Claude Lelouch

[batiar]

It looks almost unbelievable but German Black Hill-Warner Bros company released almost all Claude Lelouch DVDs with both French and German audio and with English subtitles. They released them in 5 boxes with 4DVDs in each box.

In box 1 only 2 DVDs have English subtitles. The movies "La Belle Histoire" and "L'aventure C'est l'aventure" have no subtitles. In boxes 2, 3, 4 all DVDs have English subtitles. In box 5 at least 3 DVDs have English subtitles. I am not certain of subtitles on the DVD of the movie "Ca n'arrive qu'aux autres" (German title "Das passiert immer nur den anderen"). By the way this movie according to IMDB was directed by Nadine Trintignant, so it seems puzzling why this movie is included in the Lelouch collection.

There is also a new 2 DVD Lelouch set recently released, but I don't know if English subtitles were included.

Maybe somebody in Germany can check the subtitles status of all of the uncertain cases. Additionally these boxes cost only 35 or 26 euro each in Amazon.de. This is incredible news. It seems that Germans started to subtitle many French and German movies in English.

Recently Romy Schneider collection was released in Germany that is completely English friendly.

If you find any other boxes or DVDs of French, Italian, Spanish or German movies released in Germany please let us know!!!

[Gordon]

Impressive packages. But I don't seem to see La Vie, l'amour, la mort (Life, Love, Death) from 1969, the film about the capital punishment - the guillotine - in France, shot with black and white and color sequences.

Could someone post a complete list of the films in this set, as I am having trouble reading the words on those jpegs.

Still no english-subtitled Les Misérables available, though, which is a crying shame.

Thanks, batiar.

[batiar]

This is the list of movies in the Lelouch DVD box sets:

Set 1

1. Itinéraire d'un enfant gâté (Der Lowe) (1988)
2. La Belle Histoire (Die Schonste Geschichte der Welt) (1992) (NO SUBS)
3. Tout ça... pour ça! (Alles Fur die Liebe) (1993)
4. L'Aventure, c'est l'aventure (Die Entfuhrer Lassen Grussen) (1972) (NO SUBS)

Set 2

1. Édith et Marcel (Edith und Marcel) (1983)
2. Robert et Robert (Ein Man Sucht Eine Frau) (1978)
3. Partir, revenir (Weggehen und Wiederkommen) (1985)
4. La Bonne année (Ein Gluckchet Jahr) (1973)

Set 3

1. À nous deux (Allein zu Zweit) (1979)
2. Attention bandits! (Die Zeit des Verbrechen) (1986)
3. Viva la vie! (Es Lebe das Leben) (1984)
4. Uns et les autres (Ein Jeglicher Wird Seinen Lohn Empfangen) (1981)

Set 4

1. Le Bon et les méchants (Der Gute und die Bosen) (1976)
2. Le Chat et la souris (Eine Katze Jagt de Maus) (1975)
3. Smic Smac Smoc (1971)
4. L'Amour avec des si (Die Fahnung) (1962)

Set 5

1. Toute une vie (Ein Leben Lang) (1974)
2. Il y a des jours... et des lunes (So Sind die Tage und der Mond) (1990)
3. Ça n'arrive qu'aux autres (Es Passiert Immer nur den Anderen) (1971) (SUBS ???)
Directed by Nadine Trintignant . Lelouch company Les Films 13 only produced this movie.
4. Mariage (Eine ehe) (1976)

Extra 2 DVD set

1. Une pour toutes (Eine fur Alle) (1999) (SUBS ???)
2. Une fille et des fusils (1964) (SUBS ???)

[Gordon]

Thank you!

[Kinsayder]

A small addition to your Lelouch collection (from an IMDb post):

http://mirror.rtor.net/rendezvous20_04.mov

C'etait un Rendezvous is the creation of the French filmmaker Claude Lelouch in 1976. Using a Ferrari 275 GTB early one August morning, Lelouch attached a camera to the bumper of the car and sped through the streets of Paris. He gave the driver a set route from Porte Dauphine, through the Louvre, to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur, which is straight through the heart of Paris. The driver is still unknown to this day, because Lelouch was never able to obtain a permit to close the streets. The driver, who Lelouch told officials was an F1 racer, went over the speed limit and blew off many red lights. When this film was first shown, Lelouch was arrested, and because of this, the footage has spent many years underground before it began to resurface on DVD a few years ago. Lelouch used a new technology of the time, a gyro stabilized camera mount, in order to mount the camera on the car. The problem with this is that the technology of the time only allowed for a ten minute film with this mount. Lelouch told his driver to rush because of this time limit, and the video itself is only about nine minutes.

Looks like a typical Paris driver to me

[Le Feu Follet]

I stopped following Claude Lelouch in the sixties I think it was when I saw Un Homme et Une Femme (A Man and a Woman), and I thought 'never again'.

Recently I went to Paris with a friend and he dashed into a shop and bought a DVD, and a week later pressed it onto me, urging me to watch it. It was two Lelouch films in one box, the one he was excited about was called 'La Belle Histoire'. I was somewhat taken aback when I put it in my player and discovered that it is three hours twenty-two minutes long (just the one film), with an intermission banner half-way through.

Well, now I've watched it, and it is a slightly amazing film, tacky but watchable, a bit like Lost on TV in that way, ambitious and with some good things such as ambition, a coherence of style, photography and mise-en-scene, a sort of bravura film-making, but with cheesy characterisation. It looks as though it cost a fortune to make.

I have a French cinema reference book which ways 'Lelouch is an auteur. He has a grasp of light, and he knows how to direct actors from stars to the young and inexperienced. He likes flattering colours, sentimental romance and the superficial psychology of best-sellers.'

I think La Belle Histoire is pretty unknown in the English-speaking world, as the DVD is only available without English subs, and I am not aware that it has ever had a release in London. I was wondering whether anyone here has seen it or has anythng to say about it or Lelouch.

[Toxicologist]

Apologies if i'm posting in the wrong area...

Imagine my suprise briefly tuning into MTV2 and seeing the 'new' Snow Patrol video....or should i say..the 1976 infamous C'etait Un Rendez-Vous'!!

[Dylan]

A few questions for Lelouch fans on here:

1. Aside from A Man and a Woman (which I think is great, by the way), how are the films he did with Anouk Aimee, particularly The Second Chance (1976)?

2. How are the films he's made in the last decade?

Thanks!

[Caligula]

I've seen Les Miserables (1995) several times.

It might be my single biggest want on DVD (other than the unsubbed French DVD, not available anywhere else).

It's not really Victor Hugo's novel in the strict sense of the word, more a tale about a character who realises strong similarities between his own life and the novel of the title. It takes you (on a dance, perhaps? taking into account the opening and closing scenes) through the first half of the previous century as we follow the travails of the main character.

I find viewing the film every time a very emotional experience. There are beautiful images in the film that stay with you (the parachutists dropping down, for example) and small touches (the Lucky Strike cigarettes in the D-Day Landing Soldier's helmet, the camera respectfully withdrawing & not zooming in at an emotional moment) that makes this film very special for me.

Writing film appreciation is not really my forte but hope this helps.

[Dylan]

Sounds like a good adaptation of Les Miserables, too bad it's unavailable with English subs.

Aside from A Man and a Woman, Lelouch is largely undistributed outside of Europe, which is a shame because he seems like a very prolific, entertaining and skillful filmmaker. Does anybody else on here consider any of his films great (or very good) and wouldn't mind offering some thoughts? Once again, I'm particularly interested in the films he made with Anouk Aimee.

[pro-bassoonist]

2. How are the films he's made in the last decade?

And Now Ladies and Gentlemen received some mixed reviews however I enjoyed this film a great deal. It flows perfectly, it has a notable 80s feel, Michel Legrand is back on board, and Patricia Kaas is shockingly good. Frankly, this isn't his best work but in my opinion it is one of the director's solid works.

Ciao,
Pro-B

[martin]

Extra 2 DVD set

1. Une pour toutes (Eine fur Alle) (1999) (SUBS ???)
2. Une fille et des fusils (1964) (SUBS ???)

No subs on these. In fact Une fille et des fusils (1964) doesn't even have a German audio track, which is strange!

[Le Feu Follet]

Aside from which is a shame because he seems like a very prolific, entertaining and skillful filmmaker.

I agree with prolific, entertaining and skillful, but I would also add tacky, with cliched characterizations that don't ring true.

[zedz]

. . . pretty much cement now just as then how Lelouch had no business being mentioned in the same breath as the Nouvelle Vague . . .

The mystery of Lelouch's reputation was brought home to me yesterday when I was watching the (excellent) period interview with Richard Lester on the BFI Bed Sitting Room disc and the smart, probing interviewer started quizzing Lester about how much he was influenced by all the contemporary European masters around at the time. So he says something like: "How are you inspired when you see a film by. . . (Fellini? Godard? Bergman? Antonioni? Truffaut? Pasolini? Wajda? Visconti? Chabrol? - you've got a universe of talent out there and one chance to get it right, buddy, so who's it going to be?) . . . Claude Lelouch?"

[MichaelB]

. . . pretty much cement now just as then how Lelouch had no business being mentioned in the same breath as the Nouvelle Vague . . .

The mystery of Lelouch's reputation was brought home to me yesterday when I was watching the (excellent) period interview with Richard Lester on the BFI Bed Sitting Room disc and the smart, probing interviewer started quizzing Lester about how much he was influenced by all the contemporary European masters around at the time. So he says something like: "How are you inspired when you see a film by. . . (Fellini? Godard? Bergman? Antonioni? Truffaut? Pasolini? Wajda? Visconti? Chabrol? - you've got a universe of talent out there and one chance to get it right, buddy, so who's it going to be?) . . . Claude Lelouch?"

When I was researching the booklet for Second Run's A Blonde in Love, I discovered that both it and (unbelievably) The Battle of Algiers were beaten to the Best Foreign Film Oscar by Lelouch's Un Homme et une femme.

[colinr0380]

Never underestimate the power of a middle class "Love Story" with a memorable soundtrack to sway the voters! And while I was under the impression that the Foreign Lanuage Oscars had been biased towards the most untroubling film working in already explored territory over the obviously better film for quite some time (see Bier's win this year or Secret In Their Eyes or Departures), I guess it was always present to some extent in the tastes of the Academy. I'll be particularly interested in participating in a Foreign Language Oscars runthrough some time in the future once domino has completed doing the Best Picture analyses - especially if we compare the Oscars to Cannes or Berlin, etc.

I actually find Lelouch to be an interesting case study - he's kind of the ad director version of Woody Allen in that his films can seem insufferably precious individually and overly slick, but they build up a kind of cumulative power when seen together (Of course this comment should be taken in the context that I've never been the biggest fan of Woody Allen and feel that Eric Rohmer knocks them both into a cocked hat in terms of 'cumulative power' of their films!) The BBC actually devoted one of their last major foreign language film seasons back in 1999 to Lelouch, so I got to see almost everything from And Now, My Love through to Chances or Coincidences and found them interesting enough, if nothing amazingly memorable. It was probably the trifecta of Lelouch, Malle and late Truffaut that gave French cinema a rather staid middlebrow reputation though, so they have to take some responsibility for that I suppose (and Lelouch feels like he really grabbed hold of the classic period Godard relationship dramas and did what Godard would never do - damningly took the stylistics of films which turned the language of cinema and of love inside out and turned them back into easily digestible, untroubling pieces of commercial fluff).

But I am beginning to look back more fondly on Lelouch now we are in the era of even more commercial, pretty but empty French cinema, such as those two Coco Chanel films, Ma femme est une actrice (a film in the mode of Lelouch if ever there was one) or La vie en Rose (a film which Lelouch's Edith and Marcel outshines. Even if it is just as much of a whitewash of 'real events' in it's own way, it propagates the myth in a more interesting way. I found that it also works in a bizarrely complimentary way when seen together with Sid & Nancy, albeit the Lelouch is obviously less grungy than the other film!)

Though the new Lelouch film that domino talks about turning into a musical suggests that Lelouch is taking his cues from Alain Resnais now!

[Dylan]

I'm happy Colin came in with some positive sentiments about Claude Lelouch, as I'm a big fan of this director and I winced at bit at the trashing in this thread. Have you people seen Live for Life? Absolutely brilliant and one of my favorite films of 1967, I read it as (partially) dealing with the topicality of man in the 1960's where the violence in Africa and Vietnam has something to do with the inability of couples to stay happy with each other. The music and cinematography are amazing, as are the performances by Montand and Girardot.

I'm a big fan of A Man and a Woman, and I think it has one of the greatest soundtracks (and themes) of the era with two brilliant leads and lots of style & emotion, but even as one of this film's only real fans it actually wouldn't make my top ten of 1966, which just goes to show what an absolutely exceptional year that was. The best foreign film that year, in my opinion, was Blow Up.

Meanwhile, I lump Lelouch in with Malle and Resnais and a few other late fifties/early-mid sixties French directors I don't consider part of the New Wave. But we have a separate discussion on this board dealing with the topic of who was and wasn't (or is/isn't considered) "New Wave."

[zedz]

Further to that Lelouch mention in the Lester interview, it may have been a quirk of the interviewer. I've now watched his interview with Peter Cook on the same disc, in which he grills Cook on his opinions about all sorts of deadly serious topics: the state of British politics, the monetary crisis, the Vietnam War and . . . Claude Lelouch!

The same guy also interviews a strip club proprietor and a stripper on the Primitive London disc, but I regret to inform you all that their opinions of Claude Lelouch were not recorded for posterity.

[antnield]

Further to that Lelouch mention in the Lester interview, it may have been a quirk of the interviewer. I've now watched his interview with Peter Cook on the same disc, in which he grills Cook on his opinions about all sorts of deadly serious topics: the state of British politics, the monetary crisis, the Vietnam War and . . . Claude Lelouch!

The same guy also interviews a strip club proprietor and a stripper on the Primitive London disc, but I regret to inform you all that their opinions of Claude Lelouch were not recorded for posterity.

"The same guy" is Bernard Braden and the interviews were conducted for Now and Then (the link takes you to the BFI's Screenonline piece on the series), a pet project of Braden's which never saw the light of day. The interviews have cropped up on various BFI discs - Tales from the Shipyard features one with Sean Connery, Bronco Bullfrog has a Joan Littlewood one, etc.

[domino harvey]

I think the ultimate blow struck against Lelouch probably came from his own mouth before he introduced his latest film: "I wanted to make a film that touched the viewer's heart, not their brain"-- as though one were exclusive of the other. It's partly a Holocaust film, too, so it's some small wonder that this didn't win an Oscar as well-- though its (coincidental) similarity to Inglorious Basterds probably didn't help. I recall a brouhaha in the late sixties when the Young Turks were arguing amongst themselves whether Lelouch deserved to be mentioned as a New Wave figure and Chabrol gave a spirited defense in favor of (the indefensible) Une homme et une femme, for whatever that's worth

[MichaelB]

"The same guy" is Bernard Braden and the interviews were conducted for Now and Then (the link takes you to the BFI's Screenonline piece on the series), a pet project of Braden's which never saw the light of day. The interviews have cropped up on various BFI discs - Tales from the Shipyard features one with Sean Connery, Bronco Bullfrog has a Joan Littlewood one, etc.

...and of course it's standard practice to ask multiple people the same question if the interviews are intended to form part of a TV documentary featuring intercut talking heads. In fact, I was explicitly asked to raise certain topics prior to interviewing Anthony Simmons for the Shadows of Progress documentary, and I realised why when I saw the final edited version.

[domino harvey]

Cahiers' "Director's Thumbnail" on Lelouch from '62:

Screenwriter, dialogue writer, director, cameraman, in brief the total auteur; this is the most recent example of the gawky disciple, Taking Godard for an improviser and Rouch for a long-distance runner, he wanders that streets at any good or bad (lucky or unlucky) hour filming anything anyway. "If you don't like this, don't disgust the others with it", seems to be the thinking of American television which has proposed to him to show America in the way he has shown Paris. A fat lot of good that will do.

[Camera Obscura]

I'm a (closet) Lelouch fan. And blessed with an incurable soft spot for schmaltzy middle class love dramas.

Years ago since I've seen it and not really up for a full-on defense of this one (or Lelouch in general), but I even prefer Lelouch's follow-up 'heist-romance' La bonne année ('73) over Un homme et une femme (which is explicitly referenced in the opening scene), this time with Lino Ventura and Françoise Fabian taking the lead roles. Perhaps I'm overly forgiving on this one. Despite some of the accusations of faux philosophical conversations, Ventura and Sagan carry this one so effortlessly all the way it's just irresistable (even though at this point Ventura has been typecast to death as the world-weary criminal loner with the romantic heart of gold).

But how was Lelouch considered by French critics back then?
Besides Domino's Cahiers thumbnail from '62 and Chabrol's defense of Un homme et une femme back then, how was his work supposed to represent anything remotely 'New Wave' like. Or rather, I don't see the point of measuring him along comtemporary New Wave directors. There seems to be an impenetrable pecking order for 60s French Cinema with Godard on top and from his films on everything is measured along New Wave standards, which is understandable from a 60s point of view, but bound to sideline Lelouch into the tiniest of margins of French Cinema.

[Dylan]

It's partly a Holocaust film, too, so it's some small wonder that this didn't win an Oscar as well

It will be eligible next year.

I'm a (closet) Lelouch fan. And blessed with an incurable soft spot for schmaltzy middle class love dramas.

Same here. And if you like him just get out of that closet, Lelouch is a great filmmaker and Live for Life is easily one of my top fifty films of the 1960's.

[Perkins Cobb]

Out of what I've seen, the only Lelouch film that I don't find largely vomitous is the obscure Un homme qui me plaît (Love Is a Funny Thing, 1969), which has a good Annie Girardot star turn, and finds Lelouch shooting in Los Angeles. So the film benefits from that outsider / French film buff's view of Hollywood; it's a companion piece to Model Shop and Lions Love, or even The Outside Man.