The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
French theatrical release poster
French	Les Parapluies de Cherbourg
Directed by	Jacques Demy
Written by	Jacques Demy
Produced by	Mag Bodard
Starring	Catherine Deneuve Anne Vernon Nino Castelnuovo Marc Michel
Cinematography	Jean Rabier
Edited by	Anne-Marie Cotret Monique Teisseire
Music by	Michel Legrand
Production companies	Parc Film Madeleine Films Beta Film GmbH
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release dates	19 February 1964 (1964-02-19) (France) 12 November 1965 (1965-11-12) (West Germany)
Running time	91 minutes
Countries	France West Germany
Language	French
Box office	$7.6 million[1]

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (French: Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) is a 1964 musical romantic drama film written and directed by Jacques Demy, with music by Michel Legrand. Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo star as two young lovers in the French city of Cherbourg, separated by circumstance. The film's dialogue is entirely sung as recitative, including casual conversation, and is sung-through, or through-composed, like some operas and stage musicals.^[2] It has been seen as the second of an informal tetralogy of Demy films that share some of the same actors, characters, and overall atmosphere of romantic melancholy, coming after Lola (1961) and before The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) and Model Shop (1969). The French-language film was a co-production between France and West Germany.^[3]

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg won the Palme d'Or at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival. In the United States, it was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Foreign-Language Film, Best Original Screenplay (Demy), and Best Original Score (Demy and Legrand). The film's main theme, "I Will Wait for You", was nominated for Best Original Song. It was later adapted into an English-language stage musical.

In 2018, a BBC Culture critics' poll ranked the film in the Top 100 Greatest Non-English Films of All Time.^[4]