''Cyrano de Bergerac'' is a Franco-Italian silent

romantic drama film Romance films or movies involve romantic love stories recorded in visual media for broadcast in theatres or on television that focus on passion (emotion), passion, emotion, and the affectionate romantic involvement of the main characters. Typica ...

directed by

Augusto Genina Augusto Genina (28 January 1892 – 18 September 1957) was an Italian film pioneer. He was a movie producer and director. Biography Born in Rome, Genina was a drama critic and wrote comedies for the ''Il Mondo'' Magazine, under advise of Aldo ...

in 1922 based on the 1897 play of the same name by

Edmond Rostand Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand (, , ; 1 April 1868 – 2 December 1918) was a French poet and dramatist. He is associated with neo-romanticism and is known best for his 1897 play ''Cyrano de Bergerac''. Rostand's romantic plays contrasted with t ...

. Genina began filming in 1922, at age 30, with the help of his cousin

Mario Camerini Mario Camerini (6 February 1895 – 4 February 1981) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. The cousin of Augusto Genina, he made the most well-known films in Italy during the 1930s, most of them comedies starring Vittorio De Sica. H ...

, but its release was delayed by the colorization of the film.

Plot

As described in a film magazine reviews, Cyrano , a Frenchman celebrated as a hero, poet, and soldier, wins fear and respect because of his swordsmanship. Because of his sensitiveness of his huge nose, he keeps himself from society. He believes he is outcast from romance. When he falls in love with a young woman, Roxanne, he courts her by proxy. At last she realizes Cyrano's feelings for her. Before she has an opportunity to talk to him, he dies a death of glory.

Cast

Production

Nearly the entire film was colored using the Pathé Stencil Color process, which took three years to complete, delaying the film's release until 1925. This involved cutting

stencils Stencilling produces an image or pattern on a surface, by applying pigment to a surface through an intermediate object, with designed holes in the intermediate object, to create a pattern or image on a surface, by allowing the pigment to reach ...

for each frame of the film, one for each of up to four colors. This was done in Paris by Mme. Marie-Berthe Thuillier, the most famous stencil-color artist, by projecting each frame onto a ground glass screen, and tracing with a

Pantograph A pantograph (, from their original use for copying writing) is a mechanical linkage connected in a manner based on parallelograms so that the movement of one pen, in tracing an image, produces identical movements in a second pen. If a line dr ...

. These stencils were then used to apply colors to black-and-white prints in a process similar to silk-screening. Each shot was processed separately, so different color palettes could be used for each shot.

References

External links

* * *
''Cyrano de Bergerac'' (1925): A Silent Film Review
* * {{Authority control 1920s color films Films based on Cyrano de Bergerac (play) French silent feature films 1925 drama films 1925 films Italian silent feature films Silent films in color French drama films Italian drama films Early color films Silent drama films 1920s French films 1920s Italian films