RARE! BEAUTIFUL! THRILLING!
”Claude Lelouch, remember this name well, because you will not hear it again”. That was the cruel verdict of the classic film magazine Cahiers du Cinema after the premiere of Lelouch’s first film, Le propre de l’homme (1960). It was a lesson to learn – for whoever wrote the article. Never dismiss the future of a filmmaker, you never know what will come next. A few years later came A Man and a Woman, which turned into a global phenomenon, won awards and still stands as a true romantic classic.
Meeting at a boarding school
When Anne Gauthier (Anouk Aimée) and Jean-Louis Duroc (Jean-Louis Trintignant) meet for the first time, it’s at a boarding school in Deauville in northern France. They have children who attend the school, but they both live in Paris. When Anne misses the last train back to the city, Jean-Louis offers her a ride. After getting to know each other during the drive, Jean-Louis suggests that they should drive up to Deauville together next weekend; Anne agrees.
They turn out to have much in common. Both have lost a partner, and in Anne’s case it’s easy to see that she’s drawn to men who live dangerously. Her former husband was a stuntman who died in an accident, and Jean-Louis is a race car driver, who once almost lost his life during Le Mans.
An inspiring scene at the beach
The past haunts them at times, especially Anne, which becomes an obstacle in the film’s second half. Still, this isn’t a movie where lovers overcome tremendous adversity; there’s a lightness to the whole project, which is true also of how it began. Lelouch was frustrated trying to get a distribution deal for a movie he had just finished and drove to Deauville where he ended up near the beach in the middle of the night. He fell asleep, only to wake up at sunrise, seeing a woman walking on the beach together with her daughter and a dog. That scene was enough to inspire Lelouch to come up with an idea for a new movie.
The blend of color and black-and-white gives the film an artistic touch, regardless of its practical reasons.
After hiring Trintignant for the male lead, the director followed his advise and turned to Aimée for the role of the woman. She was no newcomer, having already appeared in major films, and was reportedly first bothered by the low budget of the project. It all worked out for the best though, and even some of Lelouch’s creative decisions were the result of a lack of money. The film is primarily in color, but several sequences are suddenly in black-and-white. What is the symbolic meaning, critics asked themselves, but Lelouch finally admitted that the only reason why some of the footage is in black-and-white is because the film stock was cheaper and he was running out of cash. Not that it matters! The blend of color and black-and-white gives the film an artistic touch, regardless of its practical reasons; it’s a visual treat.
A Man and a Woman has become one of cinema’s most cherished love stories, and it’s hard to resist. Much of it depends on the leads, who are attractive and engaging as their characters go through the phases of falling in love, but Lelouch plays a huge part here as well, delicately capturing it all with his camera and blending nostalgia, memories and a sense of intimacy in effective ways. He makes us notice small details and knows how to stage those unforgettable days that write themselves into the history of a couple. There’s a sweet tenderness here.
Finally, there’s the music. Francis Lai’s score was written and recorded before the movie was shot, so Lelouch used it on set to inspire the cast. Since much was improvised, it’s a testament to Lai’s marvelously memorable music that it all turned out so well.
A Man and a Woman 1966-France. 102 min. Color-B/W. Produced, directed and photographed by Claude Lelouch. Screenplay: Pierre Uytterhoeven, Claude Lelouch. Music: Francis Lai. Cast: Anouk Aimée (Anne Gauthier), Jean-Louis Trintignant (Jean-Louis Duroc), Pierre Barouh (Pierre Gauthier), Valérie Lagrange (Valerie Duroc), Antoine Sire, Souad Amidou.
Trivia: Original title: Un homme et une femme. Followed by two sequels, starting with A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later (1986).
Oscars: Best Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film. BAFTA: Best Foreign Actress (Aimée). Golden Globes: Best Actress (Aimée), Foreign-Language Film. Cannes: Grand Prix.
Last word: “A Man and a Woman made so many things possible for me – enabled me to have a career – that I will always be grateful for it. And you know, the funny thing is, every other movie I’ve ever made, you could say is a kind of love story, another story of a man and a woman. [Laughs] I could have called all of my movies A Man and a Woman.” (Lelouch, Moving Picture Show)