L'homme qui aimait les femmes (1977)

Director:

François Truffaut

Writers:

Michel Fermaud (writer)
Suzanne Schiffman (writer)

Release Date:

25 August 1977 (Sweden)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Romance

Plot:

Many women are attending Bertrand Morane's burial. They are all the ones that 40 years old engineer loved...

Plot Keywords:

Novel | Womanizer | Adultery | Swinging | Rental Car

Awards:

4 nominations

Cast

Charles Denner	...	Bertrand Morane
Brigitte Fossey	...	Geneviève Bigey
Nelly Borgeaud	...	Delphine Grezel
Geneviève Fontanel	...	Hélène (as Genevieve Fontanel)
Leslie Caron	...	Véra
Nathalie Baye	...	Martine Desdoits
Valérie Bonnier	...	Fabienne (as Valerie Bonnier)
Jean Dasté	...	Docteur Bicard
Sabine Glaser	...	Bernadette
Henri Agel	...	Lecteur
Chantal Balussou
Nella Barbier	...	Liliane, la Karateka
Anne Bataille	...	La jeune femme à la robe frangée
Martine Chassaing	...	Denise
Ghylaine Dumas	...	La seconde employée 'Midi-Car'

Also Known As:

The Man Who Loved Women (USA)

Runtime:

120 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Black and White | Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:M (DVD rating) | Argentina:16 | Finland:K-16 | France:U | Singapore:NC-16 | Sweden:15 | UK:15 | West Germany:16

Filming Locations:

Montpellier, Hérault, France

Company:

Les Films du Carrosse

Trivia:

Director Cameo: ['Francois Truffaut']man outside cemetery at the beginning of the film.

Quotes:

Bertrand Morane: There are women that you can wonder if they got any interest in love. For others, they are carrying it on their face.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Ça n'arrive qu'à moi (1985)

Loved??

Another good film by Truffaut (as with DW Griffith, Leni Riefenstahl) in the sense of a good watch, but why does it seem so gloomy and weighted down--at times even like a horror film.

Is it because Bertrand Morane is a solitary? Or because he draws us into a world (through his low key, partly sympathetic rendering) that is somehow upsetting and/or even detestable? Is it because the view here is hothouse psychological? A kind of Freudian mind drama in which a mother-son dyad subsumes everything outside itself to its own ends? (see "Alfie" for a social view of a similar womanizer) Is it because of the extent to which this fantasy is carried out---that it finally seems deranged, and sick, as if the product of a puerile mind in an adult? Or is it all the concealment techniques used to paint Bertrand as so exceptional a male that he might even find acceptance on an all-female island?

I think all of the above count but for my part the real source of gloom is the absence of women in "The Man Who Loved Women." No matter the angle, the multiplicity of women (one arguable exception) are singularly available to Bertrand Morane. They are inspected (their entry into his world and our screens), pursued, consumed, and disposed of--all to their immense delight. This is their invisibility Oh yeah, they have their fleeting stories, but these are invariably subsumed by Bertrand's script, which is all about pleasure, appetite, and some trumped up memory of a delinquent promiscuous mother.

But the big lie in all this and what Bertrand is most convinced of is that women want and need sex--and specifically from him. This availability is so patently confirmed as to be pornographic. Each step of his lovers' butterfly-like life span with him is not only accepted, but savored and yearned for. It's as if his sexualizing puppy-love has incapacitated them, cutting them off from both their own minds, and their own worlds. No way they're drawn to him for social reasons (this is not "Alfie")---but an irressistable urge which speaks for the social power (cleverly hidden by Truffaut) behind his very personal power trip. And accounts for Bertrand's capacity to transform live, often tall, world-aware women into fun sex toys.

The real convincer in this schema of availability, though, is Genevieve, the editor publisher. You expect her to be the point woman for exposure, given her position and her inside view of Bertrand's story, but no--she is the ultimate patsy. She not only loves his refreshingly honest take on his use of women---which she convinces herself is so modern, and contains a tendency toward equality, but converts five resistant male co-publishers to her view. Which makes it just a matter of time--she's lucky to be leggy-- before she expresses wimpish longings for the said Bertrand Morane and jumps into bed with him. And her love, like that of all his others, will soon become eternal and confer a kind of sainthood on the late Bertrand. If this seems astonishing than her role in the burial scene confirms it to be nakedly true. Surrounded by dozens of Saint Bertrand's lovers, she supplies the voice over as each woman approaches to toss dirt on his coffin. She touts each as an example of Bertrand's diverse taste for women... like shy, myopic, gentle, passionate, orphanish, funny, and so forth, ad nauseam as if even greater holiness might be bestowed on a male who has slept with Asians, Blacks, Latinas, Russians, and Native Islanders. Anyway, a "fitting" end indeed to a man who classified all women as either "kittens" or "fillies."