The Story: Two people find each other. Each person has loved before and each has lingering memories of their lost love. Anouk Aimee stars as Anne, a movie script-girl, with strong memories of her late husband, a movie stunt man, ably played by Pierre Barouh. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Jean-Louis, a versatile race car driver. His wife committed suicide after a racing accident from which he was not expected to recover.
Our stars meet quite by accident - she misses her train back to Paris, after visiting her daughter at a Deauville boarding school. He is up for a weekend visit with his son and agrees to drive her back to the city. As their friendship grows, we learn about their lives, loves and losses not through dialogue but through beautiful vignettes filled with emotion (and sometimes color).
Comment: Where to begin? This is a truly marvelous film on just about every level. Start with the film's image: Shot in black and white for the present, with reflections of happier times done in both sepia and color. Lelouch lets the images tell the story (there is very little dialogue in this film).
Scenes of note: Much of this story takes place in Deauville, a chic French seaside resort. But director Lelouch makes it look alarmingly drab and dull, so as not to detract from the story. Lelouch uses the seaside images of the old man and his dog, repeated several times in the film as 'stills', with amazing impact.
Trintignant's first wife is at the hospital after his accident: We see not only her strife but the passage of time through a series of jump cuts - very effective in conveying her extreme emotional state. Near the end of this sequence we also see that sometimes telling can be more effective than showing. We do not witness her suicide but rather hear Jean-Luc speak of it with sadness in his voice.
The most famous scene of this movie is the climactic final scene in the Paris train station. Anouk Aimee is a brilliant actress, but her look of utter surprise when she sees Trintignant is beyond acting.
The Music: This film has two musical scores and both are superb! The credited score is by Francis Lai, who provided a whole generation with a tune to hum. Note the careful way in which this main musical theme is developed. There are hints, false starts, tentative moves and then it finally comes together, much like the love story unfolding on the screen.
The second score centers around Samba da Bencao by Toquinho and Vinicius de Moraes. Lelouch uses these beautiful Latin rhythms to introduce us to the love that existed between Aimee and her late husband... a love beyond words. As he sings love songs to Aimee, he pledges his devotion to the beautiful tunes and musical aristocracy of Brazil: Gilberto, Jobim, Bonfa, Vinicius and Toquinho.
Honors: A Man and a Woman won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film and Best Writing; nominated for Best Actress (Anouk Aimee) and Best Director. Won Golden Globes for Best Actress and Best Foreign Language film. Across the pond, won Best Actress at BAFTA, nominated for Best Picture. At Cannes, it won the Golden Palm (Grand Prize). The list of top honors was so amazing even director Claude Lelouch was humbled.
Auto Racing: Auto racing? Director Lelouch used quite rare footage of the Ford Motor World Racing Team for Trintignant's character. Included are one of Ford's Grand Prix cars from Nurburgring, several greatly modified Ford Mustangs from the European rally circuit and, most impressive, a Ford GT40 racing at LeMans. All of this equipment was part of Ford Motor's impressive (but doomed) effort to unseat Enzo Ferrarri as the world's racing leader (think Ford vs Ferrari - only this is the real deal). Trintignant even gets to drive a heavily modified rally Mustang back to Paris to meet Aimee!
The film is presented in widescreen format with English or French audio with optional English or French subtitles. Per the label, the running time is 103 minutes. This movie-on-demand MOD archive title on recorded media is new and factory sealed. The DVD disc is Region 1, NTSC format, specifically designed to play on DVD players in North America. It may not play on a PlayStation or similar game device.
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