Les Amants (The Lovers)
July 2008 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Louis Malle made Les Amants in 1958 when he was only 25. To his amazement, it won the coveted Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. But it was denounced worldwide for the same reasons it was acclaimed: its critique of bourgeois values and its explicit sexuality. Louis Malle made it especially as a vehicle for the sensuality of French actress Jeanne Moreau, and it helped establish her career. The film was a gateway to a new kind of cinema in France and to the sexual revolution of the 1960s. If you are too young to remember that momentous revolution, this might be the very film for you to see -- better than a documentary or a chapter in a history book. And if you admire the other great New Wave French filmmakers -- Truffaut, Godard, and Chabrol -- you’ll need to add this groundbreaker to your collection.

In a 1994 interview a few years before his death at age 63, Louis Malle summed up why The Lovers was so scandalous: "I didn’t pan away to the window." He’s talking about the scene in the bedroom of Jeanne Tournier, Moreau’s character, a leisured provincial wife, when she is naked in bed with Bernard, the young man she’s met by chance earlier that day, who’s been invited by her husband as a house guest. After Bernard has moved out of frame toward the foot of the bed, the camera holds steady on Jeanne’s face as she reaches climax. There is no discreet pan away. Also shocking is that asleep down the hall are her husband, her child, and another houseguest -- her lover. Even with these two other men in her life, "her body experienced something it never had before," Malle explained.

The film was shot in beautifully contrasted black and white. The most sensational and memorable scenes are those shot day for night of the two lovers running through moonlit gardens and drifting in a small boat down a shadowy river, with Moreau wearing a luminous white robe that flows and billows around her. The Brahms string sextet that’s used as the score intensifies the daring mood. In his 1994 interview, Malle remembered he was trying for something lyrical and romantic, his theme "love at first sight," but he was pleased during the Venice film festival when the Bishop stood in the pulpit of the Basilica of San Marco to condemn his movie. "I must have done something right." In 1959 it was a landmark US Supreme Court case regarding the legal definition of obscenity, but as an older man Malle saw the film as naïve. "If I made The Lovers today it would be much harsher."

Criterion invested special effort in this important and historic film. The DVD transfer from a 35mm master positive is excellent: meticulously restored and left in its original 2.35.1 aspect ratio. The audio has been painstakingly remastered. The electronic English subtitles are well written. The extra features include mostly interviews, and these greatly enhance one’s enjoyment and understanding of the film. Best are the two with Malle at 26 and 61. An interview with the fascinating young Jeanne Moreau made shortly after the film appeared is also included. And don’t miss the well-researched 14-page booklet.

Anyone who loves film needs to know its history -- to understand how it developed as a vehicle for exploration of social issues and how it evolved into the most important art form of the 20th century. We need to be grateful to Criterion for reissuing a film like this one so respectfully.

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