Cyrano Costume Designer Reveals the Film’s Biggest Challenges

This story concerning the “Cyrano” costume design first appeared within the Under-the-Line Subject of TheWrap’s awards journal.

The true Cyrano de Bergerac lived in France within the seventeenth century, and the Edmond Rostand play that immortalized him begins in 1640. However director Joe Wright made a acutely aware choice to maneuver the motion up a century for his new musical “Cyrano,” which stars Peter Dinklage because the poetic swashbuckler.

“The thought was to re-create Cyrano across the mid-1700s to offer the thought of lightness by the costumes,” costume designer Massimo Cantini Parrini stated. “The 1600s, whereas a good looking interval to characterize, could be very set and inflexible. Setting a musical within the 1700s allowed us to make the whole lot gentle and ethereal on the similar time.”

Parrini achieved that lightness through the use of delicate and clear materials impressed by watercolors from the 1700s that he’d seen in a museum in Rome. “The colours have been so watery and ethereal that I wished to re-create them by the costumes, utilizing extra materials one on prime of the opposite, with totally different colours,” he stated.

He labored with pure fibers similar to silk and linen, together with materials like organza which might be “delicate however full-bodied on the similar time.” He added, “For me, it is extremely necessary to keep up the factors of the costume itself whereas capturing the essence of the historic interval that I’ve to characterize.”

However Parrini sometimes used costumes that weren’t strictly correct to the interval. “Bringing modernity to a historic language is essential for understanding the costumes,” he stated. “It is crucial for me that the costume is known even by an viewers that is aware of nothing of the previous.”

He additionally wanted to concentrate to the requirement that costumes would wish to maneuver with actors who all of a sudden became dancers. “I loved utilizing supplies that aided me in creating motion,” he stated. “For instance, it was fantastic to see the troopers of their inflexible uniforms all of a sudden turn out to be gentle as air in the course of the dance sequences.”

His favourite articles of clothes, although, have been those he designed for Ben Mendelsohn’s villain, De Guiche, whereas probably the most difficult designs have been for the nuns in a convent the place Cyrano’s longtime secret love, Roxanne, lives after her husband is killed in battle. (Costumes for Roxanne, performed by Haley Bennett, have been designed by Jacqueline Durran.)

“The nuns’ costumes have been very troublesome as a result of I used to be searching for modernity and antiquity on the similar time—they brought about me quite a lot of struggling!” he stated. “The result’s lovely, although, as a result of the nuns are ‘aliens’ of the 1700s, sustaining an authority that the clergy requires.”

Learn extra from the Under-the-Line Subject right here.