He Knows This Nose: Gerard Depardieu In `Cyrano De Bergerac'

Although Gerard Depardieu took this year's Cannes Film Festival best-actor prize for his performance in the lavish new French-language remake of ``Cyrano de Bergerac,'' he doesn't regard the role of the poet-swordsman with the proboscis all that much of a stretch.

``The makeup was not difficult, because I have a big nose already,'' he said with a laugh. ``And Cyrano is someone who resembles me, someone who tries to love. He's so like an adolescent, like us all. He cares about the love of his life.

``It is difficult to duel while doing verse, though,'' he added. ``The physical things were the most difficult during the 13-week shooting schedule.''

Talking by phone from Los Angeles, Depardieu spoke some English but conveyed most of his thoughts through a translator.

``I first saw `Cyrano' on the stage two years before I made the movie,'' he said. ``I had never seen it on film or stage before, although I did eventually see a very boring television version. This film really moves.''

Last year he met Jose Ferrer, who won an Oscar for the role 40 years ago and told Depardieu he'd done Cyrano 500 times. Ferrer also played the role in Abel Gance's 1964 film, ``Cyrano et d'Artagnan,'' but neither Depardieu nor his director, Jean-Paul Rappeneau, cared for that version. The Edmond Rostand play, written in 1870, has been filmed several times since 1909.

Depardieu regards the 1987 Steve Martin update, ``Roxanne'' - which is set in Washington state - as a different thing altogether: ``It really has nothing to do with this, although it proves how universal the role is, like Hamlet. Whatever language it's in, you understand it.''

Produced for $20 million, this ``Cyrano'' is the most expensive single French-language film to date, although it cost a bit more to create Claude Berri's two-part, four-hour production, ``Jean de Florette'' and ``Manon of the Spring'' - the first half of which also starred Depardieu.

It began five years ago as a much less ambitious production. Rappeneau changed all that when he suggested Depardieu and a larger scale. The first producers fell out, unable to come up with the money, and new financing was arranged two years ago.

``When it was offered to me, I was very surprised,'' said Rappeneau, also speaking through a translator from L.A. ``It's such a big theatrical piece, I wondered how it would translate. I hesitated a lot before I decided. I studied the play, wrote a first draft, and while writing it I started to see it as a movie: every visual, like an opera, and that's expensive.

``I saw every `Cyrano' ever made, including the silent versions, and I wasn't happy with any of them,'' he said. ``This pushed me into making it. It had to be done. The others were all like taped plays, and the Gance movie wasn't Cyrano's movie. It was the same character and actor, but it was just a gimmick.''

In all, he looked at seven movies plus various television productions. About the same time he was doing his research, ``Roxanne'' came out. While he thought Steve Martin was funny, he was put off by the fact that Martin's Cyrano ends up sleeping with Roxanne.

``That's a violation of the story, which is about two people walking next to each other through life and not touching except in death. I wanted to deal with the drama of the story, the personal tragedy these two people have.''

Eventually he hired Anthony Burgess, who had done a very modern adaptation of Rostand's play for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Burgess ended up doing the English subtitles for Rappeneau's film. The final credit for the script, however, goes to Rappeneau and Jean-Claude Carriere.

``We changed the original play a lot, but we're really proud of the changes because they're all very subtle,'' said Rappeneau. ``Even in France, where everyone knows the play, no one noticed because we kept the spirit of it. People don't go to movies with scripts in their hands, and they were captivated by the visuals.''

He immediately thought of Depardieu as the only actor who could do the role justice: ``Cyrano has a killer instinct, he's strong but he has a secret wound inside himself. The real Cyrano never had a nose like Steve Martin's, so we took a mold of Depardieu's face and added a little tip. His problem is inside himself, a fantasy he's built around himself for no reason. The real problem is not the nose. He's afraid of love.''

For the key roles of Roxanne and her lover, Christian, Rappeneau had a tougher time finding the right actors: ``In the other films, Christian and Roxanne are forgotten. They're just the background for Cyrano's one-man show - especially Christian - and I didn't want to do that. I spent four months to find the best actors that age, looking at auditions and videotapes of young stage actors.''

He's delighted with his final selections. Roxanne (spelled Roxane by Rostand) is played by Anne Brochet, a 24-year-old actress who made her film debut in Claude Chabrol's ``Masques.'' Vincent Perez, the final choice for Christian, recently played the title role in Ettore Scola's ``Capitan Fracasse.''

For Rappeneau, ``Cyrano'' marks his first big break with American audiences. He has directed several films since 1966, including ``La Vie du Chateau,'' with Philippe Noiret and Catherine Deneuve, which played a few American art houses as ``A Matter of Resistance'' in the late 1960s. But ``Cyrano'' is this year's French entry in the U.S. Academy Awards, and it's a good bet to take the Oscar for best foreign film.

Depardieu could also end up with his first Academy Award nomination for best actor. The Academy tends to favor foreign actors in classical roles, such as Kenneth Branagh's ``Henry V'' last year.

Its release comes at a time when Depardieu is making a major career move into Hollywood movies. Although the actor has become a fixture of European cinema since his 1965 debut in a short called ``The Beatnik,'' it has taken him a quarter of a century to make his English-language debut in the United States.

His first truly American movie is ``The Green Card,'' Peter Weir's first film since ``Dead Poets Society.'' It's the story of an immigrant and an American female who get married for a green card. Like ``Cyrano,'' it opens in Los Angeles next week, just in time for Oscar qualification.