Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo star as two young lovers in the French city of Cherbourg, separated by circumstance.

The film's dialogue is entirely sung as recitative, including casual conversation, and is sung-through, or through-composed, like some operas and stage musicals.

[3] It has been seen as the second of an informal tetralogy of Demy films that share some of the same actors, characters, and overall atmosphere of romantic melancholy, coming after Lola (1961) and before The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) and Model Shop (1969).

[5] Madame Émery and her 17-year-old daughter Geneviève have a tiny, struggling umbrella boutique in the coastal town of Cherbourg in Normandy.

Geneviève is courted by Roland Cassard, a kind, young, very wealthy Parisian jeweler; he wants to marry her despite her pregnancy.

In one of the connections among Demy's trilogy of films, Roland had previously unsuccessfully wooed the title character in the earlier Lola (1961); now he relates a version of this story to Madame Émery.

Four years later, on a snowy Christmas Eve, Guy and Madeleine are in the office of their gas station with their small son François.

As Madeleine and François leave to visit Santa Claus, a now wealthy Geneviève and her daughter Françoise arrive.

It won three awards at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival, including its top prize, the Palme d'Or.

Jim Ridley has called Cherbourg "the most affecting of movie musicals, and perhaps the fullest expression of [Demy's] career-long fascination with the entwining of real life, chance, and the bewitching artifice of cinematic illusion."

Since the cast were not trained singers, most of the actors' voices were dubbed and lipsynced:[7] The film score established composer Michel Legrand's reputation in Hollywood.

"Watch What Happens" was covered by artists such as Tony Bennett,[8] Ed Ames,[9] and jazz pianists Oscar Peterson[10] and Vince Guaraldi.

The website's critics consensus reads, "Jacques Demy elevates the basic drama of everyday life into a soaring opera full of bittersweet passion and playful charm, featuring a timeless performance from Catherine Deneuve.

In 1979, an English-language stage adaptation, with lyrics translated by Sheldon Harnick, premiered at the Public Theater in New York City.

The cast included Max von Essen as Guy, Heather Spore as Genevieve, and Maureen Silliman as Madame Émery.

Other cast members included Ken Krugman, Patti Perkins, Robyn Payne, Jonathan Kaplan, Steven Stein Grainger, Brett Rigby, and Sara Delaney.

Composer Michel Legrand assisted in restoring the original four-track stereo sound masters to digital.

Douglas Hickox directed the said short subject, and Les Reed and Barry Mason composed the music and wrote the lyrics to its title song, French and English versions of which charted in 1969 for Mireille Mathieu and Engelbert Humperdinck respectively.