Towner Cine Club: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Towner Cine Club is a chance for you to catch classic films back on the big screen, all presented with an introduction by Henry Jordan. Whether it’s arthouse oddities, cult classics, old favourites or new discoveries, we’ll be showing something exciting every month at Towner Cinema.

Henry Jordan works at Towner as a Duty Manager and helps with the day-to-day operations of the cinema, as well as hosting Towner Cine Club. He studied English and Film Studies at University of Exeter, which included a study abroad year that he took at University of South Florida in Tampa, USA. During Henry’s time at university, he discovered his core fields of interest, among them para-cinema, surrealism and anti-literature.

Before Towner, Henry worked at the Arts Picturehouse in Cambridge, where he was a regular host for their sell out quiz nights and hosted a Q&A with Dame Pippa Harris for her film Empire of Light. He also was a regular on the Cambridge Film Show, has been published in The Quietus and still writes for The Quite Nerdy Blog, his blog about pop culture that has been running since 2014.

Jacques Demy’s all-sung tale of first love is a ravishing mix of music, romance and cinematic invention.

Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve) is in love with mechanic Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), but her mother (Anne Vernon) has other ideas. Her umbrella shop isn’t doing well; besides, there’s the war in Algeria to worry about… 

In Demy’s bittersweet classic, Michel Legrand’s achingly lovely score, the vibrant pastels of Bernard Evein’s art direction, Jean Rabier’s elegant, fluid camerawork and the rhapsodic performances are brought together to turn an unusually sombre – even dark – storyline into an enchanting fairy tale that muses wisely and movingly on the workings of fate.

"Though often paid homage to, if you haven’t seen The Umbrellas of Cherbourg then you have simply never seen anything that looks, sounds or feels quite like it."