Cyrano De Bergerac | 1990
- DIRECTOR |
- Jean-Paul Rappeneau
Lavishly filmed version of Edmond Rostand's verse drama – the precursor of all Hollywood weepies – with Gerard Depardieu in excellent form as the poet-swordsman afraid to declare his love because of his spectacularly outsized nose.
The studio filming was in Budapest, Hungary with practical locations in various historic towns around France (although the 'Battle of Arras' was staged on land on the outskirts of Budapest).
The town on the river, where Cyrano first reveals his feelings for Roxane (Anne Brochet), is Moret-sur-Loing, in the Seine-et-Marne department located at the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It's less than an hour from Paris Gare de Lyon to Gare de Moret-Veneux-les-Sablons, the nearest train station, a 20-minute walk from the town.
Long before being discovered by film Location Managers, the town was a source of visual inspiration for impressionist painters Monet, Renoir, and especially Alfred Sisley, who lived here until his death in 1899.
The streets in which Cyrano acts mad and stalks De Guiche (Jacques Weber) is Le Mans (home of the 24-hour Grand Prix), 125 miles southwest of Paris on the River Sarthe in the Loire Valley.
The Gothic walls and flying buttresses in the background are the superb Medieval Cathedral of Saint-Julien.
De Guiche informs Roxane that Christian (Vincent Perez) is leaving for the war on Place Aux Herbes in Uzès, a commune in the Occitanie region about 16 miles north-northeast of Nîmes.
The abbey where the dying Cyrano is finally reunited with Roxane is Abbaye de Fontenay, three miles north of the little industrial town of Montbard, northwest of Dijon, Northern Burgundy. Founded by St Bernard in 1118, the abbey was turned into a paper mill during the Revolution but restored in 1906 and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and open to visitors the year round (there's an admission fee and guided tours in French only).
You can take the train from Paris Gare de Lyon to Montbard Station (just over an hour), and the Abbey is about three miles to the northwest.
