"[6][7] In seventeenth-century Paris, poet and supreme swordsman Cyrano de Bergerac (José Ferrer) stops a play from being shown because he ostensibly cannot stand the bombastic style of the principal actor, Montfleury (Arthur Blake).

An annoyed aristocratic fop, the Vicomte de Valvert (Albert Cavens), provokes him into a duel by tritely insulting Cyrano's enormous nose.

When Le Bret presses him to reveal the real reason he hates Montfleury, Cyrano admits that he became jealous when he saw the actor smiling at his beautiful cousin Roxane (Mala Powers).

Ragueneau has learned that a nobleman he had mocked with his verses, the Comte De Guiche (Ralph Clanton), has hired a hundred ruffians to teach him a lesson.

The next day, before he can tell Roxane of his feelings, she informs him that she has fallen in love with a handsome guardsman, Christian de Neuvillette (William Prince), though she has not even spoken to him.

When the arrogant Comte De Guiche, who is also wooing Roxane, pressures her to marry him, Cyrano delays him long enough for her to wed Christian instead.

Furious, De Guiche, Christian's commander, orders him to join his unit immediately for a war against the Spanish, preventing the couple from spending their wedding night together.

Years pass, with Cyrano visiting Roxane weekly, having retired from the military and writing satirical articles mocking the nobility.

If the film was decried for its low-budget, stagy look, as well as for some of its supporting actors, it was almost universally admired for Ferrer's star performance, in what is acknowledged to be his greatest role.

[8] The New York Times' film critic Bosley Crowther praised Ferrer, stating that he "speaks the poetry of Rostand with richness and clarity such as only a few other actors have managed on the screen.

"[3] However, he was less than impressed with Powers ("a lovely but lifeless girl"), Prince ("a solemn young dunce"), and Ferrer in his romantic moments, opining that "his maundering and mooning over Roxane is considerably hard to take."

Variety stated that "Michael Gordon's direction doesn't always fulfill the romantic, tragic, comedic and action possibilities, but permits a number of players to account for solid moments in a story that, essentially, belongs to one performer, Ferrer.

It called Ferrer "the very embodiment of Rostand's self-sacrificing, self-dramatizing hero" while deriding the play's "soft core of unblushing sentiment, unstinted gallantry, unending heroics".