Outro Homem, Outra Mulher

Well, call it a western or historical fiction, but this film definitely has both of those elements. Claude Lelouch excellently directed this film, which i believe was his first English-speaking or bilingual film. James Caan shines as Dr. David Williams, a widowed American vet, and Genevieve Bujold's performance as Jeanne, a widowed photographer's assistant, is equally impressive. After David's wife, Mary, is found brutally beaten to death, he takes his infant son and moves south where he places him in the care of Alice, an inept schoolteacher, wonderfully played by Susan Tyrrell. Jeanne and her photographer boyfriend, Francis, played by Francis Huster, flee France and come to America for a better life. They set up a photography studio in the West, and get married. But then tragedy strikes, and Jeanne becomes a widow with a baby girl. It's not until several years later that her and David's paths cross. Beautiful love story.

Photographer Francis Huster convinces Genevieve Bujold to abandon their native Paris and make a new life in the American west. They get married on the wagon train and settle in a small but growing city; he is shot because of his incessant picture taking. Meanwhile, veterinarian James Caan has a nagging wife, who wants they to move from their ranch. She dies in childbirth.

Director Claude Lelouch is the most unabashedly romantic director since Frank Borzage. As a result, you keep wondering when Caan and Mlle Bujold are going to stop mourning and start living again. There's no sign of the ineluctable workings of fate here, just the chance of a rebirth in the New World, with Caan at his most masculine, and Mlle Bujold indescribably cute.

Veteran cinematographer Stanley Cortez has his last credit here, capturing, along with Jacques Lefrancois, Lelouch's wide-eyed view of the beauties and weirdnesses of the Old West.

I am studying sound design and this movie blew me away. Watched it late night only because of the excellent James C. The most striking thing is when ever there is a violent scene, the director choose to fade out and loose all natural sound and simply play a simple but striking piece of piano. It distances you from the horror of the violence, it seemed to me to be as if I was being sheltered from the full effect. Powerful and poetic this was a revisionist western way ahead of its peers and only to be matched by Clint Eastwood's High plains drifter and Beguiled.

Interesting to read some other reviews here talk of how art plays a role in this film, and how that's a bad or somehow less appealing thing. Maybe it's the genre they see as this not working well. For some, a simpler film may be best. But this film integrates a variety of story lines and looks to take the viewer on a forward and backward ride forcing you to think about what you missed and what is yet to come. With that, it's too complicated, too artsy if you will, for a dumbed down less sophisticated American movie audience. Sad that some miss this, but see the film for yourself and appreciate film making for the art IT IS!!! American film audiences have a lot of work to do! Otherwise, I love the film for the French language and story line in Paris because I love French, France, and Paris!

This is not a western, this is a dramatic love story set in the Old West. If you think Sergio Leone's "Once Upon A Time In The West" is slow and artsy you won't enjoy this film because it is even slower and more artistic. Good performances by Caan and Bujold can't help speed the pace of this drawn out love story. The only action takes place in the first 20 minutes of the film. The rest is pure love story which is okay but we've seen it all before in Lelouch's "A Man and a Woman."