The Lovers - Criterion Collection (1959)

Louis Malle unveiled the natural beauty of Jeanne Moreau in his breakthrough Elevator to the Gallows. With his follow-up the scandalous smash The Lovers (Les amants) he made her a star once and for all. A deeply felt and luxuriously filmed fairy tale for grown-ups perched on the edge between classical and New Wave cinemas The Lovers presents Moreau as a restless bourgeois wife whose eye wanders from both her husband and her lover to an attractive passing stranger (Jean-Marc Bory). Thanks to its frank sexuality The Lovers caused quite a stir being censored and attacked for obscenity around the world. If today its shock has worn off its glistening sensuality and seductive storytelling haven't aged a day.SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:New restored high-definition digital transfer of the complete uncensored versionSelection of archival interviews with Louis Malle actors Jeanne Moreau and Jose Luis de Villalonga and writer Louise de VilmorinGallery of promotional material from the U.S. theatrical releaseNew and improved English subtitle translationPLUS: A new essay by film historian Ginette VincendeauSystem Requirements:Running Time: 90 minutes Language: French Subtitles: EnglishFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/LOVE & ROMANCE Rating: NR UPC: 715515029629 Manufacturer No: CC1751DDVD Product Description

This is one great film...plus better as a Criterion.

Moreau in this movie will create a fantasy that you will not forget easily. The movie is one of the best I have ever seen and will only please you every few minutes...over and over again. Everytime you settle into predictability; here comes one more turn and every one is believable.

The version I am speaking of here is the Criterion Collection, so the reproduction is excellent. July 14, 2008

A fine early release by Louis Malle

This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

The Lovers known in French as Les Amants is Louis Malle's second feature film after Elevator to the Gallows. It also was the first of his films to generate controversey. It was censored upon its release in the US and other countries but A theater owner in Ohio who screened this film was charged with screening an obscene film and in a case that made it all the way to the US Supreme Court, the charges overturned. I think it would get a hard PG-13 or a light R with today's standards.

The film is about a married woman who having an affair and on her way home from a liason with her lover her car breaks down. A man then pulls over and he drives her to a garage. She then begins a relationship with him too.

This film is certainly not obscene as the censors maintained 50 years ago. Some scenes might be considered indecent by some though. I thought it was an interesting story but didn't care too much for the adultery theme.

The special features on the DVD are a slideshow of material for the US release and archival interviews with Louis Malle, writer, Louise de Vilmorin, actress, Jeanne Moreau, and actor José Luis de Villalonga. June 11, 2008

"Viva Moreau and Malle"

Criterion's recent release of Louis Malle's "The Lovers" is a hidden gem; a film that makes viewing many classic art films- in hope of finding a transcendent work- worthwhile I have always thought Jeanne Moreau was one of the finest French actresses of her generation through such noteworthy films such as "Jules and Jim," " Elevator to the Gallows," "Diary of a Chambermaid," and "La Notte" However, this film elevates her to the level of, in my opinion, such later great French actresses as Catherine Deneuve and Isabelle Huppert- and like the other two actresses she is still acting in films today; but the transformation of a "bored "bourgeoisie bitch," who reminded me of a French Bette Davis or Joan Crawford, to a vulnerable, sensually aware, luminescent beautiful woman through a sensual/sexual liaison with a freethinking, and authentic (with a young man who had in bourgeoisie background that he rejected) is hypnotic and spell binding. Prior to this, her life in the French, low cultured, Provences (anywhere but Paris) is so stifling that she is carrying on a relatively open affair with an idle rich, superficial, (but pleasant) Spanish polo player. He, like her workaholic, cynical, domineering, wealthy husband, is almost old enough to be her father, and, as is often the case of men who struggled through the horrors of world war II, is devoid of any real self awareness. Moreover, the Moreau character was certainly what we would call today a "trophy wife."

The last third of the film, involving the transformative sensual encounter, was cinematically and characterlogically mesmerizing. The depictions of nature at night, both human/sensual and scenic, were hauntingly beautiful. Louis Malle' direction was sensitive and exquisite The scenes of sexual intimacy were both erotic and aesthetic without the hint of pornography. This very was avant garde for the pre sexual revolution and pre-feminist 50's- even in France, and the film was banned in the straight laced Eisenhower Administrative of America in the 1950's.

The only things I found problematic was the Moreau character abandoning her child to pursue her romantic proclivities. On the other hand, there was a fairytale quality to the later parts of the movie,and I think Malle was trying to make a point about alienation from nature and, to a lesser extent, reality of the postwar French bourgeoisie. This was a particularly popular theme in French and Italian films of the era. Finally, don't miss the short interviews with Moreau.



June 2, 2008

Malle's Scandalous 'Lovers.'

Louis Malle's controversial 1958 film, The Lovers (Les Amants), tells the not-so-scandalous-by-today's-standards story of a middle-aged, French woman (Jeanne Moreau, Malle's love interest at the time), who leaves both her boring husband, Henri (Alain Cuny), and her Paris lover, Raoul (José Villalonga), for a younger man, Bernard (Jean-Marc Bory) after a night of passion with the stranger. "There's no resisting happiness," she explains (which left me less than convinced). The sexually frank film resulted in a U.S. Supreme Court case defining "obscenity." ("I know it when I see it," Justice Stewart wrote in the Court's landmark decision, Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964).) This film not only established Moreau as a star in the '60s, but permanently associated Brahms Sextet in B-flat Major with Moreau's sexual abandon in the film. (While Brahms plays, Moreau appears in a half-naked tryst.) Moreau provides a voice-over narration for the film to reveal her character's feelings. Henri Decaë's crisp black and white cinematography is luminous. Although I have given this film a five-star rating, the story is conventional by today's standards.

The Criterion edition features a newly restored transfer of the complete, uncensored film; a selection of archival interviews with Louis Malle, actors Jeanne Moreau and José Luis de Villalonga, and writer Louise de Vilmorin; promotional material from the U.S. theatrical release; and a new essay by film historian Ginette Vincendeau.

G. Merritt May 7, 2008

Great movie, but beware

An important piece of product information is missing here: the VHS tape is copy-protected, so that it is impossible to make a perfectly legal private DVD copy. So forget this tape and wait for the DVD.
June 22, 2007

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