Roxanne is a comedy film released in 1987, starring Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah. It is a modern retelling of the verse play Cyrano de Bergerac, written in 1897 by French author Edmond Rostand. The screenplay was written by Martin.
With L.A. Story and A Simple Twist of Fate, this forms the first installment of a loose trilogy of films written by Martin about love.[original research?] It was also released on Blu-ray disc on May 5, 2009.
Plot summary
In the film, Martin plays C.D. Bales, the fire chief in a small American town in the Pacific Northwest. (Note that C.D. Bales' initials match those of Cyrano de Bergerac.) Bales is witty, acrobatic, and skilled at many things, but he has a very large nose about which he is violently sensitive. He loves the beautiful astronomer, Roxanne Kowalski (Hannah), but she is infatuated with Chris (Rick Rossovich), a handsome but dim fireman. As in the play, Bales is touchy about his perceived ugliness (which he cannot get surgically altered because of a dangerous allergy to anesthetics) and speaks to the object of adoration the only way he can: he writes expressions of love in letter form and allows Chris to present them to Roxanne as if they were his own.
In the end Roxanne receives a letter from Chris telling her that he has left her for another woman. Dixie reveals that the letters that Roxanne thought were written by Chris were indeed truly being written for her by C.D. Bales. When C.D. arrives at her home she confonts him on the subject. C.D. and Roxanne then end up in an argument, she claiming that he was deceiving her and leading her on, while C.D. says that she wanted the perfect man, who was both emotionally and physically beautiful.
In the end C.D. and Roxanne forgive one another and Roxanne confesses her love for C.D. and his characteristic nose. She says that flat nosed people are too boring and bland, and that his nose gives him character.
In the end we see C.D. and Roxanne sitting on the roof of her house, gazing happily at the stars, the comet she has recently discovered clearly visible.
Among the side plots in the movie are: C.D. dealing with the incompetence of his volunteer firemen (whom Chris was brought in to help train), an insult fight between C.D. and a barfly, the appearance of a new comet which Roxanne came to observe, and a cafe owner (Shelley Duvall) who is a friend of both C.D. and Roxanne.
Cast
Production
The movie was filmed in the summer of 1986 in the town of Nelson, British Columbia. Steve Martin chose to use the local fire hall on Baker Street as a primary set.
Critical reception
This film is number 71 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".
It also currently holds a 88% (out of a 100%) on Rotten Tomatoes.
"Though its sweetness borders on sappiness, Roxanne is an unabashedly romantic comedy that remains one of Steve Martin's funniest."-Rottentomatoes.com Consensus on Roxanne
Roger Eberthailed the film as a, "gentle, whimsical comedy", giving it a 3.5/4, saying,
"What makes "Roxanne" so wonderful is not this fairly straightforward comedy, however, but the way the movie creates a certain ineffable spirit."-Roger Ebert
It has also won and been nominated for a number of Awards, including:
References to de Bergerac
The historical Cyrano de Bergerac wrote of a journey to the moon and to the Sun, and Roxanne alludes to this in a scene where C.D. jokes about UFOs and aliens.
Syndication
In the insult fight scene, C.D. had to come up with twenty unique nose jokes. When C.D. called for a count of jokes in the middle, one of his men said that he was up to 14 jokes; he actually had said 19 at that point. But C.D. did come up with six more anyway, making the actual number of jokes on screen 25. Usually one joke is moved to the end when the movie is put in syndication[citation needed], covering the final joke: "Dirty: Your name wouldn't happen to be 'Dick', would it?"
See also
External links
