A Man and a Woman: Bonafide Classic

 

 

 

A Man and a Woman (1966)

Directed by Claude Lelouch

Les Artistes Associés

102 minutes, Not rated, in French with subtitles

★★★★

 

French actress Anouk Aimée died this past June. If that name eludes you, know that in her prime she was considered one of the most beautiful actresses in the world. (Apparently others thought so too; she married and divorced four times.) Few did melancholia as well as she.

 

Aimée was at the height of her powers when she made A Man and a Woman. Her co-star was another giant of French cinema, Jean-Louis Trintignant. He would go on to have a longer and more distinguished career, but it was Aimée who grabbed most of the accolades in 1966. She was even nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for A Man and a Woman, which was surprising given that very few non-English speakers were so honored back then. As it was, A Man and a Woman did win some hardware (Best Foreign Language Film, Best Screenplay). In other words, we’re talking about a true classic film.

 

The story is deceptively simple. Anne Gauthier (Aimée) and Jean-Louis Duroc (Trintignant) meet at a boarding school in Deauville in which she has a daughter and he a son. She misses her train back to Paris–Anne has a habit of being late–it’s pouring rain, and the school head mistress (Simone Paris) asks Duroc if he would drive her home as he too lives in Paris. That’s a 200 kilometer drive, so the two have plenty of time to chat but they are guarded because they notice each other’s wedding rings. Duroc does offer to drive her to and from Deauville as they each make weekly visits. They soon learn that each is widowed. That uncomplicates things a bit, but the open question is whether either is over their loss. They talk as their children befriend each other and communicate more on their journeys. The head mistress’ sly smile is an indication that she can sees their mutual attraction before they do.

 

It's not a straight line from attraction to the sack. She’s wary because she fixates on her deceased husband–a stunt man killed on the set–and learns that Duroc is a sports car racer, not the world’s safest profession. (That’s after he makes up an outrageous and funny story about an alternative profession!) Slowly, though, they become comfortable with each other. Things come to a head after Duroc is one of the few drivers who finishes the 24-hour LeMans Endurance race during appalling winter conditions.

 

Ultimately, A Man and a Woman has the story arc of a romantic drama in which the principals keep their distance, move closer, come together, and split. Ahh, but do they reunite? That’s one several mysteries in the film. There is also a lot of driving in bad weather (Biblical rain, ice, snow). How bad is the weather? So bad that music of Francis Lai portends danger.

 

Director Claude Lelouch did most of his own cinematography. The effect of water on the windshield is like a black and white version of Taxi Driver, though Lelouch also liked to mix color and black and white. Lelouch paid homage to the European auteur preference of frenetic pacing for action sequences, but a slower, more casual, often diffident dynamic in filming relationships. Both Aimée and Trintignant were magnificent in wielding blank canvas faces upon which was reflected the current status of their interconnections.

 

A Man and a Woman is indeed a bonafide classic. So why not five stars instead of four? That has to do with being made in 1966. It’s often difficult for modern audiences to (metaphorically) time travel. The world of 1966 was very different from today in critical areas such as gender dynamics. Anne Gauthier is a semi-liberated woman for 1966, but you will definitely detect that Jean-Louis Duroc is aggressive to her passive. In addition, some recent viewers have found the film “slow.” Sorry, but no sympathy from me on that score. I loved the way Lelouch contrasted the speed of the race cars with the attract-repel-attract-repel cycle between Anne and Jean-Louis. Only someone indoctrinated by TV and short reels would expect it to be otherwise! It’s easy to sing the virtues of carpe diem, but getting there is a process not a single leap. A Man and a Woman is available on Kanopy and other streaming services.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

The Calendar Needs a Makeover

 

At the end of June a series of blue skies, tempering breezes, and long evenings made me think, “Why can’t we have more late spring?” Maybe we can! Let’s trash the old grade school mnemonic rhyme: “Thirty days has September, April, June, and November.” I have a better idea.

 

We should admit the calendar is screwed up and fix it. After all, climate change is real and it’s here. I’m probably asking for trouble with my next statement. Here goes: It’s been years since these parts (Western Massachusetts) have seen an old-fashioned New England winter.

 

Here's what used to happen. We got several light snows (2-3 inches) in early November just to toughen us up. By Thanksgiving, when darkness fell around 4:45 pm, bets were off for when the first Big One would hit. We’d start staring at the skies, look for halos around the moon, check in with the guy who plows the driveway, and make sure shovels and boots were at the ready. Roughly three of four Christmases were white, and count on cold and snowy Januarys and Februarys. With luck, a minor thaw around Groundhog Day brought brief respite. But as sure as the uncontrollable urge to read seed catalogs, a Nor’easter or two–known in the local parlance as “getting hammered”–buried anything shorter than the John Hancock building. Spring allegedly arrived in  March, but that was a mere strip tease. Actual spring might or might not begin to appear in early April–usually not. The first clue was a handful of snowdrops and crocuses peeking through an icy crust.

 

That was then. Now we often see no snow until Epiphany and the last several few years we’ve had very little at all. By mid-March most of the maple sap is done flowing and, if you wait until the end of the month, you’ll miss your sugar shack pancake breakfast. By early April, the lowlands are abloom. May and June have been hotter and wetter.

 

The Western world has used the Gregorian calendar since 1582. It was supposed to correct the vicissitudes of the older Julian calendar. Hah! No one counted upon human folly. For the record, lots of cultures don’t use the Gregorian calendar. Not that it matters as long as we agree that it takes 365 ¼ days for Spaceship Earth to circle the sun. There’s nothing magic about how many months we have or how many days are in each one. The sole bit of logic attached to twelve months with inconsistent allocations of days was an attempt to divide the year into roughly equal quarters based upon occurrences of the winter and summer solstices and the spring and fall equinoxes.

 

Big deal. The above logic has to be reversed in the Southern hemisphere, but they aren’t all that practical in the Northern hemisphere either. What do “official” designations matter if you live in Arizona or northern Maine? It’s pretty much the same year ‘round in warm climes, but ask someone in the northlands if cold weather holds off until December 21. On the other hand, the warmest months in New England tend to be July, August, and September, the latter an alleged “autumn” month.

 

You get the picture. So why not lop off a day off January and March and reassign them to the nicer months of April and June? I could be convinced to steal two more, say another from January and one from October to create a September 31 and June 32. Twenty-nine days in January and 28 in February would be plenty of winter! But I’ll be reasonable; it might be too difficult to reassign four days on short notice. But give me April and June 31 now, please.

 

After we adjust the calendar for my comfort we can proceed to tackle another big issue. Enjoying the light of long summer days? Me too. Let’s find the fools who decided to give us an extra hour of darkness beginning 2 am on November 3. Nobody needs more darkness unless they are a bear. I recommend hanging the inventors of Standard Time from a May Pole until they see the light of day.

 

Rob Weir

Robert Parker Part Two: More Summer Reading

 

By the 1980s Robert B. Parker had begun to hit his stride. The books become a bit longer–though they are still quick reads–and the plots more complex. Again though, it is the characters who are the most interesting in Parker novels. In the 1982 novel Valediction Susan Silverman becomes Dr. Silverman, a Ph.D. psychologist, after her graduation from Harvard. It is almost as if Spencer, Susan, and Hawk are one big unconventional family, with Hawk more than willing to act as Susan’s protector. By the 1980s, Spenser is a convert to feminism and neither he nor Susan have a racist bone anywhere in their bodies.

 

 

 

As the 1984 novel A Catskill Eagle shows, there is some trouble in the passionate love affair between Spenser and Susan. This book centers on the filthy rich Costigan family. Susan has left Spenser, is living with Russell Costigan, and has moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. In good liberated fashion, Spenser has given Susan space to make up her own mind whether she’d rather have him or Russell. Spenser is forced to intervene, though, when he gets a letter informing him that Hawk is in a jail in Mill Valley facing a murder charge and that Susan’s relationship with Russell might not be entirely voluntary.

 

You might not buy into the dynamics of the Costigan family, especially Russell’s mama complex–he’s “Rusty” to her–but Spenser must first leave Boston, head to California, and bust Hawk out of jail. Getting him out of the Mill Valley jail involves some cleverness and isn’t all that hard, but being on the lam and staying out of jail is harder. Even that is easier than getting into Jerry Costigan’s house, a veritable fortress. Jerry is Grace’s husband and Russell’s father, though why he stays with the frumpy Grace is a psychological conundrum of its own. He is one of the most respected industrialists in Northern California. Spenser is convinced he's crooked, but Jerry certainly has more allies than he. A Catskill Eagle is a thrill of minute. You can be forgiven if you are a bit suspicious of Spenser’s hair-raising escapes or how the book resolves. The best plan is to let the adrenaline course through you and enjoy the twists and turns. Ya’ think Spenser and Susan will get back together?

 

You will also encounter Rachel Wallace, a friend of Susan and Spenser. You might wish to go back to an older novel called Looking for Susan Wallace (1980) to find out more about her. 

 

 

 

In the 1982 book Ceremony we met prostitute April Kyle and New York City madam Patricia Utley. Both resurface in Taming A Sea-Horse (1986). Utley and Spenser don’t move in the same circles, but she respects the big lug so when April leaves her establishment, she actually hires Spenser to find her. Utley’s running a business, not a mission for wayward hookers, but she suspects that April might not be calling her own shots. She has heard bad stuff is going down and it’s in her best interest to get to the bottom of it. Spenser starts asking questions but when one of his street sources is murdered, the search becomes personal.

 

It’s not hard to find April, who purports to be in love with Robert Rambeaux, a Juilliard student who also happens to be her pimp. You’ve probably know how that “love” story works out, but if you think you know how sleazy the sex trade can be, you’ve no idea. Spenser enters a world in which women are recruited, trained, and traded like postage stamps. Some are even pushed into the trade by abusive parents. This tale takes Spenser to Maine, back to metro Boston, into some less-than-legitimate clubs, and forces him to make sense of a supply chain that would make Walmart jealous. At one point Spenser meets a man who helps move hookers from one place to another. Spenser asks if he collected a finder’s fee for doing so. He casually answers, “Sure. She’s product, man…. You raise cattle, you give the cows away?” Spenser and Hawk visit mob boss Tony Marcus and even he isn’t the apex predator. Plus, there’s the problem of whether April cares that Spenser is looking out for her. This is one of my favorite Spenser novels. Hardboiled fiction has the benefit of not needing to have a moral!

 

Rob Weir