Roxane for the last time. His secret love for Roxane is finally revealed when he recites from memory the last of his love letters, which she has kept, but it is too late. Cyrano first slips into delirium, then dies, leaving Roxane to mourn a second time. Cast José Ferrer as Cyrano de Bergerac Mala Powers as Roxane William Prince as Christian de Neuvillette Morris Carnovsky as Le Bret Ralph Clanton as Antoine, Comte de Guiche Lloyd Corrigan as Ragueneau Virginia Farmer as Roxane's duenna Edgar Barrier as Cardinal Richelieu Elena Verdugo as the Orange Girl Albert Cavens as the Viscount de Valvert Arthur Blake as Montfleury Don Beddoe as The Meddler Percy Helton as Bellerose Francis Pierlot as Monk Ferrer and Ralph Clanton had previously appeared in the 1946 Broadway revival of the play in the same roles that they would play in the film. Production The film was produced on a significantly lower budget than most costume dramas, because the producers were afraid that it would fail at the box office (it did). The sparseness of the sets is concealed by camera angles and by the lighting. Darkness is frequently used to hide the fact that the production design was not especially elaborate. The film was one of the first to employ the then-new Western Electric magnetic sound recording system, which would become commonplace by 1953 and which was a necessity for stereo sound recording and reproduction. Additions to the screenplay The screenplay for the film, written by Carl Foreman, was mostly faithful to the play and to Brian Hooker's translation, though it was trimmed to 113 minutes (Cyrano plays for more than two-and-a-half hours onstage). However, Foreman did add his own dialogue for two or three additional scenes inserted into the film for better continuity between the five acts of the original play, and these are obviously not in verse. The play characters of Le Bret and Carbon de Castel-Jaloux were combined, as were those of Ragueneau and Ligniere (although Ragueneau is not a drunk in the film). Le Bret consequently has a much larger and more important role in the film than in the play, and Ragueneau's role is slightly increased by his being the one threatened by a hundred ruffians that Cyrano fights off. The fight is shown in the film; in the play it takes place offstage between Acts I and II. The role