comedy drama
Comedy drama (also known by the portmanteau dramedy) is a hybrid genre of works that combine elements of comedy and Drama (film and television), drama. In film, as well as scripted television series, serious dramatic subjects (such as death, il ...
film directed by
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French filmmaker, actor, and critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. He came under the tutelage of film critic Andre Bazin as a ...
and starring
Charles Denner
Charles Denner (29 May 1926 – 10 September 1995) was a French actor born to a Jewish family in Tarnów, Poland. During his 30-year career he worked with some of France's greatest film director, directors of the time, including Louis Malle, ...
,
Brigitte Fossey
Brigitte Florence Fossey (; born 15 June 1946) is a French actress.
Early years
The daughter of a schoolteacher, Fossey was five years old when she was cast by director René Clément to star in his film, '' Forbidden Games''.Nelly Borgeaud. The film had a total of 955,262 admissions in France.
In 1983,
Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards (born William Blake Crump; July 26, 1922 – December 15, 2010) was an American film director, producer and screenwriter.
Edwards began his career in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon began writing screenplays and radio scripts ...
Burt Reynolds
Burton Leon Reynolds Jr. (February 11, 1936 – September 6, 2018) was an American actor most famous during the 1970s and 1980s. He became well known in television series such as ''Gunsmoke'' (1962–1965), '' Hawk'' (1966) and '' Dan Augus ...
as a sculptor and
Julie Andrews
Dame Julie Andrews (born Julia Elizabeth Wells; 1 October 1935) is an English actress, singer, and author. She has garnered numerous accolades throughout her career spanning over eight decades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Fi ...
as a psychiatrist.
Plot
At a cemetery in
Montpellier
Montpellier (; ) is a city in southern France near the Mediterranean Sea. One of the largest urban centres in the region of Occitania (administrative region), Occitania, Montpellier is the prefecture of the Departments of France, department of ...
in December 1976, mourners gather for the funeral of Bertrand Morane. One of the attendants, Genevieve Bigey, stands apart from the others. She notices that everyone present is a woman.
Some time earlier, Bertrand, a man in early middle-age, works in a laboratory testing the aerodynamics of scale models of aircraft, but his real passion is pursuing women. He is often successful, though he has less luck with the woman from the service that calls to wake him up each morning. After spotting a pair of attractive legs, Bertrand goes to extraordinary lengths (which include faking a car accident) to find the woman to whom they belong, only to learn she was just visiting France and has already left the country by the time he tracks her down, though he does manage to sleep with Bernadette, an employee of the company from which the woman rented a car.
Bertrand becomes friendly with Hélène, who runs a lingerie shop and is close to his own age. After she confesses to only being attracted to younger men, Bertrand, sensing an imminent change in his lifestyle, decides to write his memoirs before he forgets the details of his many conquests. He writes of his first sexual experience, which was with a prostitute; his relationship with his mother, a beautiful, but cold, woman who largely ignored him and would leave him alone for days at a time to be with her lovers; and many of his other long- and short-term sexual relationships. An emotionally unstable woman named Delphine Grezel liked to make love in public, and her relationship with Bertrand only ended when she was imprisoned for shooting her husband. When Delphine is released, she visits Bertrand, and they have a threesome with Bernadette.
When Bertrand contracts
gonorrhea
Gonorrhoea or gonorrhea, colloquially known as the clap, is a sexually transmitted infection (STI) caused by the bacterium ''Neisseria gonorrhoeae''. Infection may involve the genitals, mouth, or rectum.
Gonorrhea is spread through sexual c ...
, the doctor is impressed that he does not know who gave it to him, as he has had sex with six women in the previous twelve days. However, the typist who Bertrand is paying to make copies of his manuscript as he continues to write is embarrassed by the content, so she quits. Bertrand is disillusioned by this response and stops writing for a time, but he ultimately decides to continue. He takes a week off work to finish his book, which he sends to publishers.
The rejection letters begin to arrive, but one editor, Geneviève, likes Bertrand's manuscript and champions the work to her boss. He agrees to publish Bertrand's book without any changes, and, when Bertrand goes to Paris to meet with Geneviève, he runs into Véra, an old flame. Their breakup five years earlier caused Bertrand to require various pharmaceuticals and leave Paris, but he says he eventually pulled himself back together and does not think of her very often anymore. He denies Véra's request to have dinner and try to be friends.
Realizing that he wrote his book because of Véra, but neglected to even mention her in it, Bertrand calls Geneviève to say he has to rewrite the manuscript. She responds by telling him that it is common for writers to feel they have failed to write the book they had set out to write, but that she fought for the book he did write, and he should make his next project about Véra. Bertrand agrees to trust Geneviève, and the book is prepared for publication. Geneviève falls for Bertrand, and they have an affair.
During the Christmas season, Bertrand cannot get in touch with anyone in his little black book, so he goes out roaming the streets, and he is hit by a car while hurrying after two women. Severely injured, he is hospitalized and told not to move, but, noticing a nurse's attractive legs, he lunges at her, falls out of bed, and dies.
At Bertrand's funeral, Geneviève reflects that, of all of Bertrand's former lovers who have gathered, she is the only one who knows the full story of his life. She does not doubt that, in his own way, Bertrand loved each of them, and thinks he was seeking happiness in quantity, having not found it in any single person.
Cast
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French filmmaker, actor, and critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. He came under the tutelage of film critic Andre Bazin as a ...
has a brief, wordless cameo in the film as a man the hearse drives past during the opening title sequence.
Production
Truffaut used his free time during the filming of ''
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
''Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' is a 1977 American science fiction film, science fiction drama film written and directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, Cary Guffey, and François ...
'' to write the script of ''The Man Who Loved Women''.
Reception
The film was entered into the
27th Berlin International Film Festival
The 27th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from 24 June to 5 July 1977. The festival opened with ''Nickelodeon'' by Peter Bogdanovich.
The Golden Bear was awarded to '' The Ascent'' directed by Larisa Shepitko. Since this edit ...
National Board of Review
The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures is a non-profit organization of New York City area film enthusiasts. Its awards, which are announced in early December, are considered the first major harbinger of the film awards season that ...
.
At the time of the film's release,
Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who was the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in 2000. ...
of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' described it as a "supremely humane, sophisticated comedy that is as much fun to watch for the variations Mr. Truffaut works on classic man-woman routines as for the routines themselves", and observed that "I suppose there's always been a little of the late
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch (; ; January 29, 1892November 30, 1947) was a German-born American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; a ...
in all Truffaut comedies, ..but there is more than I've ever seen before in ''The Man Who Loved Women.''" Canby also said that "Denner is very, very funny as Bertrand, a fellow who has the same single-minded purpose as the rat exterminator he played in ''
Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me
''A Gorgeous Girl Like Me'' (), also known as ''A Gorgeous Bird Like Me'', is a 1972 French film directed by François Truffaut, starring Bernadette Lafont. It is based on Henry Farrell's 1967 novel of the same name.
Truffaut called it "a sar ...
'', as well as the delicacy of touch of
Antoine Doinel
Antoine Doinel () is a fictional character created by François Truffaut (1932–1984) and portrayed by actor Jean-Pierre Léaud (b. 1944) in five films directed by Truffaut. Doinel is to a great extent an alter ego for Truffaut; they share many ...
on his best behavior", and called the scene featuring
Leslie Caron
Leslie Claire Margaret Caron (; born 1 July 1931) is a French and American actress and dancer. She is the recipient of a Golden Globe Award, two BAFTA Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards.
Caron b ...
the film's "most marvelous, most surprising", as it is "so remarkably well played and written that an entire love affair, from the beginning to the middle and the end, is movingly evoked through what is really just
exposition
Exposition (also the French for exhibition) may refer to:
*Universal exposition or World's Fair
*Expository writing
*Exposition (narrative), background information in a story
* Exposition (music)
*Trade fair
* ''Exposition'' (album), the debut alb ...
."
In ''French Films 1945-1993'', Melissa E. Biggs described the film as "extraordinary" and "made at just the right moment in time, when sexual obsession could still be ironic and celebrated and not held up to scorn by political correctness and feminist righteousness". More negatively,
Ronald Bergan
Ronald Bergan (né Ginsberg, 2 November 1937 – 23 July 2020) was a South African-born British writer and historian. He was contributor to ''The Guardian'' (from 1989) and lecturer on film and other subjects as well as the author (or co-author) ...
and
Robyn Karney
Robyn Karney (4 January 1940 – 7 December 2017) was a South African-born London-based film writer and critic.
Karney was born in Cape Town, but raised in Johannesburg. A stage manager for the theatre companies of Brian Brooke and Leonard Schac ...
wrote in the ''Bloomsbury Foreign Film Guide'' that "the film obstinately refuses to cast light on its characters, making it no more than a superficial and sporadically entertaining exercise", and
Geoff Andrew
Geoff Andrew (born 1954) is a British writer, lecturer, teacher, film programmer and occasional broadcaster.
Born in Northampton, he studied at Northampton Grammar School and went on to gain a First in Classics at King's College, Cambridge. And ...
described the film in the ''Time Out Film Guide'' as "Charmless", saying it "irritates by its over-wrought sense of literary-style paradox, by its insistence on eccentricity as its source of humour".