Jean-Paul Rappeneau, director of Cyrano de Bergerac and The Horseman on the Roof, dies at 94

Jean-Paul Rappeneau, the filmmaker behind Cyrano de Bergerac and The Horseman on the Roof, has died at the age of 94. He leaves French cinema a small but prestigious body of work, praised for its elegance, energy and openly romantic spirit.

Rappeneau made only eight films over five decades, but each title left a mark. His filmography included The Castle of My Mother, Beautiful Families, Cyrano de Bergerac and The Horseman on the Roof. His films carried a distinctive visual signature, filled with movement, expansive settings and a taste for spectacle.

“There must be visual splendor,” was Rappeneau’s favorite way of describing the cinema he admired. He wanted scale, space for light to play across the image, natural landscapes, houses that seemed endless to cross and characters constantly in motion.

That vision stood apart from the French New Wave. It reflected instead the pleasures of his youth as a reader and moviegoer: traveling through the worlds of Jules Verne, crossing swords with Alexandre Dumas and discovering cinema through Errol Flynn’s energetic performance in The Adventures of Robin Hood. Rappeneau also valued major stars and highly skilled technicians.

The result was a body of films that favored color, movement and literary adventure. Though limited in number, his films gave French cinema a style the publication describes as elegant, richly textured and joyfully romantic.

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There must be visual splendor.