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Cyrano et d'Artagnan
1964 Historical / Drama / Adventure
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Credits
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Director: Abel Gance
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Script: Abel Gance, Rafael García Serrano, José Luis Dibildos
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Photo: Otello Martelli
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Music: Michel Magne
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Cast: José Ferrer (Cyrano de Bergerac),
Jean-Pierre Cassel (D'Artagnan),
Sylva Koscina (Ninon de l'Eclos),
Daliah Lavi (Marion de l'Orme),
Rafael Rivelles (Cardinal Duc de Richelieu),
Laura Valenzuela (Queen Anne of Austria),
Michel Simon (Le Grognard),
Philippe Noiret (King Louis XIII),
Gabrielle Dorziat (Mme de Mauvières)
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Country: France / Italy / Spain
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Language: French
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Runtime: 145 min
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Summary
1642. The opposing political ambitions of Cardinal Richelieu and
the Marquis de Cinq-Mars have brought about a rift between King Louis
XIII and his queen. To prevent a civil war, Cyrano de Bergerac is
sent to deliver a vital message to Queen Anne of Austria. On the
road from his native Gascogne to Paris, he meets the ambitious
swordsman D'Artagnan, who is also heading for Paris to make his
fortune. The two men strike up an immediate friendship and
continue their journey together, unaware of the remarkable adventures
that lie ahead.
Review
And so ends the illustrious filmmaking career of Abel Gance, one of
France’s most important cineastes. His third colour feature, Cyrano et d’Artagnan was among his
more ambitious productions, bringing together three great French
literary works - Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano
de Bergerac, Alexandre Dumas’s Les
Trois Mousquetaires and Victor Hugo's Marion Delorme - into one
flamboyant swashbuckling epic. Gance did make one further film
after this, Bonaparte et la
revolution (1971), but this was largely a re-edit of his earlier
1927 masterpiece
Napoléon.
Whilst it is hard not to be impressed by the scale and sheer
cinematographic beauty of Cyrano et
d’Artagnan, it is a pretty taxing film, with a very high ennui
quotient. For a combination of budgetary and artistic reasons,
Gance made use of foreign actors, including the American actor
José Ferrer, who had previously played Cyrano de Bergerac in
Michael Gordon's 1950 adaptation of Rostand's play (for which Ferrer
won an Oscar). Consequently, most of the dialogue is dubbed,
rendering the film coldly static and artificial. With lengthy
dialogue exchanges and protracted action sequences, the film feels
painfully slow in places, whilst some of Gance’s attempts to inject
some originality - such as some experimental use of the camera -
backfire horribly. When it was first released, the film was torn
to pieces by the critics and was a commercial disaster for its
director, effectively ending his career. It may not be Abel
Gance's best film, but Cyrano et
d’Artagnan does have a certain charm, and it isn't such a bad
parting shot from a great auteur of
French cinema.
© James Travers 2008
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