The Lovers [Les Amants] **** (1958, Jeanne Moreau, Alain Cluny, Jean-Marc Bory) – Classic Movie Review 5229

The 25-year-old co-writer/ director Louis Malle’s 1958 second feature is a deliciously lyrical love story that caused huge controversy and confirmed the rising reputations of the French director and his star Jeanne Moreau, previously established with Lift to the Scaffold. For once it is all the things it says on the poster: it is frank, mature and provocative.

In one of her most quintessential, sensuous performances, Moreau scalds the screen as Jeanne Tournier, a bored, rich, French provincial wife, with a secret life in Paris, who finds passion and love with a hunky, uninhibited young man, Bernard (Jean-Marc Bory), a house guest of her husband Henri (Alain Cluny).

Judith Magre plays Jeanne’s chic friend Maggy and José Luis de Vilallonga plays the polo-playing Raoul, Maggy’s friend and Jeanne’s lover.

The controversial semi-nude love scenes played out to the music of Brahms prompted fellow director François Truffaut to call it ‘the first night of love in the cinema’ and caused a stir on release in the United States as ‘allegedly obscene material’.

Malle won the Special Jury Prize won at the Venice Film Festival (tied with La Sfida, 1958).

Malle and Louise de Vilmorin’s screenplay is based on the novel Point de Lendemain by Dominique Vivant.

It is shot in stylish black and white by Henri Decaë.

Also in the cast are Gaston Modot, Pierre Frag, Michèle Girardon, Gin Grossac, Lucienne Hamon, Georgette Lobbe, Claude Mansard, Jean- Claude Brialy and Patricia Garcin.

It is the 25-year-old Bory’s second film. He made around 50 movies before died of a heart attack at 67 on 31 March 2001.a

Malle may have made a movie star of Jeanne Moreau, but he always reminded people that by 1958 she had already been ‘recognised as the prime stage actress of her generation’. She is 90 on 23 January 2018.

Malle died of lymphoma on 23 November 1995, aged 63.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5229

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