The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

The angelically beautiful Catherine Deneuve was launched to stardom by this dazzling musical heart-tugger from Jacques Demy. She plays an umbrella-shop owner’s delicate daughter, glowing with first love for a handsome garage mechanic, played by Nino Castelnuovo. When the boy is shipped off to fight in Algeria, the two lovers must grow up quickly. Exquisitely designed in a kaleidoscope of colors, and told entirely through lilting songs by the great compo-ser Michel Legrand, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is one of the most revered and unorthodox movie musicals of all time.

France
1964
92 minutes
Color
1.85:1
French
Spine #716

Special Features

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

New 4K digital restoration, undertaken by Ciné-Tamaris and approved by Mathieu Demy, director Jacques Demy’s son, with 5.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
Alternate uncompressed monaural soundtrack
One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
Once Upon a Time . . . “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” a 2008 documentary
Interview with film scholar Rodney Hill
French television interview from 1964 featuring Jacques Demy and composer Michel Legrand discussing the film
Archival audio interviews with Legrand and actor Catherine Deneuve at the National Film Theatre in London
Demonstration of the 2013 restoration
Trailer
PLUS: An essay by critic Jim Ridley

New illustration by Michael Phillip Dunbabin

Coming soon, available May 6, 2025

4K+Blu-ray 2 Discs $39.96 SRP: $49.95

Blu‑ray 1 Disc $31.96 SRP: $39.95

Collector's Sets

Collector's Set

The Essential Jacques Demy

Blu-ray Box Set

6 Discs

$99.96

Digital Options

Watch Now On

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

New 4K digital restoration, undertaken by Ciné-Tamaris and approved by Mathieu Demy, director Jacques Demy’s son, with 5.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
Alternate uncompressed monaural soundtrack
One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
Once Upon a Time . . . “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” a 2008 documentary
Interview with film scholar Rodney Hill
French television interview from 1964 featuring Jacques Demy and composer Michel Legrand discussing the film
Archival audio interviews with Legrand and actor Catherine Deneuve at the National Film Theatre in London
Demonstration of the 2013 restoration
Trailer
PLUS: An essay by critic Jim Ridley

New illustration by Michael Phillip Dunbabin

Cast & Credits

Cast

Catherine Deneuve: Geneviève Emery
Nino Castelnuovo: Guy Foucher
Anne Vernon: Madame Emery
Marc Michel: Roland Cassard
Ellen Farner: Madeleine
Mireille Perrey: Aunt Élise

Credits

Director: Jacques Demy
Written by: Jacques Demy
Original music by: Michel Legrand
Cinematographer: Jean Rabier
Production designer: Bernard Evein
Costume designer: Jacqueline Moreau
Editor: Anne-Marie Cotret
Producer: Mag Bodard

Related Films

1/9

Trailer for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

2/9

A scene from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

3/9

4/9

5/9

6/9

7/9

8/9

9/9

Current

Jacques Demy and Michel Legrand: Partners in Song

In this 1964 television interview, Jacques Demy defends his use of wall-to-wall singing and Michel Legrand takes to the piano for a few bars from one of his most famous compositions.

Sneak Peeks — Apr 10, 2017

Jacques Demy and Nantes: The Roots of Enchantment

A friend and longtime scholar of Jacques Demy ruminates on the great director’s career, as well as the port hometown they shared—which would become a magical movie location.

By Jean-Pierre Berthomé

Essays — Jul 30, 2014

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg: A Finite Forever

Jacques Demy’s miraculous, melancholy musical is the rare film to use pastiche and artifice to go straight for the heart.

By Jim Ridley

Essays — Jul 23, 2014

Demy Monde

Film scholar James Quandt created a nearly hour-long visual essay for our new collector’s set The Essential Jacques Demy. Titled Jacques Demy, A to Z, it elaborates on twenty-six concepts important to understanding the cinema of this singular filmm…

Visual Analysis — Aug 5, 2014

Restoration Spotlight

Restoring The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

The following short program, which also appears as a supplement in our new box set The Essential Jacques Demy, gives viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the painstaking 2013 digital restoration of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which brought the…

Tech Corner — Jul 21, 2014

Davy Chou’s Top 10

The director of Return to Seoul expresses what he values most in cinema through this selection of ten favorite films.

— Mar 13, 2023

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Top 10

The Nobel Prize–winning novelist shares a list of films that illuminate his artistic sensibility, including one British classic that inspired him to write his masterpiece The Remains of the Day.

— Jan 6, 2023

Explore

Catherine Deneuve

Actor

One of cinema’s great beauties, Catherine Deneuve (born Catherine Dorléac in Paris in 1943) is also an icon of the transformative cinematic 1960s. The daughter of two actors and the sister of three (one of whom, Françoise Dorléac, died in a car crash in 1967), Deneuve has acting in her blood. After her major breakthrough in Jacques Demy’s poignant 1964 musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Deneuve continued to prove she was more than just a pretty face in Roman Polanski’s thriller Repulsion and Luis Buñuel’s surreal erotic daydream Belle de jour. Those films may exploit Deneuve’s crystalline loveliness for its seeming inscrutability, but her portrayals of sexual repression in both (and her shocking embodiment of schizophrenia in the former) make for two of the most vivid performances of the era. Those roles set her on the path to becoming a full-fledged movie star, and she went on to act for François Truffaut, Alain Cavalier, Marco Ferreri, and Jean-Pierre Melville. Her performances have grown richer as she’s aged; today, she is a true grand dame of the cinema, and her compellingly enigmatic looks—once interpreted as fragile—have taken on a mature imperiousness, as evidenced in such films as Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale (in which she costars with her daughter with Marcello Mastroianni, Chiara Mastroianni).