Roxanne

A modern adaptation of the play Cyrano de Bergerac. C. D. is the fire chief of a small mountain town. Clever, quick and well liked; his only problem is an extremely large nose. An astronomer named Roxanne arrives in town and he falls in love with her. But Roxanne likes Chris, the handsome new man at the fire station. And Chris cannot talk. An arrangement is made: C. D. will write the words and Chris will say them. The best-known passage takes place in a bar. Someone mocks C. D. about his nose and he produces twenty insults on the spot; the scene is the direct equivalent of the famous passage in the play. Steve Martin wrote the screenplay and plays the lead. The makeup took hours every day. The real difference in the adaptation is the ending: the play ends tragically, the film does not. Daryl Hannah plays Roxanne. Fred Schepisi directed. One of the best-loved examples of its kind for anyone who likes adaptations of classics and verbal humour. For a viewer looking for fidelity to the play, the film turns the register entirely to comedy and removes the tragic dimension.