Reviews

"Cyrano de Bergerac" is a great baroque fresco. The opening in the theater, the fight of Cyrano against one hundred killers, the cadets marching in the night streets towards the war, the siege of Arras, all looks like some big Baroque painting. Director Rappaneau has defintely documented himself very well (probably using as reference the great painters of that period: on how people lived and died during the Thirty Years War: the people pillaging the heaps of dead, the Spanish soldiers praying before the attack, the coming of the Spanish across the wheat field towards the French stronghold. The attack scene is one of the most realistic ever made: with the sky covered by the smoke of the guns, the peasants forced by the soldiers to fill the creek with faggots of wood, so to allow them to cross, the following "melée" is highly realistic, one can almost smell the taste of blood and smoke. The costumes are perfect, so is the scenery. Gerard Depardieu is immense, he fills the screen, showing a character full of dignity and of courage, but permeated of gloominess for the love not reciprocated by the beautiful cousin.

After many years I have seen a wonderful epic history. In this picture, made in beautiful landscapes, men of courage fight an die for helping some peoples who cannot defend themselves. It is from the times of El Cid, Fall of the Roman Empire,and 100 Cavalieri that I did not see a story who kept and my sons over our chairs to see the epic of these men. Obviously the picture remind Beowulf, The Lord of Ring and Prince Valiant. But it is wonderful. No useless naked women (I have nothing against naked woman (possibly beautiful) but in pictures of this kind they have no citizenship) no SOB and others words of that kind repeated hundred of times. Everybody of us has thought once in his life how could be beautiful to fight bearing a sword in a field of wheat against monster and bad ones. Thank to John McTiernan, Michael Crichton and William Wisher jr. one can enjoy two hours without no problem, no bill to pay, no pollution problem, etc. We return to the times when we were little and our grandma tell us the story of the hero fighting against the dragon for the love of the princess. In this picture we have no princess, only fighting men against the BAD ONES.

This movie is the masterpiece of Roberto Rossellini, more than Roma città aperta. I was eleven when this story happened, I saw the Nazi troop burn the little town where I lived, I saw my mother kneeling and begging a Nazi soldier not to kill us, and I saw the German saying You bastard italian, alles kaputt. All the stories of this movie are true, the little boy who is alone in Napoli, the Roman girl who loves the GI arrived and after became a bitch (is more difficult to win the peace than the war), the story in Florence, you think to be in August 44, the British officer who speakes of the poor jerries that destroys all the world around them, the execution of the fascist sniper, peoples running in the Gallery of Uffizi. But the most moving is the final episode,one can feel the fear, the smell of death, the courage of the partisans and of the O.S.S., Popsky army and San Marco men. Now, when many people has forgotten the horror of war, the cruelty of men, the courage of few, this picture should be projected as a memory of things that we don want to see anymore. My name is Bruno Signorelli, I am 67 and I have seen what means the war, especially the guerrilla war.