On Loca­tion: Scenes from The Umbrel­las of Cherbourg

Jacques Demy made some of the most colour­ful and vibrant films of the 1960s. Draw­ing influ­ence from the clas­sic Hol­ly­wood musi­cals of the pre­vi­ous decade, Demy trans­plant­ed their joy­ous cel­e­bra­tion of liv­ing onto a dis­tinct­ly French land­scape, bring­ing in the nat­ur­al inno­va­tions then evolv­ing in his own country’s cin­e­ma via the French New Wave.

Released in 1964, The Umbrel­las of Cher­bourg epit­o­mis­es Demy’s dis­tinc­tive take on the musi­cal genre, using the vast skills of com­pos­er Michel Legrand to cre­ate a through-musi­cal in which the melodies were as cease­less as the town’s rain. Along with the tunes and overt­ly roman­tic dra­ma on dis­play, the direc­tor showed a keen eye for the cities he set his films in, ren­der­ing even the most seem­ing­ly nor­mal of towns with­in the style of a Hol­ly­wood fairy tale. Under Demy’s gaze, Cher­bourg becomes a fan­tas­ti­cal­ly vivid place.

Demy’s film is split into three seg­ments telling the sto­ry of Guy (Nino Castel­n­uo­vo) and Geneviève (Cather­ine Deneuve) who live in the French port town. Guy works hard in the local mechan­ics to sup­port his old aunt (Mirielle Per­rey) while Geneviève works in the umbrel­la shop of her moth­er, Madame Emery (Anne Ver­non). The cou­ple are mad­ly in love and plan to mar­ry in spite of dis­ap­proval from Madame Emery in particular.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Guy, he is draft­ed into the army to fight in the Alger­ian War mean­ing he must leave Geneviève for sev­er­al years. A night of pas­sion not long before Guy departs leaves Geneviève alone and preg­nant. But will their rela­tion­ship last the dis­tance or will new faces slow­ly fill the absence in Geneviève’s life before Guy’s return?

As with Demy’s oth­er films, this is a detailed and unique por­trait of a provin­cial towns. The direc­tor had a refresh­ing habit of mov­ing away from the Parisian set­tings of his con­tem­po­raries, find­ing it fruit­ful to express the same choco­late-box vision of the Stan­ley Donan musi­cals he loved in more local set­tings. Whether it be Nantes in Lola, Nice in Bay of Angels or Rochefort in The Young Girls of Rochefort, hon­ing in on a spe­cif­ic, idio­syn­crat­ic loca­tion seemed to be part of Demy’s work­ing; find­ing great poten­tial in France’s coastal towns. Umbrel­las is a per­fect exam­ple of this and arguably put the town of Cher­bourg on the cin­e­mat­ic map.

As the open­ing cred­its play, we see rain falling onto the cob­bles of the town’s dock­land as umbrel­las keep the passers­by dry. The cam­era soon shifts from its ver­ti­cal posi­tion, show­ing a land­scape shot of the town’s main dock­land behind the title of the film’s first chap­ter. Demy tend­ed to focus on the cen­tre of towns, find­ing his own rhythms with­in their designs.

The port we first see is at the cen­tre of Cher­bourg, and many of the oth­er loca­tions fea­tured in the film are not far from it. This is the same dock we see lat­er on when char­ac­ters wan­der and dis­cuss their wants and desires, as if Cherbourg’s water seems to loosen their tongues and allow their truths to pour forth. Today, the dock is less busy with boats but, aside from a few mod­ern inter­ven­tions, the view from Pont Tour­nant is most­ly unchanged.

Rather like the town of Rochefort, Cher­bourg cel­e­brates Demy’s film exten­sive­ly. A walk­ing tour is avail­able tak­ing in sev­er­al loca­tions (though notably not Guy’s final petrol sta­tion which is, if Google Street View is any­thing to go by, in a sor­ry state), and many of the main loca­tions used are marked with spe­cial plaques.

Though sev­er­al of these loca­tions were vis­it­ed, the oth­er I chose to pho­to­graph was the main shop used through­out the film. We first see the shop at night, the street’s cob­bles lit with an allur­ing array of colours reflect­ing the sheen of the fall­en rain. Lat­er we see it in the day­time, still colour­ful as its vibrant inte­ri­ors beam out of the building’s vast windows.

The build­ing is still there today on Rue du Port, a minute from where Demy shot the open­ing dock­land visu­al. The road itself is seen through­out the film too, espe­cial­ly in the scenes of the town’s car­ni­val snaking through the cen­tre. The shop today sells crafts rather than umbrel­las but is named in hon­our of the film all the same. A small music box that chimes a tune when turn­ing its han­dle is also housed on the near­by wall though whether the music it plays is one of Michel Legrand’s many themes from the film is dif­fi­cult to tell.

Cher­bourg has undoubt­ed­ly changed a great deal since Demy filmed there. While its cen­tre has retained much of its orig­i­nal char­ac­ter, the views from the edges of the loca­tions reveal vast new builds on the sky­line, incred­i­bly busy roads and derelict con­crete shells of build­ings left to decay. The Umbrel­las of Cher­bourg ulti­mate­ly acts as a time cap­sule for when the city retained a sense of fairy tale; echoes of old Hol­ly­wood musi­cals still ring­ing between the cobbles.