1966 - A MAN AND A WOMAN, Claude Lelouch's big hit.

Claude Lelouch had a lot riding on this film, his company was near bankruptcy and he had yet to establish himself as a filmmaker.  Working fast, he shot the film in three weeks and allowed only three weeks for editing.  The film switches between black and white and color stock, the budget was that tight.  The end result, a big hit film.

A Man and a Woman is in many ways the ultimate romantic swoon.  The characters are very attractive, Anouk Aimee has a job working on film crews sitting next to the camera doing who knows what, but it looks cool.  Jean-Louis Trintignant is the handsome race car driver so we get a lot of scenes of him zipping around roads and racetracks.  The memorable soundtrack is by Francis Lai and was a big hit.

There's no mistaking this film for The Rules of the Game but the film does seem to be the last word in overblown love stories.  A very entertaining film.

The film was written by Lelouch and Pierre Uytterhoeven the running time is 102 minutes.

1967 - LIVE FOR LIFE or Vivre pour vivre

What a piece of romantic crap.  The director Claude Lelouch had a big hit with A Man and a Woman so going back to the well again he came up with this slop about a crusading French journalist who has an affair with an American model.

To make the film look hip and contemporary for the 1960's Lelouch shot a lot of it with a hand held camera and did he ever shot it with a hand held camera.  This thing is so jittery that is guaranteed to make a viewer seasick just sitting though it.

The acting by Yves Montand seems to consist mostly of him chain smoking in close up.  Candice Bergen plays an American model named "Candice".  Bergen was actually a model before she became an actress so we get lots of shots of her doing her blonde 60's pouting model poses which is just as well considering she can't act. 

Live for Life was made during the United States involvement in the Vietnam War which the French were highly critical of.  This is part of the subtext of the film and is kind of offensive in what is a basically a sloppy cornball love story with absolutely no weight to it.

130 minutes, written by Claude Lelouch and Pierre Uytterhoeven.

1981 - LES UNS ET LES AUTRES, aka Bolero, Claude Lelouch's unending musical epic.

The lives of three families through World War II and into the present directed by Claude LeLouch focusing on the art and world of music, the bond that ties them all together.

Bolero is an epic of middle brow mediocrity made by a director who always tended to be way to sentimental and romantic for his own good.  The music is by those light weights of contemporary pop, Michel Legrand, Yanni, Marilyn and Alan Bergman and Francis Lai.

The film is frankly exhausting to watch after a while.  The early scenes set during World War II are somewhat interesting but as the film moves into the 60's and 70's and the bad pop songs kick in it's finally an endurance contest to get through.

The final scene is set at a concert for staving children in front of the Eiffel Tower no less.  It's an interpretative dance of that masterpiece of kistch Ravel's Bolero.  This version has the addition of a vocal background, pretty awful but hilarious stuff.

Claude Lelouch is a director who never met a handheld camera or crane shot that he didn't like.  The camera is constantly swinging around, circling the performers or racing backwards down some set.

An endurance contest of the highest order.

184 minutes, written by Claude Leolouch.