Der Mann, der die Frauen liebte

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.

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.

This is one of the most interesting conceptions of a man who spent all his career and life questioning the very conception of cinema and what it meant in every moment. After the adventure of french new wave of the 60's, Truffaut matured and, to me, he started producing his more focused work. He basically produced some films which were essays on cinema, as well as autobiographical depictions of his thoughts.

So, we have a film about storytelling. A womanizer who writes the story of his life. Every woman in his life is, herself, a story. So the pleasure of being involved with a woman maps the will Truffaut has to tell a story. The fact that Morane writes all the stories, and makes one single big form (a book) with them enhances this.

The woman editor has an important role. She is the key character that Truffaut places above Morane, and she annotates and comments on the whole structure. Her remarks on Morane's book and personality may as well be taken as commentaries on the very film, and of its director. She is self-reference, she is Truffaut commenting on himself, thus adding reflexivity to the film. That's why she observes that Morane, the writer, doesn't reject the "details" others wouldn't notice, and she literally says that he is basically a storyteller. Also, she is the one who remarks the fact that Morane's funeral is the perfect ending to the story. I saw all this as reflexive annotations on the very structure of the film and, more generally, on the nature of Truffaut's cinema. He was through all his life a storyteller, and above any pleasure he took in making a film, there was the pleasure of narrating. Also he took a special interest in filming details, something i think he took from Hitchcock. The hand dialing phone numbers, or turning the pages in the address book, that sort of thing.

Morane's funeral, which opens and closes the film, gathers all the women around him. It is, like the editor (the second narrator) told, a praising of Morane's life, the recognizing of his qualities, the celebration of his life (cinema).

This and "La nuit américaine" are so far the best built films by Truffaut that i saw. Many times i think that Truffaut (and Godard!) has spent to much time around things which were not that important, like school kids discussing football teams. But in certain points, he made important contributions to the evolving of cinematic narrative. This is one of them.

My opinion: 4/5

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Far superior than the shoddy and self promoting Burt Reynolds remake. Excellent performances and a classic. Anyone interested in NLP and Speed Seduction should watch this as it is a great reference resource of "Unconscious Competence". The guy knows what he is doing...but doesn't know how he does it. Shame the ending is given away at the start but that only compounds the deep impact the guy had on all of the women. The fact that he is over fifty gives hope for us all. I have no issue with the amount of women involved. If it was the other way around, in these so called 'enlightened' times, when women have so much focus, she would have been applauded as a woman who takes control! Pour a glass of red wine and enjoy.

From it's title to it's ending The Man Who loved women is a great movie. Francois Truffaut displays all his mastery of the cinematographic language.

The editing, performances and dialogues all contribute to the film's subtle but engaging rhythm. The movie revolves around Bertrand Morane, a gifted womanizer who starts evaluating his life by remembering past love affairs.

Bertrand's love life is a comical and insightful story, that combined with Truffaut's brilliant direction and a perfect script make "L'homme qui aimait les femmes" a very entertaining and original movie.

Beautiful french women, great cinematography and Charles Denner's acting. There are no mistakes in this film, very recommended.