The Lovers - Criterion Collection

• The Fire Within - Criterion Collection
• The Thief of Bagdad - Criterion Collection
• The Red Balloon (Released by Janus Films, in association with the Criterion Collection)
• Classe Tous Risques - Criterion Collection
• Vampyr - Criterion Collection
• The Furies - Criterion Collection
• Trafic - Criterion Collection
• Earrings of Madame de...
• Death of a Cyclist
• High and Low - Criterion Collection

After working with Jeanne Moreau in Elevator to the Gallows, Louis Malle decided to showcase her in his next film, The Lovers. The Lovers is about a woman, living in Dijon, married to a successful but overbearing and inattentive magazine publisher. Showcase her he did, because she is in practically every frame of the movie. It might be the first depiction of a woman having an orgasm on screen. Her characters exuded sensuality more than sexuality, a sensuality tinged with intelligence and a fair share of danger.

The Lovers is a very personal and egocentrically themed movie. On the way back, her car breaks down and she is given a lift by an attractive young archaeologist who looks down on her friends and lifestyle. Moreau's stardom was launched by The Lovers, and she gained a certain measure of notoriety in the process. He is invited to stay over, and on a fateful night, meets Jeanne outside the mansion.

Feeling bored and unfulfilled in her married life she goes on frequent jaunts to Paris to see her friend and hook up with her playboy lover. She was labeled the new Bardot, but Moreau was anything but a sex kitten. Jeanne makes her fateful decision and for better or worse will have to live with the consequences. The Lovers created quite a storm when it came out in 1959 for it's frank sexuality which would be quite tame by today's standards.

The Self and it's emotional enrichment as well as sexual fulfillment has primacy over interpersonal relationships, even the basic mother/child relationship. The suspicious husband asks her to invite both over for a weekend stay at their estate. A love affair commences that will cause Jeanne to make a life altering decision.

It is a film that celebrates woman's sexuality and her power to make her own choices. Lawrence's wife, who left her comfortable upper-middle class life of a wife and a mother for the big unknown with a much younger man. In the Midwest, this film was considered obscene and it is the Supreme Court that granted this movie not be equaled with pornography. To find some amusement, young wife Jeanne goes to Paris to visit her married childhood friend who mingles in high society. As a token of gratitude, young man is invited for a supper and to spend a night in the house before he takes off to his destination the next day. It is amazing to see the film made in late 50s and realize that this film has caused a stir all over the world, US included. Frustrated that she cannot be with her lover, and outraged by her husband's possesive behavior, Jeanne wonders outside her bedroom at night, in the garden, where she and her mysterious savior find each other.

Made in black and white, this Malle's film is even more artistic in today's era. Jeanne is sure she has found her soulmate and decides to leave everything behind: her young daughter Catherine, the big house, jewelry, clothes, everything. In the dawn of the new day, as house guests are getting ready for the fishing trip, Jeanne and her lover leave house never to return again. I do not believe that it is lovemaking scenes alone that made this film scandalous at the time. They sleep in separate bedrooms.

All she is certain of is that she wants to be with a man she has met and there is no price to it. It is in preparation of this weekend, that Jeanne's car breaks down on the road and she gets a ride from the handsome, young stranger to her home. He is determined to re-establish his dominion over his household and of course, his wife. Her husbands pays her very little or no attention, he is cold and emotionally unavailable. She will sacrifice everything for her own happiness no matter how short, or long that happiness will last. It is there that she finds a lover, well-to-do polo player who she sees regularly until one day her husband decides to put a stop to her trips to Paris and have his wife's "friends" come a visit for the weekend. Story is about a upper middle class married woman who lives in provinces (Dijon) with her newspaper editor husband.

She lives seemingly comfortable life in a large house, with full time nanny and servants. I have enjoyed watching interviews from a film director, actors and screenwriter and find film utterly beautiful and powerful, 50 years after it was made. Before long, they realize strong attraction between them and make love in the garden and her bedroom. This woman is almost like D.H.

Moreau in this movie will create a fantasy that you will not forget easily. Everytime you settle into predictability; here comes one more turn and every one is believable. The movie is one of the best I have ever seen and will only please you every few minutes.over and over again. The version I am speaking of here is the Criterion Collection, so the reproduction is excellent.

The film is about a married woman who having an affair and on her way home from a liason with her lover her car breaks down. This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film. The special features on the DVD are a slideshow of material for the US release and archival interviews with Louis Malle, writer, Louise de Vilmorin, actress, Jeanne Moreau, and actor José Luis de Villalonga. It also was the first of his films to generate controversey. She then begins a relationship with him too. I think it would get a hard PG-13 or a light R with today's standards.

It was censored upon its release in the US and other countries but A theater owner in Ohio who screened this film was charged with screening an obscene film and in a case that made it all the way to the US Supreme Court, the charges overturned. This film is certainly not obscene as the censors maintained 50 years ago. The Lovers known in French as Les Amants is Louis Malle's second feature film after Elevator to the Gallows. I thought it was an interesting story but didn't care too much for the adultery theme. A man then pulls over and he drives her to a garage. Some scenes might be considered indecent by some though.

Criterion's recent release of Louis Malle's "The Lovers" is a hidden gem; a film that makes viewing many classic art films- in hope of finding a transcendent work- worthwhile I have always thought Jeanne Moreau was one of the finest French actresses of her generation through such noteworthy films such as "Jules and Jim," " Elevator to the Gallows," "Diary of a Chambermaid," and "La Notte" However, this film elevates her to the level of, in my opinion, such later great French actresses as Catherine Deneuve and Isabelle Huppert- and like the other two actresses she is still acting in films today; but the transformation of a "bored "bourgeoisie bitch," who reminded me of a French Bette Davis or Joan Crawford, to a vulnerable, sensually aware, luminescent beautiful woman through a sensual/sexual liaison with a freethinking, and authentic (with a young man who had in bourgeoisie background that he rejected) is hypnotic and spell binding. Finally, don't miss the short interviews with Moreau. The only things I found problematic was the Moreau character abandoning her child to pursue her romantic proclivities. On the other hand, there was a fairytale quality to the later parts of the movie,and I think Malle was trying to make a point about alienation from nature and, to a lesser extent, reality of the postwar French bourgeoisie. The depictions of nature at night, both human/sensual and scenic, were hauntingly beautiful. Moreover, the Moreau character was certainly what we would call today a "trophy wife.". Louis Malle' direction was sensitive and exquisite The scenes of sexual intimacy were both erotic and aesthetic without the hint of pornography.

The last third of the film, involving the transformative sensual encounter, was cinematically and characterlogically mesmerizing. Prior to this, her life in the French, low cultured, Provences (anywhere but Paris) is so stifling that she is carrying on a relatively open affair with an idle rich, superficial, (but pleasant) Spanish polo player. He, like her workaholic, cynical, domineering, wealthy husband, is almost old enough to be her father, and, as is often the case of men who struggled through the horrors of world war II, is devoid of any real self awareness. This very was avant garde for the pre sexual revolution and pre-feminist 50's- even in France, and the film was banned in the straight laced Eisenhower Administrative of America in the 1950's. This was a particularly popular theme in French and Italian films of the era.