Der Mann, der die Frauen liebte

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")

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.

Towards the end of the film, the main character, Bertrand, a singular individual obsessed with women (a lot) and literature (a little), says, in a serious voice-over at night, in a room whose only light comes from a fireplace, the very soul of the film: "Then the desire took me to read the memoirists of the last century. How should you write when you talk about yourself? How had the others done? What were the rules? I realized that there are no rules, that each book is different and expresses the personality of its author. Every page, every sentence of any writer belongs to him. His handwriting is as personal to him as his fingerprints." The film, not very easy to like at first due to its repetitive side (Bertrand remembers different women he has known in his life) and a little bland (not much happens, really), captivates and gradually fascinates by its idiosyncratic nature, by a half-energetic, half-melancholic tone which cannot be anything else than the intimate expression of the work and personality of François Truffaut, by its subtle fade to black shots emphasizing the proud independence of the main character, by its rich literary tone. This is, for me, an inferior film to the magnificent 'The Mississippi Mermaid' which successfully combined this level of inner depth with an exciting film noir storyline, but it is no less a fascinating film due to its intimate authenticity. At one point a doctor says to Bertrand: "Nothing is more beautiful than seeing the publication of a book that you have written, nothing is more beautiful. Except perhaps giving birth to a child that we carried for nine months in our womb. But we are not capable of that, well, not yet." A fade to black shot deliciously placed there underlines the beauty of this profession of faith by François Truffaut on the essential importance of artistic production. He is no longer here, but his work speaks for him...

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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