A Man and a Woman Sweeps and Swoons Its Way Into The Criterion Collection

A wildly popular entertainment of prestige filmmaking given a boost by the verve of the French Nouvelle Vague, Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman might well be one of those films you took for granted was already part of The Criterion Collection. It hasn’t been, up until now, and a lovely new 2K digital restoration, supervised by the still-sprightly director himself, makes for a welcome addition as Spine #1304. It may not be the most influential or timeless of the Collection’s entries, but at the ripe young age of 60, A Man and a Woman remains a sublime, sweeping, swooning romance, presented in a whirlwind of cinematic effects and anchored by the palpable energy of its effervescent, evergreen stars.

Those are the handsome, affable Jean-Louis Trintignant as race-car driver Jean-Louis and the equally striking, slyly enigmatic Anouk Aimée as film-script supervisor Anne, both characters reeling from the loss of their spouses and scuffling along as widowed single parents. Anne lost her first husband, a stuntman, to an on-set accident she had the horror to witness first-hand; Jean-Louis’ young wife committed suicide in response to a devastating race accident he would later barely survive. The two have already, even before the events of the film proper, endured enough trauma to stunt anyone emotionally, but in sharing their losses, they find a common ground to move forward.

The two meet at the boarding school where they have sent their young children, and from there begin their wind-swept, rain-soaked, on-and-off-again affair. The narrative hurtles back and forth between each lover’s past—their prior loves and losses are dramatized onscreen in detail—and their present. The title of the film implies something of an equality of its two subjects, and, to its credit, both Anne and Jean-Louis are often seen at their respective workplaces, she on set, collaborating with the director, crew, and cast, he planning, practicing, and racing. The racing sequences are especially great, but remember, in the mid-1960s, women were just entering the workplace: Anne’s is the character who is truly progressive. Both of them are smart, accomplished, and impossibly attractive, the two exemplify 1960s cosmopolitan chic.

Lelouch’s direction sets their affair in motion with an impassioned verve and style borrowed from the Nouvelle Vague directors before him. It is unquestionably a more commercial, starstruck approach without any of Godard’s irony or Truffaut’s insight, but that’s not to say it doesn’t work. His camera sweeps and swoons around the two lovers, whether in stunning long shot or extreme close-up; the editing pitches and rolls between episodes past and present; varying film stocks and aspect ratios color each sequence with a new and invigorating perspective. Never mind that the last was born not of artistic intent but of budget limitation: Lelouch’s modest budget did not allow him to shoot the entirety of the film with color stock, so he did what he could with black and white and tints.

There’s no better time capsule for the decade’s swinging, stunning style, presented with utter sincerity, than A Man and a Woman. Viewers of the era and across both sides of the Atlantic were mesmerized. A Man and a Woman won the Grand Prix at Cannes and the Academy Award for Foreign Language film. Its screenplay also won an Oscar, as did Francis Lai’s memorable earworm of a theme song, which, with co-star Pierre Barouh’s gently strummed sambas, made the soundtrack an international hit.

Criterion presents A Man and a Woman in its original aspect ratio of 1.66:1 and a new 2K restoration supervised by Lalouch himself and created from the original 35mm camera negative. There is, of course, a great deal of variety to the visual content, as scenes differ greatly in their film stock, grain, and color, but the intensity and detail here looks as precise as one can imagine. The monoaural soundtrack, remastered from the original negative, does the scope of the film’s sound design justice, from the quiet strums of a nylon-strung guitar to the roar of the racetrack.

Special Features

Claude Lelouch.  In this winning new 23-minute interview shot last year in Paris, Lelouch, now in his late eighties and still full of movie-star vim and vigor, reminisces about his upbringing and the events—most of them failures—that led to his making A Man and a Woman in 1966. Cinema, he says, “saved his life.” The segment features Lelouch interviewed at his home, his comments juxtaposed with archival photos of his early life and work on set, alongside some behind-the-scenes footage from the film’s making. In French with English subtitles, like each of the other supplements included here, it’s an impressive and instructive featurette, newly commissioned for this special edition.

Making of. This 22-minute program was made by Lelouch’s production company from footage following the director and actors Aimée and Trintignant during the shoot. Each of the three is interviewed separately, but the real treat is the behind-the-scenes footage of the car-race scenes and seeing a dining chair jerry-rigged to the top of a car as a dolly to follow Trintignant’s Mustang around the track. Criterion’s menu says this is a “1996” program, but I’m certain that’s an error, with all of the content, like with the following segment, from 1966.

Portrait of Claude Lelouch at 28. This 11-minute verité-style segment, originally aired on French television in 1966, features footage of Lelouch presenting A Man and A Woman alongside cast members Aimée and Trintignant at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival. It’s a nice time capsule to have, even if it doesn’t scratch more than the surface of your typical film-festival schmoozing and selling.

C’était un rendez-vous. This 1976 short, shot in a single nine-minute take with a camera strapped to a car’s bumper as it races through Paris at speeds of over 120 miles per hour, is the story of a man, the driver, desperately late for a date with the woman he loves. But the real attraction is Lelouch himself driving, careening through narrow Parisian cobblestone undaunted by traffic, pedestrians, or stoplights. It’s a wonder neither he nor anyone else was injured! Lelouch provides a brief newly-shot introduction connecting this to A Man and a Woman by way of his love for automobiles and racing.

Also included are two trailers, and, in the accompanying 12-page full-color foldout booklet insert, an excellent essay, “Modern Lovers,” by Carrie Rickey.

A little surprisingly, none of the supplements speak to either of A Man and a Woman‘s sequels, A Man and a Woman: Twenty Years Later (1986) or The Best Years of a Life (2019), both directed by Lelouch and starring Aimée and Trintignant: it’s as if neither exists. There’s also little indication of this particular film’s influence on the New Hollywood directors of the decade that followed: A Man and a Woman is said to be a favorite, in particular, of Hal Ashby and Mike Nichols, both of whose work shows traces of Lelouch’s improvisational and freewheeling storytelling. Nonetheless, with its focus on this film alone more so than in context, and with a great new 2K transfer, the Criterion Collection’s special edition Blu-ray of A Man and a Woman is one to cherish.