The Man Who Loved Women

The film opens at a funeral, and only women are standing at the grave. The dead man is Bertrand Morane, an engineer in Montpellier. In flashback we get his life, or rather the catalogue of his relationships with women, which he is trying to turn into a book. At the publishing house, the woman editing the manuscript begins to know him through it. François Truffaut directs. Charles Denner plays Bertrand, with Brigitte Fossey, Nelly Borgeaud and Leslie Caron. Truffaut is not admiring this man. Bertrand is compulsive, unable to explain himself, and has turned his life into an archive. The film neither celebrates nor condemns him. It takes notes. Truffaut's own attachment to books leaks all the way through. What sits at the centre is the act of writing, and the idea that a life only acquires shape once it is written down. Blake Edwards remade it in 1983 with Burt Reynolds, and lost Truffaut's cold distance entirely. The pair are often cited as a case study in how an adaptation can misread its source. Who it is for: readers of Truffaut's more personal files, and anyone drawn to films about writing and obsession. Who it is not for: most of the women remain chapters, and that structure leaves the film exposed now.