Cyrano de Bergerac (1923)

Cyrano de Begerac is joyous, witty, a poet, a leader and filled with plenty of charisma and bravado in 17th Century France. He has only one flaw: an unusually long nose which makes him ... See full summary »

Director:

Augusto Genina

Writers:

Mario Camerini, Edmond Rostand (play)

Stars:

Pierre Magnier, Linda Moglia, Angelo Ferrari

Cast

Credited cast:
Pierre Magnier	...	Cirano di Bergerac (Cyrano de Bergerac)
Linda Moglia	...	Roxana (Roxane)
Angelo Ferrari	...	Baron Christian de Neuvillette
Maurice Schutz	...	Le Bret (as Schutz)
Alex Bernard	...	Ragueneau
Umberto Casilini	...	Guiche
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Gemma De Sanctis
Roberto Parisini

Storyline

Cyrano de Begerac is joyous, witty, a poet, a leader and filled with plenty of charisma and bravado in 17th Century France. He has only one flaw: an unusually long nose which makes him unattractive to any woman. Thus, he cannot have the woman he loves, his cousin Roxanne. Roxanne loves an officer in his army who gets tongue-tied in front of women. Who will Roxanne love? Will Cyrano ever find love? Or will he find happiness in helping the officer woo Roxanne? This is a story of split personalities, human frailty and unrequited love.

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Plot Keywords:

love | 17th century | unrequited love | poet | nose | 

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Taglines:

Edmond Rostand's immortal love drama.

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Genres:

Drama | Romance | War

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Certificate:

TV-G

Details

Country:

Italy France

Release Date:

18 January 1924 (France)

Also Known As:

Cyrano de Bergerac

Company Credits

Production Co:

Augusto Genina, Film Extra, Unione Cinematografica Italiana

Technical Specs

Runtime:

113 min (1999 alternate)

Sound Mix:

Silent

Color:

Color (hand-colored)

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The play was inspired by a real person, Cyrano de Bergerac, Savinen (1619 - 1655), an author known for his swordsmanship and large nose.

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Alternate Versions

In 1999, Film Preservation Associates copyrighted a 113-minute version with a new score written by Kurt Kuenne, performed by The Olympia Chamber Orchestra and conducted by 'Timothy Brock'.

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Connections

Version of Cyrano de Bergerac (2005)

User Reviews

Here's a museum piece of the silent screen, not at all hard to watch!

Although I am a dedicated watcher of old movies, including silents, I must confess some are more of a trial than a pleasure. But that is certainly not the case with this 1925 Italian produced silent film of Rostand's famous play. Sure, doing a silent version of a very talky play like CYRANO DE BERGERAC presents considerable problems for the director. Here, they are partly solved by very frequent, some might think incessant, title cards, presented simultaneously in Spanish and English. The bilingual presentation suggests that the single surviving copy which provided this restoration was probably an export print.

For the silent era, the acting here is rather restrained, suggesting that maybe the cast were stage trained people. Since I presume almost everyone knows the "Cyrano" story, I'll skip over any synopsis attempt, and comment upon what for me was the most intriguing aspect of the film. I refer to the colour process used. It was called the "Pathe Stencil Process", and I confess to an imperfect understanding of exactly how it was worked. It appears that individual frames were projected on ground glass slides, hand coloured by artists, and these plates then used to produce the individual "colour" frames in the final print. This was a painfully slow process. Witness that the film was started in 1922, and release prints were not available until 1925.

If you find the editing choppy at times, probably the blame lies on how exhibitors handled the single surviving print when it was in general release. In those days, it was not uncommon for an exhibitor to edit out portions of a film which he did not like, or perhaps to simply shorten the film. See, the shorter the film, the more audiences you could run by it. Anyway, this old film is worth a look. The hand colouring is used mostly on the costumes, sometimes on faces and backgrounds. The idea, perhaps, was to recreate the feeling of old paintings, not real life colour. Note that in the period 1922 to 1925, the 2-strip Technicolor process was under development, and might have been available to the producers for testing or use. In any case, they didn't use it, and we have something unique as a result.