Main Cast: Anouk Aimée, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Pierre Barouh, Valerie Lagrange, Henri Chemin
Release Year: 1966
Country: FR
Run Time: 102 minutes
Plot
The ultimate "date" movie of the mid-1960s, director Claude Lelouch's A Man and a Woman (Un Homme et Une Femme) stars Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimee in the title roles. The twosome meet at the boarding school where their children are enrolled. Aimee, an actress, misses her train home, and Trintignant, a professional race car driver, offers her a ride. It is the first of several friendly encounters which eventually blossom into love. Both want to commit to each other, but neither can shake the Past. The now-famous climactic scene in a train station was not scripted at the time of shooting, thus Aimee was unaware that director Lelouch had decided upon a tearful reunion between her and Trintignant. This explains the look of utter surprise on the actress' face. Much has been written about the possible motivation behind Lelouch's decision to film some scenes in color, others in black-and-white. None of the more ardent auterists truly want to hear the director's explanation: he'd run short of money halfway through production, and black-and-white film stock was infinitely cheaper. The winner of two Oscars (one for Best Foreign Film), A Man and A Woman also scored on the "top ten" with its memorable theme music by Francis Lai. A sequel, A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later appeared....twenty years later. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Lelouch's charming romance may not exactly sound the depths of male-female relations, but in its flashy cutting, enraptured camera movements, glamorous locations, appealing performers, and undercurrent of bittersweet romantic longing, the film is as pleasurable as the lightest of soufflés. The man (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a professional auto racer, and the woman (Anouk Aimee), a film continuity person, meet at his children's school and begin to fall in love during a lengthy drive. As they come to know one another and their relationship grows, both are fettered by powerful memories of past loves. Perhaps the most accurate description of the film is "two hours of MTV for almost middle-aged people who like French movie music." As the lovers dash about from film sets to hospitals to racetracks, with the camera perpetually awhirl, the film leaping back in forth in time, and the stock switching from color to black-and-white, one is entertained while having little idea what's happening between the two lovers. It becomes a simple matter to project one's own fantasies onto these attractive, thinly sketched romantic archetypes, which may explain the film's enormous international success. What now seems most unusual about the film is its gentle lyricism and the lack of antagonism in the couple's relationship despite the considerable stresses of both their lives. The motif of gentle lyricism is picked up in Francis Lai's memorable theme, which became a huge hit in its own right. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
Simone Paris - Head Mistress; Yane Barry - Mistress of Jean-Louis; Souad Amidou - Francoise Gauthier; Paul Le Person - Garage Man; Antoine Sire - Antoine Duroc; Gerard Sire - Announcer
A Man and a Woman (French: Un homme et une femme) is a 1966French film. The movie was written by Claude Lelouch and Pierre Uytterhoeven, and directed by Lelouch. It is notable for its lush photography (Lelouch had a background in advertising photography), which features frequent segues between full color, black-and-white, and sepia-toned shots, and for its memorable musical score by Francis Lai.
The film tells the story of a young widow, Anne (Anouk Aimée), a film script supervisor whose late husband (Pierre Barouh) was a stuntman and died in an on-set accident, and a widower, Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a race car driver whose wife committed suicide after Jean-Louis was in a near fatal crash during the 24 hours of Le Mans. They meet at their respective children's school in Deauville. They share a ride home to Paris one night after Anne misses the last train, and their mutual attraction is immediate. The story follows their budding relationship over the course of several trips back to Deauville, and as they fall in love despite Anne's feelings of guilt and loss over her deceased husband. After a night together in Deauville, Anne finds herself unable to be unfaithful to the memory of her husband, and decides to leave Jean-Louis. While she is traveling back to Paris by train, Jean-Louis races to meet her at the station, and when she gets off the train she is surprised to see him there. Happy that her lover had come back for her, they embrace as the film ends, the final outcome of the relationship left open to interpretation.
Pierre Barouh, who plays the deceased husband in the film, also sings the songs in the soundtrack. In a sequence of the film, he makes a brief reappearance singing "Samba Saravah", a French version with lyrics by Barouh himself of the Brazilian song "Samba da Benção" written by Baden Powell with original lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes.[3]
The song "Aujourd'hui C'est Toi" is used as the theme for the BBC's Panorama current affairs program, plus Rede Globo's Jornal Hoje midday newscast.
