Rappeneau has rendered all future attempts to remake Rostand's play futile. This must be the knock-out all-time version to make us forget the efforts of José Ferrer (1950) and Derek Jacoby (1985). First of all, Depardieu is the ultimate Cyrano, embracing the 17th century poet as well as the 17th century action hero. Secondly, the film is replete with unsurpassed visual splendor, and in spite of his name, the composer, Jean-Claude Petit, has made what approximates the greatest of musical scores. But most poignantly, this play MUST be done in French, in the Molière metre that Rostand so masterly copied in his old, but-not-that-old play. No translation can do justice to Cyrano's definition of a kiss as "Un point rose qu'on met sur l'i du verbe aimer" a rose-colored dot over the 'i' in the verb ... to love? (do you see what I mean?), and there's Cyrano's great goodbye to Roxane: "Grâce à vous une robe a passé dans ma vie." - thanks to you, a skirt has passed through my life," the beauty of the original poetry teetering on the brink of disaster:'a skirt'? a dame? a moll? We suddenly see Cyrano accompanied by Lauren Bacall or Gloria Grahame. I have seen the play in seven or eight different versions, but I experienced for the first time that I actually shed tears in the final scene, when Cyrano senses an august balance in his fate that consigned him to waiting in the shadow while others mounted to passion and fame his handsome young protegé, Christian, who culled the kiss from Roxanne that Cyrano so yearned for, and Molière who has stolen lines from Cyrano's unpublished poetry.
Accordingly, one can pity Rostand for never experiencing what his play could really achieve.
Accordingly, one can pity Rostand for never experiencing what his play could really achieve.