The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (The Criterion Collection)

This dazzling new release—The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (The Criterion Collection) in stunning 4K UHD—is poised to be an absolute feast for the senses, especially when unleashed on a massive screen at home. Prepare for your retinas to be serenaded. The meticulous restoration elevates Jacques Demy’s kaleidoscopic vision to levels that might make even a peacock blush with inadequacy.

Far from a mere curiosity, this cinematic confection—equal parts romantic tragedy and musical reverie—has now been polished to such vivid clarity that you can practically count the raindrops as they shimmer on pastel cobblestones. Every frame is a masterclass in color theory; every note of Michel Legrand’s lush score floats like velvet through the air. What was once described as a “bagatelle” of color and music now feels more like a supernova of visual and auditory indulgence—a symphonic sugar rush for cinephiles.

Whether you’re revisiting this French New Wave gem or discovering it for the first time, watching it in 4K is less like watching a movie and more like stepping into a surrealist oil painting that sings to you. Bonus weird fact: Cherbourg, the town in which the story unfolds, was once bombed heavily in WWII—but in this film, it becomes a dreamy bubble of emotion and eyeliner where even heartbreak is choreographed in Technicolor.

But here’s where the story gets stranger than fiction. As Guy is whisked away to fight in the Algerian War—a conflict that, incidentally, involved compulsory military service so confusing even Charles de Gaulle had a headache—their romance is suspended like raindrops in midair. There are no spoken lines; everything is sung. Every. Single. Word. From buying an umbrella to getting your heart shattered, it’s all filtered through the melodic genius of Michel Legrand’s swoon-inducing score.

Behold a curious cinematic anomaly that defies convention and logic—The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a film so luminously odd it might’ve been beamed in from a pastel-tinted alternate universe. This is the movie that rocketed the ethereal Catherine Deneuve, whose bone structure could probably chisel marble, into the pantheon of screen legends. At just 20 years old, Deneuve embodied Geneviève, the porcelain-doll daughter of an umbrella shop owner, who floats through the film with the weightless wonder of first love. Her beau? A dashing auto mechanic named Guy, played with quiet intensity by Nino Castelnuovo, whose performance is so sincere you almost forget his job is to fix carburetors, not break hearts.

The entire film is awash in colors so vivid it could give a Skittles factory an inferiority complex. Walls are painted in saturated purples, greens, and yellows—colors that would never coexist in real life unless you were hallucinating in a candy store. Jacques Demy, the mad musical magician behind it all, turned a rainy seaside town into a Technicolor dreamscape where melancholy and magic waltz together.

A lesser-known fact? Deneuve was reportedly so shy during filming that she barely spoke off-camera—ironic, considering she sings all of her dialogue on it (albeit dubbed by another vocalist). Also, the film’s structure mimics opera more than musical theater, a choice so bold that early audiences didn’t know whether to applaud or blink in confusion.

In the pantheon of film musicals, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg stands alone: an achingly bittersweet, candy-coated fever dream with the emotional punch of a sledgehammer wrapped in chiffon.