El hombre que amaba a las mujeres

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.

Each film by François Truffaut is like an antithesis for its predecessor (Shoot the Piano Player for The 400 Blows, Jules et Jim for Shoot the Piano Player etc.) but The Man Who Loved Women (1977) isn't really the opposite of Small Change (1976) but more like The Story of Adele H. (1975) turned upside down. First of all, the protagonist of The Story of Adele H. is a woman and the protagonist of The Man Who Loved Women is a man. However, despite the tragical intensity of The Story of Adele H. and the light comedy of The Man Who Loved Women both films deal with sexual obsessions. In the former film, the woman is madly in love with a man from whom she can't get response. In turn, the latter is all about a man who doesn't believe in true love and therefore goes from one brief relationship to another.

The Man Who Loved Women (1977) might just be Truffaut's funniest comedy but, what is more, it also presents an insightful picture of an obsessive womanizer Bertrand, brilliantly played by Charles Denner. Just like The Story of Adele H., it is also a story about an independent character who is a victim of his own obsession. In addition, in the background of both stories there is an abandonment (made by a mother or a lover), both protagonists try to imitate their parents in one way or another and are inevitably going to face destruction, both stories are also recorded to personal memoirs and both of them have separate prologue and epilogue sequences.

Already in the very beginning of The Man Who Loved Women we are told that the protagonist has died and at the cemetery we enter a long flashback which equals most of the film. However, before we enter this flashback we see women walking to the cemetery but also Truffaut himself passing by, which is a clear statement that the film knows that it is fiction. As if he was sealing the deal. It is consciously exaggerated romanticism, so to speak. This idea is also highlighted by the fact that the protagonist starts to change his memories when he decides to write an autobiographical novel. His whole life is fiction.

Usually, Truffaut portraits fatal women who lead their lovers to death and destruction (Jules and Jim, The Bride Wore Black) but in this case the man is the dangerous character who lures women. However, in reality he is much more destructive for himself than for the women he loves. His obsession seems to be some sort of a defense mechanism against the vulnerability which hunts many of Truffaut's characters who are often abandoned by a cold mother (The 400 Blows).

As said, Bertrand is a victim of his own obsession and just like the dogmatism of Catherine, from Jules et Jim, so is the obsession of Bertrand an absolute prelude for death. He is constantly tied to his own madness. He loves to watch women and even points out that "women's legs are like compass points, circling the globe." Although, this rather plain concept gets an intriguing twist because Bertrand actually sees the seductive legs of women everywhere -- even where there aren't any; like in the outrageous scene at the airport -- and they also seal his destiny.

Besides youth and innocence, love was a repeating theme throughout Truffaut's career and that is why he is often called the romantic of the French New Wave. In his world, love was a dominant force which restricted the lives of people. But it also appears to us as kind and patient. The Man Who Loved Women was Truffaut's tribute, not only to women, but to love. In the director's personal love life, he had several lovers but no life partners. Although, Truffaut wasn't a womanizer by any means he said that he never stopped loving his former lovers. As if relationships were transient but love was eternal.

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.

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...

It would be impossible to make today a movie like 'L'homme qui aimait les femmes' (the English title is 'The Man Who Loved Women') directed in 1977 by François Truffaut. Not the way the French filmmaker wrote and directed it, in any case. The main hero is a serial womanizer, a man who usually looks at women from the legs up, who accumulates conquests inevitably followed by separations, who has no intention of establishing a stable relationship and who collects his trophy memories in drawers full of letters and photos before starting to write a book in which he describes his series of love adventures. Such a male hero could be in our times only a negative character and the fact that Truffaut describes him as an eternal lover whose fascination for women finds its justification in the way they are also attracted and fall under his charms would be hard to explain today. And yet, Don Juan and his disciples traverse the history of literature, opera, and cinema.

If someone still dares to write the script for a remake, he should change almost everything. There is a lot of on-screen smoking - at work, at the table, in bed. People send letters and use dial phones that ring threatening. Manuscripts of books are brought by the writers in envelopes and entrusted to the typists. Not only are there no mobile phones, but the engineer Bertrand Morane, the hero of the film, works for a company where telephone calls are accepted in a switchboard operated manually by a telephone operator. In the morning he is awakened by the voice of another telephone operator from a wake-up service. Any attractive woman who crosses his way becomes the object of his attention and fascination, regardless of her social or family status. The film is asymmetrical, in the sense that Truffaut is less interested in the psychology of his female heroines. Charles Denner, the actor who plays the main hero of the film is far from having the physical charm of an Alain Delon or the charisma of Belmondo, looks like a banal guy. What is the secret of his success with women? Maybe it's his fascination with the opposite sex that he reveals quite directly, without ostentation or traces of violence. If he misses a conquest, our hero shrugs and goes to the next woman he meets on the way. Truffaut conveyed to the film's hero his own fascination with women, embodied in his admiration for the actresses who starred in his films (and in a few alleged love stories).

A few cinematic elements attract attention. The scenes that open and close the film are borrowed from the film noir genre, although what happens between them is completely different. Attentive viewers will identify in the first frame the director's cameo appearing, as in Hitchcock's film. The off-screen voice is used intensively, which is not a rarity in Truffaut's films, being inserted under the pretext of the hero's attempt to turn his adventures into a memoir book, like those of Casanova or Don Juan. As I am mentioning - again - Don Juan, this film lacks any kind of moralising judgment. Even in the libretto of Mozart's opera the great seducer is punished. Here it is hazard that is put at work. To substantiate psychologically the behaviour of his hero, Truffaut inserts some flashback scenes from his adolescence and introduces the figure of his mother, a kind of mirror replica of what would become his son. In 'L'homme qui aimait les femmes' two of the main themes of his films meet, the fascination for women and the sometimes painful coming to age. Plausible? Spectators are left to judge. The film deserves, in any case, a viewing or a re-viewing.