Jean-Paul Rappeneau's rendition of the Edmond Rostand play is a perfectly acceptable version of the piece for either someone who has never seen a production of it before or else someone who can't get enough of it. But the interest of the thing is infinitely more literary than cinematic. The English subtitles, composed by no less an eminence than Anthony Burgess, and purchasable in paperback at your local bookstore, attempt to preserve the rhythm and rhyme of the original French text ("You'll take care of him, then? You're such a dear friend"), and constitute a literary event of some magnitude. But reading these while simultaneously hearing the spoken French puts a strain on the senses: poetry must be the hardest kind of literature to read with the television on in the background. The production, to be sure, is sumptuous and fastidious, even if the photography by Pierre Lhomme partly clouds it up and blots it out. And Gerard Depardieu, the beefiest of Cyranos, plays up the physical side of the role -- the swashbuckling and the lusting -- at the price of blunting and coarsening the wit. (A wit isn't supposed to bellow.) Depardieu's emphasis is particularly helpful with the Quixotesque overtones of the closing scene. He cannot, however, help that this scene passes beyond poignance and gets dragged out, and down, into bathos. (1990) — Duncan Shepherd
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