The Things of Life
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
The Things of Life (Template:Lang-fr) is a 1970 French drama film directed by Claude Sautet. Based on the novel Les Choses de la vie (English title Intersection) by Paul Guimard, the film circles around a car accident experienced by Pierre (Michel Piccoli), an architect , and the events before and after it. The film won the Louis Delluc Prize, and had 2,959,682 admissions in France, making it the eighth highest earning film of the year.
Plot
The structure of the film involves frequent jumps in time - between the time of, and after, the car crash, and before the crash. The opening sequence jumps between the period immediately after the crash, and the crash itself.
In the French countryside on a summer morning, a lorry full of pigs stalls at a crossroads. An Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint swerves to avoid it and crashes into an orchard, hurling the driver, Pierre (Michel Piccoli), onto the grass. As he drifts in and out of consciousness, he revisits the essential things which make up his life.
A Paris architect in his forties driving to a meeting at Rennes, Pierre he had quarreled with his lover Hélène (Romy Schneider) the previous night. They were due to leave together for a job he was offered in Tunis but he hadn't signed the documents. But he had agreed to take his teenage son Bertrand, who lived with his estranged wife Catherine, for a holiday in the family's holiday home on the Île de Ré. Stopping at a café, he wrote to Hélène calling everything off, but did not post the letter. Driving past a wedding, he decides that the letter was quite wrong and he should marry Hélène.
Rushed to hospital in Le Mans, he does not recover. As his widow, Catherine is given his effects, including the unsent letter to Hélène. Catherine is reading it when she sees Hélène arriving. She tears it to pieces, and Hélène is told by a nurse that she is too late.
Production
The idea of making a film from the Paul Guimard's novel was originally turned down by multiple financiers in France. It was the fourth feature directed by Claude Sautet, and his first to become a major success. Sautet would work with actress Romy Schneider again on further projects, including Sautet's next feature Max and the Junkmen. Sautet also hired composer Philippe Sarde to write the score. That initiated a long partnership between the two, spanning twenty-five years and eleven films. The car crash scene was shot on a crossroads specifically created for the purpose, and took two weeks to shoot.
Cast
- Michel Piccoli as Pierre Bérard
- Romy Schneider as Hélène Haltig
- Gérard Lartigau as Bertrand Bérard
- Lea Massari as Catherine Bérard
- Jean Bouise as François
- Boby Lapointe as the driver of the animal transporter
- Hervé Sand as the lorry driver
- Jacques Richard as the nurse
- Betty Beckers as the female hitchhiker
- Dominique Zardi as the male hitchhiker
