Why Is ‘Cyrano’ Still So Potent? Ask Anyone Who’s Loved at All.

When the French playwright Edmond Rostand penned “Cyrano de Bergerac” in the late 19th century, he couldn’t have imagined its durability — translations into countless languages, stage productions across the world and several high-profile film adaptations. The newest of those, “Cyrano” (opening in theaters Feb. 25), supplements Rostand’s beloved story with musical numbers by members of the rock band the National — a decidedly contemporary touch. But this is nothing new; Rostand’s has proved a malleable text, and its film adaptations tell us much about the kind of stories audiences were responding to when they were made.

The 1950 “Cyrano de Bergerac” (streaming on Paramount+) starred José Ferrer, who had played the title role on Broadway in the mid-1940s, winning a Tony for his turn. It’s a classical approach, presentational (the proscenium arch of the stage isn’t visible, but it may as well be), with little attempt at realism in its playing or setting.

Though greatly abridged, the script is quite faithful to the story beats of the original play. Cyrano de Bergerac is, we are told, a “soldier, poet, philosopher, magician, playwright … and the best swordsman in Paris.” He is also blessed (or, he believes, cursed) with an enormous, lengthy nose. He’s boisterously self-confident, except in matters of love. Self-conscious of his appearance (“Me, whom the plainest woman would despise”), he keeps his affections hidden from his beloved cousin, Roxane (Mala Powers), and his fears are confirmed when she asks him to set her up with the handsome Christian (William Prince), “because you have always been my friend.”

But when Cyrano discovers that Christian is clueless in the ways of romance and hopelessly tongue-tied in the company of the fairer sex, Cyrano comes up with a solution: He’ll write love letters for Christian, providing an outlet for his own affection while giving Roxane the perfect man she desires. “Together we could make one mighty hero of romance,” Cyrano assures Christian, writing a flurry of letters and even standing in for him (vocally, that is) when Christian stands under Roxane’s balcony late one night, barely out of her sight, to woo her.

The film and the original play end in tragedy. Christian and Roxane are wed just before he and Cyrano are sent to war, and when Christian dies in battle, his secret dies with him; Roxane enters a convent in mourning, and Cyrano only confesses to authoring the letters just before his own death years later.

The film won Ferrer an Oscar for best actor but scored no other nominations, which sounds about right: Michael Gordon’s direction is competent and Dimitri Tiomkin’s music is inspired, but this “Cyrano” serves mostly as a record of a masterful performance. (A 1990 film version, starring Gérard Depardieu, is a more satisfying “traditional” take.)

Yet the film was striking enough to make an impression on Steve Martin, who saw it on television at the age of 12 and never forgot it, spending the next several decades quietly harboring a desire to play the role.

“I had no intention of writing the script myself,” he told The Times in 1987; at that point, he had only penned “The Jerk” and other broad comedies. “I was afraid of it. You’re playing with fire when you tamper with a classic. So I went looking for a writer. But it was such a personal idea, and anyone I would give it to would make it his own. It’s hard to ask Neil Simon to write your idea.”

So Martin spent four years writing it himself, soliciting suggestions for updates and modifications from everyone from former collaborators Carl Reiner and Herbert Ross to the author Gore Vidal. In “Roxanne,” released in 1987 (and streaming on Hulu), Cyrano de Bergerac has become C.D. Bales (Martin), a firefighter, a wit, an “encyclopedia,” an acrobat, a chef and (obviously) a writer. The movie is filled with markers of the era: a saxophone-heavy jazz score, copious casual drug references, a gender flip for our hero’s best friend. Roxanne (Daryl Hannah), now spelled with another “n,” is a brainy astronomer; Christian is now “Chris” (Rick Rossovich), a hunky firefighter.

“My very early drafts were so close to the original as to be embarrassing,” Martin confessed, but the nicest surprise of “Roxanne” is its direct references to specific lines and sequences from Rostand’s text. Martin, of course, amps up the laughs — mostly involving Chris, who is the prototypical himbo, dopey but harmless, while the Keystone Kops-style bits with the other firefighters could have been in any Martin comedy of the era. But he transforms a famous scene, in which Cyrano tops a would-be rival’s insults, into a killer comic set piece — something akin to Martin’s stand-up, featuring his variety of voices and spot-on timing. And he makes the balcony scene humorous by trying Harpo Marx-style charades before C.D. simply uses his own voice.

Yet the pathos remain. “Roxanne” is, in many ways, a film about loneliness. C.D. is a man accustomed to entertaining himself, via the little songs he sings and comic sequences he performs, often for no one else, while going about his day. And unsurprisingly, Martin revised the story to give it a happy ending, a choice indicative not only of the era, but also of the pivot in genre. It’s a romantic comedy now, and few great romantic comedies end with two-thirds of a love triangle dead. Other adaptations follow the lead of “Roxanne,” like the gender-swapped “Truth About Cats and Dogs” or the teen-centered “Whatever It Takes” and “The Half of It — so, ironically, the 2021 version is surprising for following Rostand’s original so closely.

In the new “Cyrano,” the primary shift involved revising the text for its star, Peter Dinklage — a man not lengthy in nose, but short in height. (Roxanne, played by Haley Bennett, is also, thankfully, changed from a blood relative to his “oldest friend.”) And it is modified to accommodate the new songs, which seem shoehorned in during the early sections but take flight once the letter writing begins. The director, Joe Wright, makes a heart-rending three-person song out of the love triangle, visualizing their harmonizing with split screens, tantalizing imagery and barely subdued eroticism.

In its best moments, “Cyrano” does what other recent film musicals like “In the Heights” and “West Side Story” do: It reminds us that singing can make a character (and an actor) more vulnerable, tapping into an openness and emotion that beautifully suits this particular story of romantic longing. It also suits the theatricality of Wright’s style, a quality sometimes subtextual (see, for example, his “Atonement”) and sometimes made text (as in his “Anna Karenina”), while accommodating the ornate feel of the contemporary costume drama.

So why is this story, now more than a century old, still so poignant and affecting? The answer may lie in one of the scenes featured in all three films, in which Cyrano first believes Roxanne is meeting him to confess her love, only to discover that her affection is for Christian. The devastation that falls across Dinklage’s face is like a dagger to the heart — and familiar to just about anyone who’s lived and loved for any time at all. Roger Ebert pinpointed it, writing in his “Roxanne” review that the play “still strikes some kind of universal note, maybe because for all of us there is some attribute or appendage we secretly fear people will ridicule. Inside every adult is a second-grader still terrified of being laughed at.” And that may be the key to our identification with this character. He’s the kind of person we all like to imagine ourselves to be — confident, brave and witty — and the kind of person we know we are — sensitive, tentative and delicate.