1964 Cannes Winner Available On Home Video

A fully restored, digitally remastered version of director Jacques Demy’s 1964 classic “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” became available recently on home video.

The film won the Cannes Film Festival’s Grand Prize, the Palme d’Or, and introduced the beautiful, 20-year-old Catherine Deneuve.

The score for the French homage to musicals was written by Michel Legrand, an Oscar winner whose score for the film - in which all the dialogue is sung - includes “I Will Wait for You,” nominated for an Oscar.

This story of a doomed romance became one of the top-grossing French films ever, but it did not reach the American audience as Demy intended. In those years, most prints of foreign films were poorly made copies.

This remastered version had a theatrical revival in the United States last year. It is now available on home video in the full splendor of its vibrantly colorful set design, mixed with a rich, jazzy score as Demy had originally planned.

The film received much acclaim from critics both in 1964 and last year. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert said, “If you don’t have a theater in your town playing it, build one.”

The Fox Lorber video, priced at $79.98, comes in French with English subtitles in yellow.

Vintage film releases abound. Last week MGM/UA added eight titles to its $19.98 Vintage Classics series: “Lilies Of the Field” (1963); “Little Caesar” (1930); “The Maltese Falcon” (1941); “Paths of Glory” (1957); “The Petrified Forest” (1936); “They Died With Their Boots On” (1941); “Thunder Road” (1958); and “The Train” (1965).

On Tuesday, MGM/UA releases a $14.98 version of “Rain Man” (1988), starring Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise.

Paramount Home Video recently released three Richard Gere films, all at $14.95: “Primal Fear”; “Intersection”; and “Looking for Mr. Goodbar.”