A Time for Loving | |
---|---|
Directed by | Christopher Miles |
Written by | Jean Anouilh |
Produced by | Dimitri de Grunwald Mel Ferrer |
Starring | Joanna Shimkus Mel Ferrer Britt Ekland Philippe Noiret Susan Hampshire Mark Burns |
Cinematography | Andréas Winding |
Edited by | Henri Lanoë |
Music by | Michel Legrand |
Production company | London Screenplays |
Distributed by | Hemdale Film Distributors Anglo-EMI |
Release date |
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Running time | 104 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
A Time for Loving is from an original screenplay by the French playwright Jean Anouilh, commissioned by the producer Anatole de Grunwald before he died in 1967, which was finally produced by his younger brother Dimitri de Grunwald with Christopher Miles directing in 1970. It is a bitter-sweet nostalgic look at Paris just before and during the second World War as seen by three couples, who over the years rent the same artist's studio in Montmartre. [1] [2]
At the same time as an English man, Geoff arranges a rendezvous with his first love, Patricia, to recapture their first affair in a Montmartre studio, the son of the concierge persuades his first love Simone to climb up to the same studio bedroom window thinking it would be empty for the night. Meanwhile, Geoff finds Patricia has grown bitter over the years, and that the warmth has gone from their relationship, but when they disturb the two young lovers in the bedroom, the evening ends in a humorous and more light-hearted manner, as they are forced to crawl under the concierge's door in order to leave unseen.
Running late to school the concierge's son sees a young American girl, who is studying at the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly, and who is having an affair with an older doctor. Not only must they keep the affair secret from the concierge, but also from the disapproving general public by having to meet in shady ‘hôtels de passe’. However an escape to the seaside in Normandy brings matters to a head between them, as the second world war begins.
In occupied Paris, Marcel, the managing director of an important cement business, arrives at the studio which he is renting for his mistress Josette, and bumps into a German Oberleutnant on the landing. As it is Christmas Eve, old enmities are put aside, but Marcel has to get his other Christmas presents home to his wife Hélioise and also to his mother, who lives the other side of Paris. All of whom offer Marcel the customary Christmas French dish of oysters, which are also given to him by his mistress for her party, along with her music teacher and her student Monsieur Grondin.
The only form of transport in Paris during those war years were velo-taxis, a type of bicycle rickshaws, which are unable to get the overweight Marcel to all of his women in time for their oyster dinners. These he has to consume in a hurry, one after the other, in order to be on time, albeit a bit green around the gills, for a secret meeting with the French Resistance. After the war all three men are reunited in the old studio. [3]
After the success of The Virgin and the Gypsy, Dimitri de Grunwald, who had arranged the finance through his European Consortium, teamed up with Christopher Miles again, who in gratitude agreed to direct ‘A Time for Loving’ as long as a meeting could be arranged with Jean Anouilh to discuss the screenplay. This de Grunwald arranged in the Hotel Provençal in the South of France near where Anouilh lived. [4]
This 1930s hotel, in which the bar hosted Scott Fitzgerald where he wrote Tender is the night was to close the following year, and reflected that elusive bygone era which Anouilh was trying to capture. Anouilh agreed to meet Miles at the bar at 5pm the night of Bastille Day 1970 and see if it was possible for him to reconsider some aspects of the screenplay for the modern audience. Miles reports that at 5pm sharp a sixty year old moustached man with gold-rimmed spectacle and a twinkle in his eye shook him by the hand saying in French "Eh bien, I have reread my scenario and I find it enchanting" - so there was little else Miles could say to the great man, but to toast the project, and watch the fireworks from the hotel. [5] [6]
In fact Anouilh did help later with some rewriting by improving the interlocking dialogue for some of the sequences, which were needed in a hurry as shooting was to begin in Paris on Pont Alexandre III which had to be closed to the public for filming on 4 August 1970, a studio built on an existing house in Rue Berthe, Montmartre, as well as its interiors to be designed and built by Theo Meurisse at the Studio Boulogne, all to be co- ordinated by Miles’ friend from their Paris film student days, Patrick Bureau. [7]
Anouilh had set his script in Montparnasse, but by the 1970s the modern towers dominated the exteriors, so Miles moved the location to Montmartre which he knew well from his student days. This meant getting helpful co-operation from his old friends, the local vegetable market sellers, the butcher, the local artists and the poet Pierre Jacob and his wife Josia to play small roles and appear in the film. [8] [9]
Alexander Walker of the London Evening Standard wrote "Though one is surprised to see it done at all any longer, I have to admit it is done very well in Christopher Miles's romantic comedy...'Time for Loving' is one of the very few English films made in France that is worth the Channel crossing" [10] and the style of the film appealed to Dilys Powell of the Sunday Times "... and it's amusing to see Michel Legrand, most prolific of film music composers, making a spirited appearance with a trombone: in my eyes Lila Kedrova never over-acts: one admires too, the re-creation of war-time Paris, streets empty of traffic except for bicycle-taxis" [11] as it did to the Daily Telegraph : "The most striking quality of this handsome, erratic film, is its splendidly square sense of place....Christopher Miles accurately gauges the material things that give substance to an experience... really it is less a time for loving than time remembered". [12] However for the London Evening News it was a rose among the West End weeds: "Directed with leisurely sophistication by Christopher Miles - reunited with his Virgin and Gypsy stars Joanna Shimkus and Mark Burns -... it’s a rose among the West End weeds" [13] but Derek Malcolm of The Guardian wrote: "There is delicious Joanna Shimkus as a medical student in love with Mel Ferrer’s middle-aged doctor, Susan Hampshire’s icy rich lady failing to rekindle her affair with Mark Burns, and the estimable Philippe Noiret as a harassed business man trying to satisfy his wife, mistress and self-pitying mother". However he felt although the film looked nice, the French being the meanest, and most bourgeois, and least romantic nations on earth - it was a bit of a fake. [14]
Montmartre is a large hill in Paris's northern 18th arrondissement. It is 130 m (430 ft) high and gives its name to the surrounding district, part of the Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for its artistic history, for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur on its summit, and as a nightclub district.
The Cemetery of Montmartre is a cemetery in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, France, that dates to the early 19th century. Officially known as the Cimetière du Nord, it is the third largest necropolis in Paris, after the Père Lachaise Cemetery and the Montparnasse Cemetery.
Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh was a French dramatist and screenwriter whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1944 play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles' classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's Vichy government. His plays are less experimental than those of his contemporaries, having clearly organized plot and eloquent dialogue. One of France's most prolific writers after World War II, much of Anouilh's work deals with themes of maintaining integrity in a world of moral compromise.
Marcel Marceau was a French mime artist and actor most famous for his stage persona, "Bip the Clown". He referred to mime as the "art of silence", performing professionally worldwide for more than 60 years.
Henri Alekan was a French cinematographer.
Joanna Marie Shimkus is a Canadian film actress. She is the widow of actor Sidney Poitier and mother of actress Sydney Tamiia Poitier.
Marcel L'Herbier was a French filmmaker who achieved prominence as an avant-garde theorist and imaginative practitioner with a series of silent films in the 1920s. His career as a director continued until the 1950s and he made more than 40 feature films in total. During the 1950s and 1960s, he worked on cultural programmes for French television. He also fulfilled many administrative roles in the French film industry, and he was the founder and the first President of the French film school Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC).
Le Carnaval des vérités is a 1920 French silent film written and directed by Marcel L'Herbier.
Josette Day was a French film actress.
Michel Bouquet was a French stage and film actor. He appeared in more than 100 films from 1947 to 2020. He won the Best Actor European Film Award for Toto the Hero in 1991 and two Best Actor Césars for How I Killed My Father (2001) and The Last Mitterrand (2005). He also received the Molière Award for Best Actor for Les côtelettes in 1998, then again for Exit the King in 2005. In 2014, he was awarded the Honorary Molière for the sum of his career. He received the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor in 2018.
El Dorado is a French silent film directed in 1921 by Marcel L'Herbier. The film was notable for integrating a number of technical innovations into its narrative of a "cinematic melodrama". It achieved considerable success on its release, as a ground-breaking film that was distinctively French at a time when the cinema was felt to be dominated by American productions.
L'Inhumaine is a 1924 French science fiction drama film directed by Marcel L'Herbier. It has the subtitle histoire féerique. L'Inhumaine is notable for its experimental techniques and for the collaboration of many leading practitioners in the decorative arts, architecture and music. The film caused controversy on its release.
The Virgin and the Gypsy is a 1970 British drama film directed by Christopher Miles and starring Joanna Shimkus and Franco Nero. The screenplay by Alan Plater was based on the novella of the same name by D. H. Lawrence. The film was voted "Best Film of the Year" by both the UK and USA critics.
Christopher Miles was a British film director, producer and screenwriter.
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Entente cordiale is a 1939 French drama film directed by Marcel L'Herbier and starring Gaby Morlay, Victor Francen and Pierre Richard-Willm. The film depicts events between the Fashoda crisis in 1898 and the 1904 signing of the Entente Cordiale creating an alliance between Britain and France and ending their historic rivalry. It was based on the book King Edward VII and His Times by André Maurois. It was made with an eye to its propaganda value, following the Munich Agreement of September 1938 and in anticipation of the outbreak of a Second World War which would test the bonds between Britain and France in a conflict with Nazi Germany.
Marguerite Moreno was a French stage and film actress.
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