer, for the second classic play role on film, as well as the first Puerto Rican actor so honored.

Enjoyed this great 1950 performance by Jose Ferrer who won an Academy Award for Best Actor for this role and he sure put his heart and soul into his role. Cyrano De Bergerac was a very smart man with great talent in fighting with a sword, a poet, actor and a man who desperately need a woman to love and marry. Cyrano De Bergerac acted like a Douglas Fairbanks Sr., jumping all around and killing large numbers of people who wanted to insult him and his friends. Cyrano falls in love with his cousin who is very attractive and he even helps her find a lover and actually acts as cupid. I thought that Cyrano's nose was very attractive and much bigger than Jimmy Durante.