 |  | All I could want from a foreign purchase |  |
The movie is visually appealing and an artistic achievement. A simple story but delivered in a powerful and compelling manner.
DVD is excellent with some great special features--documentary, 20 years later featurette, more. It has both English and French language tracks and a variety of subtitle options.
For film fans, students, scholars and all, a great film to take a look at.
July 24, 2008 | | Slight but very memorable | |
It's not surprising that Un Homme et Une Femme/A Man and a Woman proved a smash hit: cars and stunts for the guys and romance for the gals, an impossible to forget love theme and a slight enough plot not to get in the way of the characters or be damaged by subtitling or dubbing. Rather than a love story it's really the prelude to a love story - or at least a possible love story (an ambiguity the belated sequel would find few friends by resolving) - with the mutually widowed Jean-Louis Trintignant's racing driver and Anouk Aimée's continuity girl still in love with her dead husband meeting through their weekend trips to visit their children in boarding school. It's a fitting start to their romance since the film was born when director Claude Lelouch, after driving all night trying to work out how to save his disastrous Les Grands Moments, found himself on a beach at six in the morning watching a woman with her child presumably making the most of what little time they had together. Shot on the hoof with a tiny crew with exteriors shot in color to raise funding for a TV sale but the interiors shot in black and white to keep costs down, the film still works surprisingly well, striking just enough home truths about relationships and doing it with enough charm and skill to make the odd misstep forgivable, although if you've seen the sly opening scenes of Lelouch's La Bonne Annee you might find it extremely difficult to keep a straight face during the ending.
Both this and the sequel, A Man and a Woman 20 Years Later, are currently available at a bargain price on a nice PAL 3-disc set with English subtitles from Amazon.fr (the third disc of extras has no subtitles, however).
January 18, 2008This is an unforgetable movie - maybe for the fabulous soundtrack and the clean photo art! It's a MUST!
July 9, 2007A highly popular date movie in the mid sixties, Claude Lelouch's Oscar-winning "A Man and a Woman" may owe its innovative visual style to the French New Wave, but at its heart is a very simple love story, as the title implies. Flashing back and forward in time, switching from color stock to black-and-white, Lelouch tells the tale of these two lovers with stylistic panache and a dizzyingly romantic tone underscored by Francis Lai's lilting, memorable score. Love, as only the French know how to do it.
June 27, 2007| | | Monte Carlo Rally brings man and woman together | |
The man and woman of the title have each suffered the trauma of death of partners - killed in separate accidents. The man, father of a young son, lives in a world of motor racing. The woman, mother of a young daughter, is prominent in motion picture production. The drama of the film lies in the emotional and psychological tensions of these two people finding, realising and accepting love a second time. Embedded loyalties and attitudes of the couple are not easy to change. Natural and unscripted dialogue, low-key scenery, and mundane realities combined with the high expectations of the man and the woman give the film a spontaneity and quality that make it a classic of French cinema.
June 8, 2007More reviews at Amazon.com ...
Daily Birthdays
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