 When I first saw Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg about ten years ago, I was blown away. So much about the movie transfixed me — the glorious Michel Legrand song score, the candy-colored visuals, and of course Catherine Deneuve as Genevieve, the picture-perfect embodiment of innocence, and later, of innocence lost. But one aspect of the film I wasn’t sure of was the jewelry salesman Roland Cassard, played by Marc Michel. After Genevieve’s boyfriend Guy is drafted to fight in Algeria and Genevieve discovers she’s pregnant with his child, Roland proposes marriage to her despite her pregnancy, and after some pressure from her mother she eventually accepts.
One moment involving Roland that I’ve always loved comes when he first asks Genevieve’s mother for her daughter’s hand. As Roland sings a song about his first love, Lola, who spurned him for another man, Demy cuts to a shot in which the camera dollies around a promenade with a balcony. The first time I saw The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, I assumed it was a stand-alone story, and so I interpreted this shot simply as a poetic image to accompany the story Roland tells.
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