Claude Lelouch

Born in the French capital on October 30, 1937, Claude Barruck Joseph Lelouch –his full name– is the son of a Jew and his wife, who converted to Judaism when she married him. For this reason, the family settled in Algeria, then a French colony, facing the threat of Nazi invasion, but he made the mistake of returning to Nice in 1942, with an aunt. Upon discovering the danger of the place, the Lelouchs try to leave, but the Gestapo is looking for them. On several occasions, his mother hides with the child in movie theaters, where he is fascinated by the screen, he never tires of watching the same movie several times in a row.

After the Second World War safe and sound, the clan returns to Paris, where the boy fails in high school. His father buys him a camera, with the aim that he learns how to use it, since that way he can earn a living as a news reporter. In this way, he debuted with small documentary works, such as Une ville pas comme les autres, USA en vrac… , and Quand le rideau se lève, one of the first films of daily life in the former USSR. While he was carrying it out, he visited the filming of When the Storks Fly by , from 1957, which made him decide to dedicate himself to making fiction.

Thanks to the repercussion of his work on communist Russia, when it was his turn to join the military service he was assigned to the cinematographic unit, of a propaganda nature. “Back then I was convinced that the camera was the most important thing in cinema,” he recalled in an interview. “But I had to deal with the worst actors in the world, the officers and soldiers, so I realized that the direction of actors also had a fundamental role.”

Upon graduating in 1960, he shot his debut feature, the romantic drama Le propre de l’homme, but the reviews weren’t anything to get excited about. “Remember the name of Claude Lelouch, because you will never hear of him again,” commented the review in Cahiers du Cinéma. To make matters worse, no distributor took charge of the tape, and a few weeks after the first screening his father died. Everything presaged that the decade that was beginning was going to be disastrous for the new filmmaker, but it would not be like that.

To earn a living, he dedicates himself to filming ‘scopitones’, that is, routine presentations of songs by popular artists like Johnny Hallyday , in a clear precedent for video clips. He gets funding to start up his own production company, which he intends to call Les Films de l’Apocalypse, but the notary is scared by this name when he goes to do the deeds. “Listen, today is the 13th, it’s 1:00 p.m. and his name, Claude Lelouch, has 13 letters. How about calling the company 13?” he told the filmmaker. He ended up calling it Les Films 138.

His subsequent works, such as A girl and her rifles, did not just attract attention. Depressed, he decides to spend a few days by the sea in Deauville. While driving his car at dawn, he spots a woman walking her dog on the beach. As he watches them, he tries to imagine what they are doing there so early. Thanks to this he begins to write the script for A Man and a Woman , the story of two widowers, a movie script and a motor racing champion, who live a passionate romance. Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimée agree to star in it despite the lack of budget, and the director’s little prestige. francis laiHe composes a soundtrack for it that would be all the rage in the record stores of the time. Despite the fact that he delivered it late to the selection committee of the Cannes Film Festival, when they had already closed the official section of 1966, they like it so much that they decide to include it despite everything. She achieved the highest distinction of the contest, the Palme d’Or, shared with Ladies and Gentlemen, by Pietro Germi . It later earned four Oscar nominations, of which it won two, for Foreign Language Film and Original Screenplay (it did not materialize for Director and Lead Actress).

Although proposals to work in Hollywood later rained down on him, he decided to stay in France. She then shoots Live to Live , about a married couple on the verge of divorce, played by Yves Montand and Annie Girardot . During filming he lives an idyll with the latter, which they both kept secret for many years. He is not a one woman man; actresses dominate his sentimental life, because after the divorce from his wife, Christine, he was married to Evelyne Bouix , Marie-Sophie L. and Alessandra Martines . With all of them he has six children. He seems to have settled down with Valérie Perrin , also an interpreter.

Despite his hectic sentimental life, he often reflects on relationships, in titles such as On Love and Infidelity , a French production shot in the United States, with Jean-Paul Belmondo and again Girardot, which despite not being a massive success He is well regarded in his country. Jean Dujardin , star of The Artist , assured in an interview that it is one of his favorite films. “I see her every six months.”

After recovering Jean-Louis Trintignant , as a thief, in The Scoundrel, Claude Lelouch made adventure films in the 70s, with a touch of comedy, at the service of Lino Ventura , in Adventure is Adventure , and A Lady and a rascal . He tackles intriguing cinema in El gato, el ratón, el amor y el miedo, and Viva la vida , and the musical drama in Los unos y los otros . In the mid-’80s, he brought back Trintignant and Aimee, in A Man and a Woman: Part 2 , which didn’t garner anywhere near the buzz of its predecessor.

In the 90s he is still quite active. He singles out the light-hearted comedy All of this…for this? and Exceptional Witness , with Jean-Paul Belmondo , who transfers the plot of “Les miserables”, the popular novel by Victor Hugo , to the time of the Nazis . With the beginning of the 21st century, he continues to shoot at a good pace, but he only has a little impact with And now… ladies and gentlemen , a failed romantic drama with Jeremy Irons . His 49th film, The Most Beautiful Years of a Life , brings back the protagonists of A Man and a Woman for the third time , already elderly, who meet again when he is in a residence, and suffers from Alzheimer’s. “I find it tremendously moving to see the current images of Jean-Louis and Anouk contrasted in the space of a few seconds with those taken 52 years earlier”, comments the filmmaker. “It is a second of eternity that produces a gap in time. Emotions make the circle close. And the images of Jean-Louis and Anouk in two different eras further intensify our emotions.”