A Man and a Woman

A Man and a Woman (French: Un homme et une femme) is a 1966 French film written and directed by Claude Lelouch and starring Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant. Written by Lelouch and Pierre Uytterhoeven, the film is about a young widow and widower who meet by chance at their children's boarding school and whose budding relationship is complicated by the memories of their deceased spouses. The film is notable for its lush photography, which features frequent segues between full color, black-and-white, and sepia-toned shots, and for its memorable musical score by Francis Lai.

A Man and a Woman had a total of 4,272,000 admissions in France and was also the 6th highest grossing film of the year. In the United States, the film earned $14,000,000. The film won several awards, including the Palme d'Or at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival, and Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Writing. A sequel, A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later (Un Homme et une Femme, 20 Ans Déjà) was released in 1986.

A Man and a Woman (song)

"A Man and a Woman" is the seventh track on U2's eleventh studio album, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. An acoustic version of the song showed up on the "All Because of You" single. It has been performed live only once at the Clinton Foundation.

Writing and composition

"I think it's a little gift of a song. It's like a jukebox gem."

"A Man and a Woman" emerged after U2's engineer was trying a mix of something the band had recorded. Lead singer Bono liked it and soon started to play the bass guitar and singing. The acoustic guitar that the Edge is playing in the song was taken from another completely different song, they chopped it up and connected together with the new one. It was inspiring to Bono to keep working on that. Bono cites Thin Lizzy founding member Phil Lynott as the influence for the style in which he sings the song.

Bono, who has been interested in the distance that lies between men and women, wrote this song about rediscovering a kind of flirtatious and romantic love. The Edge classes "A Man and a Woman" as the wild card on How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.

A Man and a Woman (album)

A Man and a Woman is an album by vibraphonist Johnny Lytle featuring jazz interpretations of Francis Lai's score for the 1966 French film A Man and a Woman recorded in 1967 and originally issued on the Solid State label.

Reception

The Allmusic review by Richie Unterberger stated "It's bourgeois to the core, for sure. But it's also archetypal of a certain media stereotype of European elegance, exuding a certain charm despite its overt sentimentality".

Track listing

All compositions by Francis Lai

Personnel

References