Music
The continuous music score and the colour photography had much to do with the popularity of this film. Formally the work is operatic, with the plot advanced entirely through dialogue sung with accompanying music. The color photography is bright and vivid: and the whole is united by an orchestral score of simple but sincere rhythms and tunes that permeate continuously a story of events lasting at least five years.
The actors' voices were dubbed for the songs in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg:
- Danielle Licari: Geneviève Emery
- José Bartel: Guy Foucher
- Christiane Legrand: Madame Emery
- Georges Blaness: Roland Cassard
- Claudine Meunier: Madeleine
- Claire Leclerc: Aunt Élise
The film score established composer Michel Legrand's reputation in Hollywood, where he later scored other films, winning three Oscars. In North America, two of the film's songs became hits and were recorded by many artists: "I Will Wait For You" (the main theme) and "Watch What Happens" (originally "Recit de Cassard" "Cassard's Story"). Both were given new English lyrics by lyricist Norman Gimbel. Tony Bennett's classic performance of the theme song was added to one version of the soundtrack CD.
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Famous quotes containing the word music:
“Let us describe the education of our men.... What then is the education to be? Perhaps we could hardly find a better than that which the experience of the past has already discovered, which consists, I believe, in gymnastic, for the body, and music for the mind.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“The time was once, when thou unurged wouldst vow
That never words were music to thine ear,
That never object pleasing in thine eye,
That never touch well welcome to thy hand,
That never meat sweet-savored in thy taste,
Unless I spake, or looked, or touched, or carved to thee.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Have you ever been up in your plane at night, alone, somewhere, 20,000 feet above the ocean?... Did you ever hear music up there?... It’s the music a man’s spirit sings to his heart, when the earth’s far away and there isn’t any more fear. It’s the high, fine, beautiful sound of an earth-bound creature who grew wings and flew up high and looked straight into the face of the future. And caught, just for an instant, the unbelievable vision of a free man in a free world.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)