L'homme qui aimait les femmes (1977) Reviews

• A really good movie about a man who was just crazy about women.

  staycoolguy2000-03-26

  This movie is just wonderful, a kind of masterpiece as for its construction, its dialogues and the actors' performances. The first image sets the scene very clearly : Bertrand Morane's burial attended only by women. No guys in the funeral procession. Twenty or so lovely middle-aged females are following their (former) lover's last trip. One of them, Brigitte Fossey, Bertrand's last girlfriend, comments, from backstage, on this unusual situation and explains, incidentally, what the film 's gonna be : a flashback to Bertrand's life. How does she happen to know about it ? Thanks to Bertrand's book she has recently edited for him and called "The man who loved women" (passed tense works here as a premonition). The author describes his passion for women and focuses on some of them. Inspired directly from the Bertrand's life (and from the director's life as well), his narrative is informal, genuine, sometimes contradictory but never pedantic nor rude. He remembers his love affairs, his bad and good times, and, most of all, tries to express his feelings to such an extent that is story must be seen as an auto-analysis, the writer's personal attempt to understand his personality rather than a woman chaser's curriculum vitae. Come to that, Charles Denner, the lead, shows us very well that his character's everything short of a sexist and self-confident womanizer. He fell in love once, but this experience turned out to be a real disappointment. Now, he feels as if he were unable to love anymore. So, he's `collecting'. He may have shortcomings, he may have fun picking up beautiful girls wherever and whenever he can, he may not be the kind of faithful and steady guy a good many girls usually like, his behavior might be considered as outrageous by some, the thing is he's a sensitive, affectionate, simple and nice person who knows how to make women happy and comfortable. Each mistress's chosen for a particular reason, a physical standard (behavior, way of walking, voice..) but all share one thing : they have long, smooth and attractive legs. All in all, `The man who loved women' is a mighty good film, worth watching it.

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• François Truffaut does it again

  caspian19782005-01-14

  Another terrific character driven movie, François Truffaut creates a story that makes you laugh as well as cry. Charles Denner stars as a fan of the ladies. More than that, he is in great need of woman so much that is ends up to be his doom. The movie begins at the end, with the funeral. Like Hitchcock, François Truffaut makes a cameo at the beginning as his trademark. From there, we begin to see who this man was and why is urge for women caused his death. A very sexy film for 1977, it is still as funny today than it was almost 30 years ago. Unlike American movies, it is very difficult to have a scene with just words and no action. Many scenes in the movie are one shot scenes with nothing but pages of words, words and more words. This is the movie's strong point, besides having several beautiful women. The language (not just French) in the movie is powerful to its audience. It speaks to both men and women.

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• a very good movie--particularly the ending

  MartinHafer2005-08-15

  If this movie had JUST been about the sexual escapades of the main character, I would have hated it. After all, this is a man whose entire existence is based on bedding women--and this alone would have made a boring movie. Instead, it shows the emotional shallowness of this character and his complete inability to be close to another person--and its ultimate impact on him. He doesn't see this as a problem, but during the latter part of the movie, its impact on him becomes apparent. I particularly liked the unexpected ending. As the movie begins, it is at his funeral, so you KNOW he will die but HOW is the real interesting twist. About the only thing I did not like about the movie was the episodic nature. Sometimes it was a little hard to keep track of all the women. Perhaps this was unintentional, as there were a LOT of women in this man's life! Of course, it did serve to illustrate his problem!!

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• Memoirs of a Womanizer

  claudio_carvalho2010-12-24

  In 1976, in Montpellier, the funeral of the engineer Bertrand Morane (Charles Denner) is attended by several women. The lonely Bertrand works in a laboratory in a ship model basin and wind tunnel for aircraft testing and loves books and women, spending his leisure time seducing women and reading. Along his life, Bertrand makes love to the most different type of women and decides to write a book telling his love affairs. "L'Homme qui Aimait les Femmes" discloses the memoirs of a womanizer. This sensual and funny film is a great tribute to the beautiful French women with lovely French actresses. The romances of Bertrand are provoking and charming and his character shows that a man does not need to be handsome to be seductive and conquer women. Last but not the least, Bertrand is a man that follows the poetry of the French Henri de Régnier (1864-1936): "Love is eternal while it lasts". My vote is seven. Title (Brazil): "O Homem Que Amava as Mulheres" ("The Man Who Loved the Women")

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• Not a Film as Much as A Seductive Cinematic Pleasure

  jayraskin12010-04-29

  This is the eight feature film by Francois Truffaut that I have seen. He made 25 feature films over a 24 year period from 1959 to 1983. What I find most interesting about Truffaut's development is how conventional he became. With "Jules and Jim," (1960) he broke every rule of cinema convention. Here, 17 years later, he does a movie that is a model of Hollywood conventionally. It is so conventional that Hollywood soon copies it into an American version starring Burt Reynolds, (a film which also has its merits.) In conventional cinema the audience is meant to identify with a character subjectively. The ability to cut shots so the viewer becomes part of the action, seeing what a character sees and feeling what a character feels, is the essence of conventional Hollywood cinema. Here we are meant to identify solely with "the skirt-chasing" hero. Yet the hero seems to be only a stand-in for Truffaut himself, or at least a vision of Truffaut that he would like the audience to have of him. Because Trauffaut is a master of cinema as his hero Hitchcock was a master of cinema, we, the audience, do identify with the hero. It is only at the moments when we are looking at the course, rough facial features of Charles Denner, when we see him as being 6 years older than Truffaut and not nearly as handsome that we find it hard to accept him as a man with the power to sweep women off their feet. If Truffaut is the lover Bertrand Morane, Danner is not. However, it is only at moments when we cast ourselves into the roles of the quite beautiful women in the film that this becomes a problem. It is curious that Jean-Pierre Léaud did not play the lead in this film as he personified Truffaut in so many other films. In any case, even if Danner is not so handsome, we feel the pleasure of the successful seducer. It is a pleasure that even death cannot wipe out. However, because of the conventionality of the film, we do not feel the joy of the new wave. One day, someone will make a movie about two brothers, one named Francois and the other Jean Luc. The first brother created conventional works of art that were masterpieces of subjective narrative, the other brother took a Brechtian delight in exploding those conventions and making sure that we never identified with a character, but only studied them. I am think, amazingly, although their paths diverged considerably, they may have arrived at the same peak of cinematic art.

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