A MAN I LOVE

France, 1969, 118 minutes, Colour.
Jean Paul Belmondo, Annie Girardot.
Directed by Claude Lelouch.

A Man I Love is generally lightweight colourful Lelouch romantic drama, although there is the bitterness of disillusionment at the end. For Lelouch fans, this should be enough to commend it.

However, it is Lelouch’s American film of 1969, a year when several Continental directors went to make their US film. Antonioni made Zabriskie Point, Demy made The Model Shop. The background is interesting as the story centres on a film group working in the United States, a behind-the-cameras drama.

The stars are always sympathetic, music is by Francis Lai who composed many Lelouch scores especially the theme for A Man and a Woman.

1. Did the title adequately sum up the whole film? Does it sound too trite for the film? Why?

2. Was this more women’s magazine stuff or was there more point behind the film?

3. Claude Lelouch is noted for his slick and glamorous treatment of his themes. How slick and glamorous was the style of this film? Should it have been?

4. The U.S. was a 'foreign' country for the protagonists of the film. Did the film make audiences see the U.S. (Hollywood and the Southern states, at least) in a new light, or as a Frenchman would see it? What details of the U.S. way of life and style did the film pick out?

5. Did the film parody itself with its film-making background especially with Belmondo playing a composer and with the sequence showing how music is added to the images and enhances their impact?

6. Were the characters or the principals well established in the film, their lives at home, prior to the American trip, the depth and shallowness of characters, ambitions?

7. Were the principals likeable? Why? What incidents in the film communicated this? Why did they begin their affair? How much love was there? How much convenience? Did each use the other? What comment did the constant reference to each other’s family and the frequent phone calls (plus deception) make?

8. How long did their affair last? How was it affected by their moods, their works, the places they went to - Las Vegas, the lake? How happy were they?

9. What comment on modern morals and standards and styles of modern society did the film make?

10. How sincere were the attempts to break off the affair at the time? Were they just strangers in another land flung together? How did the New York sequences add to this?

11. What comment did the two homecomings make on what had happened? How did they contrast?

12. How serious had the film become by this? Why?

13. Did you expect Belmondo to go to Nice? Did Patricia really expect that he would? What future did she have ahead of her?

14. What emotions, what message, are the audience left with?