From director CLAUDE LELOUCH (And Now…Ladies and Gentlemen) comes this 1966 classic, a tender, visually exciting film of revitalizing love: a race-car driver (JEAN-LOUIS TRINIGNANT) and a movie script girl (ANOUK AIMEE) share a romance filled with humor and truth, intertwined with the demands of career and parenthood. Winner of OscarsO for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Screenplay. French filmmaker Claude Lelouch continues to take critical heat for this 1966 international hit, which has been labeled “schmaltzy” and dismissed as overly stylized for its simple story line. While it certainly can’t be mistaken for a masterpiece of the French New Wave (Lelouch was left in the dust that year by such wonders as Jean-Luc Godard’s Masculin Feminin), A Man and a Woman has a jumpy impressionism that engages a viewer precisely because it cuts against conventional expectations of romance. Starring Anouk Aimée as a widowed “script girl” (working in film production) and Jean-Louis Trintignant as a racer who lost his wife to suicide, the film is really an objective sampling–almost a study–of moments between the time the two characters meet and the point at which they begin to read each other intuitively. Generous flashbacks fill in details on the pair’s woeful, recent histories, while endless documentary-like glimpses of Aimée’s and Trintignant’s characters at work in their highly charged professions become a visual engine for the days passing between measured developments in love. Lelouch is more dryly humane than lush in his approach, though the film strains once in a while for a forced naturalism that can actually be more narcissistic than the most obvious romantic contrivance. Still, A Man and a Woman–in the best sense–is also a movie in love with itself, with its own ability to evoke and conjure and construct dozens of different ways of tracking a relationship in progress. If Lelouch doesn’t exactly push open the boundaries of cinema as several of his filmmaking peers did at the time, he certainly enjoys what he’s doing. –Tom Keogh
Rating: 
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July 27, 2010
#1
Review by L. S. Slaughter
Rating:
And this ain’t it. But it’s all we got for now, so heh.”Un Homme et une Femme” holds up quite well some 32 years hence. Younger viewers may not realize that a lot of the montage devices and tricks that may seem ‘dated’ were actually popularized and/or invented herein by Claude Lelouch. I actually found myself rewinding to watch the color sections a couple of times, especially the mid-film sequence scored to Francis Lai’s achingly sentimental and lovely “Stronger than Us” as Anouk Aimee (the world’s most beautiful woman) and Jean-Louis Triginant stroll the Deauville shore and muse on art and life. The tinting and grain of those sections – the boat ride, Anouk remembering her dead husband (Pierre Barouh) as he sings “Samba Saravah” to her – set a trend I pine for again.The story? Well, thin, even by today’s lughead standards (widower and widow fall in love against some lovely French scenery shot in winter), but it’s obvious Lelouch was going for something that was quite new, then: a marriage of film and music that was not a “musical” per se, but rather, the forerunner of MTV (well, MTV with a soul, let’s say). Cut loosely but thankfully not on-the-beat to Lai’s jazzy/lush mid-60s score, Lelouch suceeds darn well. The freeze-frame ending cued to the final electric piano note, and that moment when Anouk Aimee pauses for the longest time and says to Jean-Louis, “You never told me about your wife”, are two of my favorite filmgoing moments.”Un Homme et une Femme” is emblematic of a world-view which I, for one, wish would take hold of folks again and topple the psychotic-trash-nihilistic consciousness now dominating pop culture. It was thoughtful, romantic, inward and outward at once, loving of sentiment but not wallowing in sentimentality, sophisticated, in love with love and with being alive in the world… not afraid of seeming tender. If any of this strikes you as square or passe or naive, then, this ain’t your movie.Let’s hope the DVD gets released in French. Daria could use some alternative programming to ‘Sick,Sad World’, as could some of the rest of us.
July 27, 2010
#2
Review by Laurie
Rating:
The original movie, which was the winner of the ’66 Cannes Film Festival,was MAGNIFICENT in its original language. The English ruins the effect of the entire enxperience. Seeing it in French (with English subtitles)was magic along with the French lyrics to the accompanying music. The terrible “tonality” of the voices on the dubbed version cheapens the experience and makes it a totally different, flatter movie, and not nearly as romantic and sensual.Please advise viewers if a new version containing French language (English Subs), and French music comes along. That would be wonderful!!!! Because I, for one, have NEVER forgotten the romance of this movie.
July 27, 2010
#3
Review by John E Dvoracek
Rating:
That’s what the editors of this version did – they cut at least two of the most moving scenes from the original French language, English sub-titled edition. Additional scenes were jaggedly removed, often disrupting the natural and graceful flow of the original. Was this an edited-for-television version? Why not offer the original movie theater version? That 5-star masterpiece was reduced to 3-stars by the hacked editing and average dubbing. If you’ve not seen it before, you will enjoy this version much more.
July 27, 2010
#4
Review by Mark Hromalik
Rating:
“A Man and a Woman” is beautiful and magnificent…in French, with English subtitles. I must also recommend Francis Lai’s haunting soundtrack, which is incredibly romantic. The English-dubbed version of the film, however, is downright irritating and ultimately disappointing. Please make the subtitled version available soon. Merci.
July 27, 2010
#5
Review by T. Roberts
Rating:
The DVD has just been released (March 18, 2003) For those of us who love the film, but suffered for many years with the dubbed English, the French language (with subtitles) is back! Anouk and Jean-Louis never sounded more romantic. The color, the music, and the sounds are fantastic, just as we remember them from the theater release.For those who hate subtitles and require English, the solution is just a menu click away. Indulge yourself- Order the DVD and retire your beloved, ragged VHS.