A Man and a Woman

According to director Claude Lelouch, the story originated from an experience following his disappointment trying to get a distribution deal for his film The Grand Moments. As was his habit during troubling times, he went for a long drive and ended up on the shore at Deauville at 2:00 am. After a few hours sleep in the car, he was awakened by the sunrise and saw a woman walking on the beach with her daughter and a dog. This sparked his creativity which led to the story and script which he co-wrote with Pierre Uytterhoeven within a month.[9]

The title may have come from a line in the film, where Jean-Louis and Anne are listening to the news on the radio driving in a fast Ford Mustang and a commentator says, "A man and a woman have just died after skidding in a powerful car". This leads to a discussion about how well he is driving and Anne commenting "you are average".[10]

A key casting decision for Lelouch was Jean-Louis Trintignant:

I think Jean-Louis is the actor who taught me how to direct actors. We really brought each other a lot. He changed his method of acting while working with me, and I began to truly understand what directing actors was all about, working with him. I think the relationship between a director and actor is the same relationship as in a love story between two people. One cannot direct an actor if you do not love him or her. And he cannot be good if he or she does not love you in turn.[11]

For the female lead, Trintignant asked Lelouch who his ideal woman would be, and Lelouch indicated Anouk Aimée, who had appeared in Fellini's films La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8½ (1962). Trintignant happened to be a close friend of hers and told him to call her. When he did, she accepted without reading the script. Although early disagreements and the low-budget skeleton crew caused initial tension between the director and actress, they quickly resolved their differences and the two went on to become close friends.[9]

Once the script was drafted, the film was made relatively quickly, with one month of pre-production work, three weeks of principal photography, and three weeks editing.[9] Due to budget constraints, he used an older handheld camera that was not soundproof, so blankets were frequently employed to dampen the camera noise.[9]

Lelouch is considered a pioneer in mixing different film stocks: black-and-white with colour, and 35mm with 16mm and super 8. For years, film critics debated the symbolism of the mixed film stocks, but Lelouch acknowledged that the primary reason was that he was running out of money, and black-and-white stock was cheaper.[11] His original plan involved shooting strictly in black and white, but when an American distributor offered him $40,000 to film in colour, he filmed the outdoor sequences in colour, and the indoor scenes in black and white.[9]

The music soundtrack was recorded prior to filming, and Lelouch would play the music on the set to inspire the actors.[9] Lelouch encouraged his actors to improvise some of the dialogue, and several key scenes were improvised. The climactic scene at a railway station was not scripted at the time of shooting, and Aimée did not know that director Lelouch had decided on the two main characters reuniting at the end. The look of surprise on Aimée's face is genuine.[12]

The film was shot, among others, in Paris, Monte Carlo and Deauville. The love scene was shot in the Hotel Barrière Le Normandy Deauville which, in memory of the film, has a suite entitled "A Man and a Woman".

The film earned theatrical rentals of $4.6 million in the United States and Canada and $4 million internationally during its initial theatrical release.[13][14] It played for 83 weeks in Boston, 73 weeks in Syracuse and 61 weeks in Seattle.[14] An English-language version of the film was shown in the United States and Canada from 1 July 1968, and the film eventually earned rentals of $6.3 million in the US and Canada.[14][15]

It was the sixth most popular film at the French box office in 1966, after La Grande Vadrouille, Dr Zhivago, Is Paris Burning?, A Fistful of Dollars and Lost Command.[16]

Upon its theatrical release in the United States, A Man and a Woman received mostly positive reviews. In his New York Times review, Bosley Crowther wrote: "For a first-rate demonstration of the artfulness of a cameraman and the skill at putting together handsome pictures and a strongly sentimental musical score, there is nothing around any better than Claude Lelouch's A Man and a Woman".[17] Crowther lauded the "beautiful and sometimes breath-taking exposition of visual imagery intended to excite the emotions" and praised the director for his ability to create something unique from the commonplace:

Mr. Lelouch, who was his own script writer as well as director and cameraman, has a rare skill at photographing clichés so that they sparkle and glow with poetry and at generating a sense of inspiration in behavior that is wholly trivial.[17]

The review in Variety commented on the performances of the lead actors: "Anouk Aimee has a mature beauty and an ability to project an inner quality that helps stave off the obvious banality of her character, and this goes too for the perceptive Jean-Louis Trintignant as the man".[18]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 75% based on 16 reviews, with an average rating of 6.4/10.[19]

The film was selected for screening as part of the Cannes Classics section of the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.[20]

1. "Un homme et une femme" (A Man and a Woman) performed by Nicole Croisille and Pierre Barouh (2:40)
2. "Samba Saravah" by Pierre Barouh (4:30)
3. "Aujourd'hui c'est toi" (Today It's You) by Nicole Croisille (2:06)
4. "Un homme et une femme" (A Man and a Woman) (2:37)
5. "Plus fort que nous" (Stronger Than Us) (3:15)
6. "Aujourd'hui c'est toi" (Today It's You) (2:35)
7. "A l'ombre de nous" (In Our Shadow) by Pierre Barouh (4:55)
8. "Plus fort que nous" (Stronger Than Us) by Nicole Croisille and Pierre Barouh (3:43)
9. "A 200 à l'heure" (124 Miles An Hour) (2:30)[32][33]