How to Catfish Your Cousin, Battle-Rap in 17th-Century French Poetry, and Win an Oscar with a Potato-Sized Prosthetic Nose
It’s 3:15 AM. My eyes feel like they’ve been rubbed with coarse sandpaper, the cold pizza on my desk is starting to look back at me, and I am currently watching a man with a prosthetic nose the size of a baking potato, wearing a cape and a floppy hat, standing in the bushes and whispering sweet, flowery poetry to his own cousin while a handsome, mouth-breathing dummy on a balcony takes all the credit.
Welcome, my friends, to the tragic, romantic, and beautifully wordy world of Edmond Rostand’s ultimate love triangle.
If you’ve never watched the 1950 version of Cyrano de Bergerac, congratulations: you’ve only watched the Steve Martin comedy (Roxanne) or the recent musical and missed out on the definitive, gold-standard adaptation. The director, Michael Gordon, and legendary producer Stanley Kramer had a simple, highly theatrical, and incredibly low-budget strategy:
- Work with a tiny budget, resulting in indoor sets that look like they were borrowed from a local high school theater production.
- Rely entirely on the complex, tongue-twisting, and highly rhythmic rhyming poetry of Edmond Rostand’s original 1897 play.
- Cast José Ferrer, let him wave a sword around, and watch him carry the entire low-budget film on his back all the way to a historic Academy Award.
The result? Cyrano de Bergerac (1950).
The “Plot” (If we can even call it that)
Cyrano de Bergerac (José Ferrer) is a brilliant swordsman, poet, and philosopher in the French army who has a nose so massive it has its own gravitational pull. Cyrano is deeply, hopelessly in love with the beautiful Roxane (Mala Powers), but is too insecure about his face to ever tell her.
Roxane, meanwhile, has fallen for Christian (William Prince), a handsome new cadet in Cyrano’s regiment. Christian is pretty, but he has the personality and verbal skills of a wet cardboard box. When Christian admits he doesn’t know how to talk to women, Cyrano makes a bizarre, self-sacrificing deal: he will write poetic, beautiful love letters to Roxane on Christian’s behalf, essentially acting as the romantic brain behind Christian’s handsome face.
It is the ultimate, heartbreaking 17th-century catfishing scheme, where Cyrano gets to express his true feelings, but Christian gets all the hugs.
Why You Need to Watch This Tonight
- The Original Tinder Scam: The famous balcony scene is a masterpiece of awkward comedy and tragedy. Watching Cyrano stand in the dark, feeding romantic lines to Christian, who just mouth-breathes and repeats them to Roxane, is the ultimate historical equivalent of using your smart friend’s bio and photos to get matches on a dating app.
- José Ferrer’s Historic Masterclass: Ferrer is absolutely spectacular. He delivers his lines with the speed, rhythm, and precision of a modern rap battle, easily dispatching insults while fighting off a hundred men with a sword. He became the first Hispanic actor in history to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, and he earned every single ounce of that gold statue.
- The “Nose” Battle-Rap: The opening sequence featuring the “Nose Monologue” is legendary. A wealthy, arrogant nobleman tries to insult Cyrano by saying: “Your nose is… very big.” Cyrano, disgusted by the lack of creativity, replies by listing twenty different, incredibly poetic, and hilarious insults about his own nose just to show the guy how bad he is at trash-talking. It is a glorious piece of writing.
- The Potato on His Face: The prosthetic nose itself is a work of art. It is bulbous, aggressively fake, and completely unconvincing in close-ups. Yet, because José Ferrer acts with such absolute passion, dignity, and tragic gravity, you completely forget about the potato on his face within ten minutes of starting the film.
The Verdict
Is it a good movie? It is an absolute masterpiece of dramatic performance. While the film’s production values are clearly low, the dialogue, the swordplay, and Ferrer’s legendary, heartbreaking performance completely transcend the cheap sets. It is funny, deeply romantic, and the final, weeping death scene under the falling autumn leaves is one of the most beautifully theatrical endings ever captured on film.
My Rating: 5 out of 5 self-deprecating nose insults delivered mid-swordfight.
Wanna see a legendary, Oscar-winning 17th-century battle-rap and romance?
Turn off your phone, dim the lights, and search for this classic 1950 drama on your favorite retro cinema platform. Because it has slipped into the public domain, you can watch José Ferrer defend his honor (and write love letters for a dummy) completely free and legally.
WATCH “CYRANO DE BERGERAC (1950)” ON YOUTUBE (Opens in a new window)]
