{"id":2353,"date":"2011-02-23T16:49:38","date_gmt":"2011-02-23T21:49:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=2353"},"modified":"2011-02-23T17:01:29","modified_gmt":"2011-02-23T22:01:29","slug":"dvd-man-and-a-woman-a-un-homme-et-une-femme-1966","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=2353","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Man and a Woman, A \/ Un homme et une femme (1966)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>M<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Excellent\/ DVD Transfer: Excellent\/ DVD Extras: Very Good<\/p>\n

Label: Warner Home Video\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: March 23, 2003<\/p>\n

Genre: Drama \/ Romance \/ French New Wave<\/p>\n

Synopsis: Romance increases as a man and a woman meet on weekends to pick up their children at a boarding school in Deauville, France.<\/p>\n

Special Features: Interview: \u201c37 Years Later with Claude Lelouch\u201d (12:52) in French with English subtitles \/ 1966 making-of featurette \u201dUn home et une femme\u201d (22:47) in French with English subtitles \/ Trailers for A Man and a Woman (1966) and A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later (1986)<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

– Academy Award Winner for Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Original Screenplay (Claude Lelouch and Pierre Uytterhoeven).<\/em>
\n– British Academy Award Winner for Best Actress (Anouk Aimee)<\/em>
\n– Golden Globe Winner for Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Motion Picture Actress (Anouk Aimee)<\/em><\/p>\n

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Claude Lelouch\u2019s breakthrough film is a snappy mix of style, improv, and beautiful faces, not to mention a fetishistic love for fast automobiles, but perhaps the best way to approach this central work of France\u2019s sixties nouvelle vague is as a contemporary romantic fable.<\/p>\n

Highly influential in film technique as well as its free-form storytelling, A Man and a Woman<\/strong> is ostensibly focused on the romance that develops between what appears to be married parents who visit their respective children at a boarding school in the coastal town of Deauville.<\/p>\n

What begins as a chance encounter evolves into friendship and fascination, and each character \u2013 script girl Anne Gauthier (Anouk Aimee), racing car driver Jean-Luc Duroc (Jean-Louis Trintignant) \u2013 clearly enjoys the courting process, settling for quality time rather than a series of intense affairs destined to flame out.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the maturity of the characters (and time-consuming courting) are also tied to the adultness of the story, and while Lelouch generally discards clich\u00e9d schmaltz between the couple, he also satirizes lovey-dovey flashback vignettes by packaging them like adverts.<\/p>\n

Certainly in the case of Anne, her moments with stuntman \/ husband Pierre feel like genre archetypes compacted into some kind of fashion or lifestyle TV ad, whereas Jean-Louis\u2019 marital highlights are the opposite: he\u2019s seen frequently on the road prepping, training, and driving competitively, while Valerie (Val\u00e9rie Lagrange) is the long-suffering wife willing to accept long temporal separations because she\u2019s addicted to her husband.<\/p>\n

In both cases, however, Jean-Louis and Anne are devoted to their children \u2013 born in what are hinted as being rather tough marriages because of pressing careers \u2013 and it\u2019s the kids which clinch the perfectness of the parents\u2019 encounter: the adults need each other\u2019s company, patience, tenderness, and compassionate parenting skills in order to reform their separate lives into a singular, traditional family. At least that\u2019s the underlying goal.<\/p>\n

Lelouch uses an extremely simple visual device to comment on the grey illicitness of their palling around: glimpses of wedding rings. Regardless of past events, both wear rings openly and willingly, as statements on being faithful to their past lives, and the brief views of their ringed fingers conveys a character\u2019s unease, hesitation, or blatant confidence in pursuing a gradual friends-with-benefits liaison.<\/p>\n

Stylistically, Lelouch draws from his own documentary years, but he also adds a visual scheme that\u2019s rabidly commercial, offset by Godardian jump cuts, and goosed with changing film stocks and grains without seemingly any rhyme or reason, except perhaps with colour being symbolic of reality, black & white of stark emotions and naked candor, grainy black & white for the grimy and physically demanding racing scenes, and sepia for the loosening of nerves between the potential lovers.<\/p>\n

Whether the couple consummates their friendship with intercourse is often kept at the margins, and Lelouch seems more interested in extended montages where his characters are in, around, or driving cars. He is a director obsessed with the vehicle and its beauty as a sub-character in the story, and there are few scenes where there isn\u2019t a car onscreen.<\/p>\n

His filmmaking style also abides by few rules: audio from the flashbacks may bleed into reality, Jean-Louis\u2019 original description of his profession is dramatized as a sepia-toned film vignette where he\u2019s a gleeful little pimp; and Anne\u2019s recollections of her husband are told through song: Pierre\u2019s interest in samba has him singing dialogue like a staged extract from a Jacques Demy film.<\/p>\n

The salutes to fellow contemporaries and peers doesn\u2019t end there: Jean-Louis Trintignant\u2019s first scene has him being \u2018chauffered\u2019 in a red Mustang, and the actor performs his smart-assed dialogue like Jean-Paul Belmondo in Godard\u2019s Breathless<\/strong> (1960), with a cigarette dangling from his lips.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the biggest surprise is the non-repetitiveness of Francis Lai\u2019s famous theme. The score – the composer\u2019s feature film debut – is derived from the famous male-female duet with organ, but that single version which became a hit isn\u2019t heard until 80 mins. into the movie, when the romance becomes serious. The key to the couple\u2019s status is in the specific variation Lai plays, because the single version correlates with giddy, positive turns in the narrative.<\/p>\n

The most interesting score cue is a lush string version with orchestra that\u2019s first heard during Anne\u2019s recollection of meeting Pierre while working on a film, and it reflects Lelouch\u2019s toying with film conventions: it\u2019s faux dramatic, macho western music that plays over courtship scenes, as well as Jean-Pierre\u2019s racing scenes – perhaps inferring the story is pure myth.<\/p>\n

One can also see traces where Lelouch\u2019s film subsequently influenced certain Hollywood filmmakers. The fractured editing and docu-style camerawork were picked up and diversified via split-screen montages by director Norman Jewison in The Thomas Crown Affair<\/strong> (not to mention the flippant dune buggy montage between Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway).<\/p>\n

McQueen himself adopted long lens shots of fast-moving cars in daylight \/ nighttime \/ early morning rainfall in Le Mans<\/strong> (1971), a minimalist drama about one driver among a sea of competitors. McQueen\u2019s fleeting, sympathetic encounter with a racer\u2019s widow vaguely echoes the core reasons Anne and Jean-Louis ultimately continue their relationship: a need to fill a deep emotional void.<\/p>\n

Thomas Crown<\/strong> and Le Mans<\/strong> are also graced with silky jazz-pop scores from Michel Legrand, a composer whom Francis Lai evokes with his elegant theme variations.<\/p>\n

Warner Home Video\u2019s DVD includes a clean transfer of the film, plus optional original French and English dub tracks.<\/p>\n

The extras are strong, starting with the featurette \u201c37 Years Later with Claude Lelouch\u201d where the director describes the film\u2019s genesis, and filming, including the economic issues that mandated the use of colour and back & white film for interiors and night scenes (a tactic also adopted by Tinto Brass for Deadly Sweet<\/strong>, his own New Wave effort from 1967, which coincidentally co-starred Trintignant), and the use of telephoto lenses to prevent camera noise from ruining dialogue scenes \u2013 an amusing irony where economic and practical decisions created a distinct style. Lelouch also explains his use of pre-recorded music prior to filming, and his flexible directorial style which allowed for sudden script changes, tangential scenes, and improvised dialogue from the actors.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a lengthy vintage making-of featurette with plenty of behind-the-scenes footage, and on-set interviews which show an excited cast and crew making a film no one expected would become an international and Oscar-winning hit.<\/p>\n

Lelouch\u2019s later effort to recapture the magic of his beloved couple in A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later<\/strong> (1986) was generally unsuccessful, and while the movie\u2019s worth a peek, fans may wish to let their own conclusions to Anne and Jean-Louis\u2019 1966 union settle before giving Lelouch\u2019s coda a try<\/p>\n

Lelouch\u2019s style is powerfully cinematic, and would look grand on Blu-ray, with every colour and piece of film grain maxed out in HD. The studio should seriously consider a double-bill of the 1966 and 1986 films.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2011 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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Related links:<\/em><\/p>\n

LP: \u00a0Man and a Woman, A \/ Un homme et une femme<\/a><\/strong> (1966)<\/p>\n

CD: \u00a0Francis Lai \u2013 The Essential Film Music Collection<\/a><\/strong> (2011)<\/p>\n

DVD \/ Film: \u00a0A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later<\/a><\/strong> (1986)<\/p>\n

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Related external links (MAIN SITE):<\/em><\/p>\n

DVD \/ Film: \u00a0Deadly Sweet \/ Col cuore in gola<\/a> <\/strong>(1967)<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Soundtrack Album<\/a> — Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Buy from:<\/em><\/p>\n

Amazon.com<\/strong> \u2013\u00a0A Man and a Woman<\/a><\/p>\n

Amazon.ca<\/strong> –\u00a0Man & a Woman<\/a><\/p>\n

Amazon.co.uk <\/strong> – Man & A Woman [DVD] [1967] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em><\/em><\/em>\/\u00a0M<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ M . Film: Excellent\/ DVD Transfer: Excellent\/ DVD Extras: Very Good Label: Warner Home Video\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: March 23, 2003 Genre: Drama \/ Romance \/ French New Wave Synopsis: Romance increases as a man and a woman meet on weekends to pick up their children […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[314,311,310,312,313],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-BX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2353"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2382,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353\/revisions\/2382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}