Cyrano de Bergerac (1990)

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General		Extras
Category	Romance	Main Menu Audio & Animation Interviews-Cast-Gerard Depardieu Biographies-Cast & Crew Notes-The Legend Of Cyrano Notes-Roger Ebert Review Awards Notes-CD Soundtrack (plus audio sample) Trailer-Malcolm
Rating
Year Of Production	1990
Running Time	132:01
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (73:04)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Jean Paul Rappeneau
Studio Distributor	Umbrella Entertainment	Starring	Gerard Depardieu Anne Brochet
Case	Click
RPI	$29.95	Music	None Given

    http://us.imdb.com/Tawards?0099334 lists the awards that this film has received. Just about the entire planet agrees on its quality. Everything about this film is excellent; the acting, the story, the screenplay, the cinematography...I could go on all day. This is a must-see film. Unfortunately, this disc may not be the best way to do so, but more on that later.

    Gerard Depardieu plays Cyrano, in fact he is Cyrano. He is absolutely perfect in this role, bringing out all the style of the character, the emotions of lost love, the flamboyance and more. He is a real joy to watch.

    Unless you are fluent in French, you really need to watch this film at least twice, as it is presented in French and has a large amount of dialogue. You end up reading the subtitles the first time through and missing some of the beautiful cinematography, the great acting and the expressions on the faces of the characters. The solution is to watch it once through to get the dialogue, then to sit back and simply watch the film again for its own inherent beauty.

    The film is based on a play written by Edmond Rostand in 1897 based on the historical character Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655). Historians seem to disagree on just how much the original Cyrano matched the character in the play. One thing we do know is that he wrote one of the earliest science fiction stories on record.

    To keep my review in balance, the only criticisms that I can find for the film is in some of the sword work. This film, like most that attempt to portray this period, misuses the rapier. The entire history of the sword in the western world is a move away from the edge and towards the point. Early broadswords, for example, did emphasize the edge, but as the realisation set in that the point was far more effective in most situations, the use of the point came to the fore. This influenced sword design, and we saw the sword becoming much lighter and thinner, leading eventually to the French foil with no edge at all. The 1600s were the pinnacle of the rapier and we have a reasonable knowledge of the techniques of the period, as some of the sword teaching manuals still exist today, such as those written by diGrasse (http://www.kismeta.com/diGrasse/index.htm for those that might be interested). The scenes in the training hall at 39:04 are very good, but once we get out onto the street we lose some of the realism. This is only really a minor criticism as they do better than many other films.

    The storyline itself is well known. A master swordsman and poet with an unfortunately large nose is in love with a beautiful woman (Anne Brochet). This woman is his cousin and regards him only as a friend. She falls in love with a young man (Vincent Perez) who is very handsome but is lacking in the art of romance. Cyrano agrees to become the young man's ghost writer and it is his poetic art that wins Roxanne's heart, the irony being that this is at his own expense.

Video

    I am afraid that the film master used here is not very good, and this has had an effect on the whole transfer. The result is a poor quality video transfer. The biggest problem is the amount of grain present and this has caused many problems.

    We are presented with a 1.53:1 ratio transfer that is not 16x9 enhanced. According to the Internet Movie DB the original ratio was 1.66:1. I was unable to tell just how they changed the ratio nor can I envisage just why they chose to change it, nor why they chose 1.53:1 as the final ratio.

    Sharpness is the first casualty of the grain. In parts it is acceptable but it often descends into a blur of grain. This has also had an effect on the blacks, rendering them quite noisy. The blacks are also lacking in detail in parts, in some scenes leaving us with simple silhouettes. 

    The colours are muted throughout the film, however skin tones are quite good. The entire colour palette is very earthy - browns, earth reds, and so forth - so the colour saturation is probably intentional to give the film a certain feel suitable for the period. Again, the grain has had a deleterious effect, making the colours appear noisy in places.

    Large amounts of grain invariably lead to MPEG artefacts and this disc is no exception. The backgrounds, particularly in the darker scenes where the grain is most evident show signs of macro-blocking, such as on the wall in the background at 65:12. We also have some posterization in the characters' faces such as at 40:40. There is also some loss of resolution during scene changes, with the last frame of the previous scene and the first one or two frames of the next showing some quite marked blocking.

    I noticed an unusual form of telecine wobble in a couple of places. Well, actually, not so much a wobble as an occasional single jump. A clear example of this is at 73:51 where the entire frame moves downwards to the left and then back in the space of two frames. This can be a bit disconcerting as it is almost subliminal. It took me a few runs through to identify just what was happening.

    There are a large number of film artefacts in this transfer. The grain has already been mentioned. There are also an entire host of flecks, spots, dust, scratches, and so forth throughout the film. The white artefacts are the most distracting, such as in the scene at 27:54 where we are going down a dark alley that seems infested with fireflies. They really should have found a better master for this transfer.

    The English subtitles are burnt-in to the image in this transfer. While they are quite good and easy to read, selectable subtitles would have been preferred.

    This is an RSDL disc with the layer change at 73:04 on a scene change. There is no music but there is some ambient noise that is interrupted, making the change a little distracting.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The disc contains a single Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack in French. While the surround encoded flag is not set, I watched the film with Pro-logic decoding turned on and this worked well.

    As I do not speak French, I cannot attest to the dialogue quality other than to say it was always audible and appeared to have no real problems.

    It was interesting to note how difficult it was to pick whether the dialogue was in sync when you don't speak the language. In your own language, you can predict approximately what the mouth movements will be for a given piece of dialogue. Without this knowledge, sync is surprisingly difficult to judge, although it did appear to be in sync.

    There is one small 'pop' in the soundtrack very near the end at 128:07.

    The music was excellent as witnessed by the awards for best score it has won. It is sweeping and majestic and a perfect match for the film. It draws you into each scene in perfect harmony with the on-screen action, building tension and displaying emotion as felt by the characters. Jean-Claude Petit has done a wonderful job and fully deserves the awards.

    The surrounds are active throughout the film both for music and ambience. They are not blatantly used but are quite subtle. Nonetheless, they would have been sorely missed if they were not there. An excellent effort for a movie that is more than ten years old and only encoded in surround.

     The same applies to the subwoofer. The redirected bass gives a strong foundation to the soundtrack without ever really drawing attention to itself. Again, it would have been missed if it were not there.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu is presented at 1.33:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced. It starts with a simple animation and then moves to a static border with scenes from the movie playing in the background. This is accompanied by a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. The loop lasts for about thirty seconds.

Gerard Depardieu: Interview

    This interview is presented in a small window on the left side of the screen, while the rest of the 1.33:1 image is taken up with graphics and a menu giving access to the various sections of the interview. This makes the image a little small and might be a problem on a smaller screen. Once the interview is selected, the whole interview plays with the menu items automatically being selected. You can jump ahead to the next section by pushing the Enter button. It has a Dolby Digital 2.0 sound track and runs for a total of 10:25.

    The interview was conducted by Margaret Pomeranz for the SBS Movie Show. We are given a short but interesting insight into Gerard Depardieu, his views on his character and the movie, his views on other characters in the movie and his interaction with the director. This interview was obviously done before he polished his English, as at times he was assisted by someone off-screen to find the 'right word'. A great comment by Depardieu sums up the feel of the interview: "He (Cyrano) is French: he likes to eat, fight and make love".

Biographies-Cast and Crew

    The usual text pages outlining a little about the person and their achievements.

Notes: The Legend Of Cyrano

    A series of text pages outlining a little of the history of Cyrano. Quite interesting if you are unaware of the history of the character.

Notes: Roger Ebert Review

    A series of text pages taken from Roger Ebert's review.

Awards

    A listing of the awards the film has won.

Notes: CD Soundtrack (plus audio sample)

    An advertisement for the soundtrack of the film on CD. It is actually accompanied by a track from the CD and runs for 2:55. I wish they had included an isolated score on the DVD - now I have to go out and buy the CD!

Coming Soon

    An advertisement for some titles coming soon from the distributor, including the trailer for Malcolm. The trailer is presented in 1.85:1 not 16x9 enhanced and is accompanied by a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

    There does not appear to be a Region 1 version of this disc and the Region 2 version is reported as being presented at 1.33:1 and of a similar video quality as our version. They also have the subtitles burnt-in to the image. I can't in all conscience recommend any of the versions available, but it seems as if our version may be the best of a not-so-great lot.

    Discs like this one make me mad. A brilliant film telling the story of Cyrano De Bergerac with consummate skill is severely let down by the transfer - could they not have found one good print of this film anywhere?

    The video quality is shocking.

    The audio is a very good effort considering its age.

    The extras are not the best.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall