Les amants (1958)

User Rating:

7.2/10   

Director:

Louis Malle

Writer:

Louise de Vilmorin (dialogue)
(more)

Release Date:

26 October 1959 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

The most talked-about and fought-about film!

Plot:

Bored with her husband, bored with her polo-playing lover, will the middle-aged heroine go away with...

Plot Keywords:

Secret Lover | Paris France | Castle | Sex | Burgundy

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Jeanne Moreau	...	Jeanne Tournier
Jean-Marc Bory	...	Bernard Dubois-Lambert
Judith Magre	...	Maggy Thiebaut-Leroy
José Luis de Villalonga	...	Raoul Flores (as José Villalonga)
Gaston Modot	...	Coudray
Pierre Frag
Michèle Girardon	...	La secrétaire
Gib Grossac
Lucienne Hamon	...	Chantal
Georgette Lobre	...	Marthe
Claude Mansard	...	Marcelot (as Claude Mansart)
Alain Cuny	...	Henri Tournier
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Jean-Claude Brialy	...	Un garçon a manège (uncredited)
Patricia Maurin	...	Catherine, fille de Jeanne (uncredited)

Directed by
Louis Malle

Writing credits
Louise de Vilmorin		(dialogue)
Dominique Vivant		(novel "Point de Lendemain") uncredited

Cinematography by
Henri Decaë		(director of photography) (as Henri Decae)

Film Editing by
Léonide Azar

Production Design by
Bernard Evein

Set Decoration by
Jacques Saulnier

Makeup Department
Gisèle Jacquin	....	makeup artist

Production Management
Irénée Leriche	....	production manager
Hubert Mérial	....	unit manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Alain Cavalier	....	assistant director
François Leterrier	....	second assistant director

Art Department
Charles Merangel	....	property master

Sound Department
Pierre-André Bertrand	....	sound engineer (as Pierre Bertrand)

Camera and Electrical Department
Vincent Rossell	....	photographer
André Villard	....	camera operator

Editorial Department
Madeleine Bibollet	....	assistant editor
Kenout Peltier	....	assistant editor

Music Department
Serge Baudo	....	conductor
Johannes Brahms	....	composer: theme music

Other crew
Francine Corteggiani	....	script girl

Production Companies

• Lux Compagnie Cinématographique de France (present)
• Nouvelles Éditions de Films (NEF)

Distributors

• Lux Compagnie Cinématographique de France (1958) (France) (theatrical)
• Zenith International Films (1959) (USA) (theatrical) (subtitled)
• Arte Vidéo (2005) (France) (DVD)
• Criterion Collection, The (2008) (USA) (DVD)
• Kinokuniya (2005) (Japan) (DVD)
• New Yorker Films (1996) (USA) (VHS)
• Video Film Express (2006) (Netherlands) (DVD)

Other Companies

• Poste Parisien  sound post-production
• Franstudio  studio
• Chanel  costumes: for Jeanne Moreau (uncredited)

Also Known As:

The Lovers (UK) (USA)

Runtime:

Argentina:90 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:15 | Argentina:16 | Finland:K-16

Filming Locations:

Burgundy, France

Company:

Lux Compagnie Cinématographique de France

Trivia:

After screening this film, Nico Jacobellis, manager of the Heights Art Theater in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, was charged with and convicted of possessing and exhibiting an obscene film. He appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court, which overturned the convictions, ruling that the film was not obscene. In a concurring opinion, Justice Potter Stewart made his famous pronouncement concerning what was pornography: "I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197 (1964) (Stewart, J., concurring).

Movie Connections:

Featured in Geburtstagskinder der Nouvelle Vague (2007) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Streichsextett No. 1

The Lovers

What you see here is Jeanne Moreau's famous first filmic female orgasm and director Louis Malle's second feature film. Les amants / The Lovers was at that time a controversial study of bourgeois emptiness and sexual yearnings. The (as widely described) inscrutable Moreau plays a high society wife who is bored by her rich husband, has a lover, smart friends and a daughter. On one night she makes passionate love with a young student of a few hours acquaintance, and leaves it all for a new life.

If it now looks too much like an angry young sensualist's movie, the combination of a body language that is highly pleasurable, the soundtrack of Brahms, and the Henri Decaë's velvety monochrome, ravishing photography proves hard to resist. Her second collaboration with director Malle shows once more, what a wonderful screen persona Moreau is: commanding, willful, sultry.