Customer Reviews

The Lovers (The Criterion Collection)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have seen this film when it first came out some 40 years ago and I will never forget it. It proves that a love making act can be presented with an autmost purity and sensitivity, and without the need for pornography.I cannot wait for it to be released again.

I saw this film along with a Yiddish stage show in a theatre on south beach in Miami many years ago. It was difficult at the time, to really enjoy the movie since it was inappropriate for that particular audience as they were laughing and giggling at the very serious and sensitive scenes due to their embarrassment.I loved the movie and think about it every time I hear strains of Brahms Double Concerto, (repeated beautifully in many love scenes)"The Lovers" is a French tale of adultery without today's nudity and language - but oh so very sexy! I would recommend this movie for anyone who is a fan of Louis Malle. His direction of Jeanne Moreau is superb. I am eagerly awaiting the re-issue of this film so that I may own it and enjoy watching it again and again.

It's the Brahms first sextet, Opus 18, that's used in this movie, not his Double Concerto, as reported by an earlier reviewer. This exquisite Brahms piece provides one of the greatest soundtracks in the history of film. (Another is the Miles Davis original soundtrack for an earlier Louis Malle film, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud.)

Had someone asked me to name the most romantic films of all time before seeing what I think is Louis Malle's masterpiece, I would have said "Last Year at Marienbad" or "L'Atalante" or "Rules of the Game," all French (of course). Well, "The Lovers" is now on the top of my list and will stay there for a very long time -- because it is highly unlikely someone of Malle's caliber will come along any time soon, or of the caliber of any of the New Wave geniuses who were part of his generation (which is too bad). And just think, Malle was only 25 when he made "The Lovers"!

As he himself admits in an interview shown on this DVD, the film is a love letter to Jeanne Moreau, which she herself knew perfectly well and is the reason everything is worked out so beautifully. More than one director has fallen in love with her, namely Truffaut and Bunuel, but this is different. Malle clearly adored Jeanne Moreau. He made this film to render her immortal. He had no way of knowing what would happen later in her career and probably felt this was his one chance and wasn't about to let it slip away.

This film was enormously successful and caused a scandal. Many of the reasons are obvious -- this is 1958, after all -- but there is one reason I want to point out that Malle himself isn't entirely explicit about in one of the interviews. He admits he wanted to keep the camera on Jeanne as she experiences an orgasm (maybe for the first time) instead of the usual sound effects while camera filmed ... the window. An orgasm induced how? The bedroom scene has Bernard on top of her kissing her on the mouth, then kissing her neck, then her breasts, and he just keeps on kissing as he moves further and further down Jeanne's body -- which is implied but not shown. When she climaxes, Bernard is not on top of her, pumping away -- the bed does not move -- but between her legs. In 1958 this must have seemed absolutely outrageous. Malle caught a lot of flack because of it, to which his response was "good, I must have been doing something right." (Apparently, a Cleveland theater owner got arrested for obscenity in a case that eventually went to the Supreme Court!)

One reason this film is so original is that we don't find out who the title refers to until quite late; in fact, Malle deliberately misleads the audience into thinking that the Spanish polo player is that lover. And when she meets the real one, Bernard, which happens entirely by accident, they don't hit it off at all; he says he dislikes intensely all the people she likes, takes his sweet time getting her home knowing guests are waiting, and makes rude comments about her husband. So, what did he do right that struck a chord? I won't spoil it by answering.

Five stars are the most the system allows, though I would gladly have given twice that many.

To talk about the meaning and trascendence of The lovers means to make reference to one of the most remakable, irreverent and daring films in the Fifties decade. If you look behind in the story of the cinema, you will find interesting proposals such as The devil in the flesh, Ectasy (with Hedy Lamarr), Pandora Box, The blue angel, Gilda, Baby Doll for instance, but never before a film loaded with such abundance of dark poetry,increasing tension and a great doses of references about the double moral and social hypocrisy.
After the huge sucess in the whole world with Elevator to the Gallows, Louis Malle decided to make an unique film; a true fullfillment in every sense of the meaning.
Louis de Villalonga and Jeanne Moreau are specially splendid in this unmatched film that deserves all your special attention.
A true landmark in the story of the cinema.

This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

The Lovers known in French as Les Amants is Louis Malle's second feature film after Elevator to the Gallows. It also was the first of his films to generate controversey. It was censored upon its release in the US and other countries but A theater owner in Ohio who screened this film was charged with screening an obscene film and in a case that made it all the way to the US Supreme Court, the charges overturned. I think it would get a hard PG-13 or a light R with today's standards.

The film is about a married woman who having an affair and on her way home from a liason with her lover her car breaks down. A man then pulls over and he drives her to a garage. She then begins a relationship with him too.

This film is certainly not obscene as the censors maintained 50 years ago. Some scenes might be considered indecent by some though. I thought it was an interesting story but didn't care too much for the adultery theme.

The special features on the DVD are a slideshow of material for the US release and archival interviews with Louis Malle, writer, Louise de Vilmorin, actress, Jeanne Moreau, and actor José Luis de Villalonga.

Criterion's recent release of Louis Malle's "The Lovers" is a hidden gem; a film that makes viewing many classic art films- in hope of finding a transcendent work- worthwhile I have always thought Jeanne Moreau was one of the finest French actresses of her generation through such noteworthy films such as "Jules and Jim," " Elevator to the Gallows," "Diary of a Chambermaid," and "La Notte" However, this film elevates her to the level of, in my opinion, such later great French actresses as Catherine Deneuve and Isabelle Huppert- and like the other two actresses she is still acting in films today; but the transformation of a "bored "bourgeoisie bitch," who reminded me of a French Bette Davis or Joan Crawford, to a vulnerable, sensually aware, luminescent beautiful woman through a sensual/sexual liaison with a freethinking, and authentic (with a young man who had in bourgeoisie background that he rejected) is hypnotic and spell binding. Prior to this, her life in the French, low cultured, Provences (anywhere but Paris) is so stifling that she is carrying on a relatively open affair with an idle rich, superficial, (but pleasant) Spanish polo player. He, like her workaholic, cynical, domineering, wealthy husband, is almost old enough to be her father, and, as is often the case of men who struggled through the horrors of world war II, is devoid of any real self awareness. Moreover, the Moreau character was certainly what we would call today a "trophy wife."

The last third of the film, involving the transformative sensual encounter, was cinematically and characterlogically mesmerizing. The depictions of nature at night, both human/sensual and scenic, were hauntingly beautiful. Louis Malle' direction was sensitive and exquisite The scenes of sexual intimacy were both erotic and aesthetic without the hint of pornography. This very was avant garde for the pre sexual revolution and pre-feminist 50's- even in France, and the film was banned in the straight laced Eisenhower Administrative of America in the 1950's.

The only things I found problematic was the Moreau character abandoning her child to pursue her romantic proclivities. On the other hand, there was a fairytale quality to the later parts of the movie,and I think Malle was trying to make a point about alienation from nature and, to a lesser extent, reality of the postwar French bourgeoisie. This was a particularly popular theme in French and Italian films of the era. Finally, don't miss the short interviews with Moreau.

It is amazing to see the film made in late 50s and realize that this film has caused a stir all over the world, US included. In the Midwest, this film was considered obscene and it is the Supreme Court that granted this movie not be equaled with pornography. Made in black and white, this Malle's film is even more artistic in today's era. Story is about a upper middle class married woman who lives in provinces (Dijon) with her newspaper editor husband. She lives seemingly comfortable life in a large house, with full time nanny and servants. Her husbands pays her very little or no attention, he is cold and emotionally unavailable. They sleep in separate bedrooms. To find some amusement, young wife Jeanne goes to Paris to visit her married childhood friend who mingles in high society. It is there that she finds a lover, well-to-do polo player who she sees regularly until one day her husband decides to put a stop to her trips to Paris and have his wife's "friends" come a visit for the weekend. He is determined to re-establish his dominion over his household and of course, his wife. It is in preparation of this weekend, that Jeanne's car breaks down on the road and she gets a ride from the handsome, young stranger to her home. As a token of gratitude, young man is invited for a supper and to spend a night in the house before he takes off to his destination the next day. Frustrated that she cannot be with her lover, and outraged by her husband's possesive behavior, Jeanne wonders outside her bedroom at night, in the garden, where she and her mysterious savior find each other. Before long, they realize strong attraction between them and make love in the garden and her bedroom. Jeanne is sure she has found her soulmate and decides to leave everything behind: her young daughter Catherine, the big house, jewelry, clothes, everything. In the dawn of the new day, as house guests are getting ready for the fishing trip, Jeanne and her lover leave house never to return again. I do not believe that it is lovemaking scenes alone that made this film scandalous at the time. This woman is almost like D.H. Lawrence's wife, who left her comfortable upper-middle class life of a wife and a mother for the big unknown with a much younger man. All she is certain of is that she wants to be with a man she has met and there is no price to it. She will sacrifice everything for her own happiness no matter how short, or long that happiness will last. I have enjoyed watching interviews from a film director, actors and screenwriter and find film utterly beautiful and powerful, 50 years after it was made. It is a film that celebrates woman's sexuality and her power to make her own choices.

This is a lovely early Louis Malle film that shows him beginning to find his own urbane and witty voice after the stylish noir homage Elevator to the Gallows. Although not in a class with Le Feu Follet (The Fire Within - also on Criterion) or Lacombe, Lucien (to name 2 of Malle's greatest), it is a striking movie that begins as a kind of typical European satire of the bourgeois and then unexpectedly shifts in plot and tone to a dreamy romanticism that is both utterly fresh and un-maudlin. As others have pointed out, the use of Brahms's chamber music does much to enhance the swooning beauty of the movie. It boast a wonderful cast as well, including the beautiful young Jeanne Moreau and Alain Cuny (familiar to most as the tortured intellectual from La Dolce Vita).

The Lovers generated a lot of controversy on its release for its "frank sexuality" (to borrow a hackneyed term), and indeed it was the film that elicited the famous line about pornography--"I know it when I see it"--when Justice Potter Stewart ruled the film was not obscene after an Ohio theater had been fined for showing it.

The Criterion disc is splendid--a beautiful transfer and good supplements. Although not Malle's best, it is a film well worth seeing and more proof of the consistent subtlety, humanism and grace of this criminally underrated filmmaker.

After working with Jeanne Moreau in ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS, Louis Malle decided to showcase her in his next film, THE LOVERS. Showcase her he did, because she is in practically every frame of the movie. THE LOVERS created quite a storm when it came out in 1959 for it's frank sexuality which would be quite tame by today's standards. It might be the first depiction of a woman having an orgasm on screen. Moreau's stardom was launched by THE LOVERS, and she gained a certain measure of notoriety in the process. She was labeled the new Bardot, but Moreau was anything but a sex kitten. Her characters exuded sensuality more than sexuality, a sensuality tinged with intelligence and a fair share of danger.

THE LOVERS is about a woman, living in Dijon, married to a successful but overbearing and inattentive magazine publisher. Feeling bored and unfulfilled in her married life she goes on frequent jaunts to Paris to see her friend and hook up with her playboy lover. The suspicious husband asks her to invite both over for a weekend stay at their estate. On the way back, her car breaks down and she is given a lift by an attractive young archaeologist who looks down on her friends and lifestyle. He is invited to stay over, and on a fateful night, meets Jeanne outside the mansion. A love affair commences that will cause Jeanne to make a life altering decision.

THE LOVERS is a very personal and egocentrically themed movie. The Self and it's emotional enrichment as well as sexual fulfillment has primacy over interpersonal relationships, even the basic mother/child relationship. Jeanne makes her fateful decision and for better or worse will have to live with the consequences.