Les uns et les autres
France
, 180 min
Shown in 1981
CREDITS
- dir
-
Claude Lelouch
- scr
-
Claude Lelouch
- cam
-
Jean Bofferty
- cast
-
Robert Hossein, Nicole Gracia, Geraldine Chaplin, James Caan, Daniel Olbryski, Jorge Donn, Macha Meril
-
COMMENTS
The film is best known now as Bolero.
This sumptuous, humanistic film is an ambitious peak in Claude Lelouch’s career: it covers almost 50 years in the lives of individuals in four countries (France, Russia, America and Germany) and pays lyrical homage to the influence of music and dance upon mankind through periods of suffering and indomitability. For devotees of the musical film, Les Uns et Les Autres is unique because it attempts to cover so much material and, for the most part, succeeds. Let it be emphasized from the outset that Lelouch has made a grand entertainment and, in his own way, arranges his historical background with threads of social comment gleaned from actual events. The tiresome attitude of the critics (or some of them) at the Cannes Festival was that they were waiting only for Wajda and had little aesthetic sensibility left over for Lelouch. The approach to World War II is respectful, touching upon the plight of innocent people caught up in its madnesses without warning. The pleas for understanding are inherent in all of the film’s episodes, so that the atrocities and cruelties of mankind are linked to specific characters. Each life is criss-crossed by generations whose musical heritage brings them together magically. If one can generally assume, as drama, a linkage between, say, Glenn Miller, Josephine Baker, Nureyev, Ulanova and Fürtwangler, with a generous helping of popular songs, then this exceptional mélange gives some indication of the film’s wild flights of fancy. The cast is unusual, too, with non-singers miming with persuasive vigor and James Caan creditably delineating a King of Swing. Les Uns et Les Autres is a giant, colorful film, filled with an appreciation of life, music and the unpredictable ways of history. It is naive enough to make Ravel’s "Bolero" a hymn to eternal dance, but therein lies the fun and freedom of those films that sit unswervingly close to art.
—Albert Johnson
FACTOID #95
Later to find fame with the amnesia-tinged film noir update Memento, British director Christopher Nolan was nominated for the SKYY Prize in 1998 for his first feature Following. Nolan shot the film about a writer who stalks strangers, on weekends over the course of a year on a budget of $6,000.
