Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
1964 · Jacques Demy · The Umbrellas of Cherbourg on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Listen for every line being sung, even the most mundane request. (sound)
There is no spoken dialogue anywhere in the film; declarations of love and requests for gasoline are both delivered as song.
Payoff: Once nothing is ever just said, the singing stops feeling strange and becomes the film's only reality. In the reading: pure optical & sound situations (sonsign). The reading calls this a sonsign: a pure sound situation you can only listen to, one that never resolves into ordinary speech.
Watch Genevieve's clothes match the wallpaper behind her. (light)
Rabier and Demy repaint walls and coordinate costume and decor so color rhymes across every frame of the shop and street.
Payoff: The whole town looks like it is feeling something, before any character says a word. In the reading: affective color. The reading calls this an affective color: a palette that absorbs the feeling of a scene, not just describes the place.
Watch the camera glide beside people instead of cutting to follow them. (camera)
Rabier's camera moves in long lateral tracks through shops and streets, craning and floating rather than cutting between positions.
Payoff: Even an ordinary errand gets treated with the same continuous lyricism as a love scene.
Watch Deneuve's face for what changes without her saying anything. (performance)
Freed from the work of speaking her own lines aloud, her expression carries desire, fear, and worry with unusual clarity.
Payoff: Her face is doing work the singing voice, dubbed by someone else, cannot do for her.
Watch the opening overhead shot of umbrellas crossing the square. (staging)
The camera looks straight down on a rain-slicked square as umbrellas bloom and slide past each other to the score.
Payoff: In one shot the film tells you its whole method: ordinary life arranged as pattern and weather turned into choreography.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Listen for the singing, not the words. Nothing here is ever just spoken.