“A Man and a Woman” by Claude Lelouch, “Rain People” by Francis Ford Coppola, “A Long Happy Life” by Gennady Shpalikov: what do they have in common?

The sixties were the time of the young, the angry and the not so angry, the time of new pathos, the time of new heroes, the time when the heroism of battle gave way to the romance of creation, the little man suddenly became greater than the collective truth, and private feeling turned out to be no less, if not more important, than global ideas. But the pathos did not go away – there was nowhere for it to go.

Text: Ksenia Rozhdestvenskaya

The Soviet sixties—from “A poet in Russia is more than a poet” to “I raised high words like a son”—proclaimed the importance of simple human feelings, but spoke about them as if every word was written with a capital letter. The European Sixties became increasingly angry and leftist until their fury spilled out onto the streets in 1968. The American sixties fought with the world of their fathers for the right not to fight with the rest of the world.

Three almost arbitrarily chosen films from the 1960s provide insight into the vocabulary and set of rules of this new pathos: Gennady Shpalikov’s A Long Happy Life, Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman, and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rain People. It is clear that these are films from completely different worlds, with completely different problems and traumas, and if in the USSR romance is “young cities” full of geologists and firefighters, then in France romance is a rally in Monte Carlo and conversations about cinema. Nevertheless, in all these films (and in a dozen others) the pathos of the 1960s is obvious – an attempt to explore the inner world of a person with the help of a telescope, talking too loudly about what is better to remain silent, the eternal longing for the fact that “everything is still ahead ”, according to “the main and important thing that should happen in the life of every person.”

“Man and woman”

Claude Lelouch, 1966
Starring: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Anouk Aimé

The French New Wave brought into cinema a new relationship between reality and cinematic art, and the new wave crashed with the film A Man and a Woman. Everything here is as it should be in the 1960s: unexpected angles, a hand-held camera, a free plot, space rushing past the characters, a feeling, not an idea – but all this in order to beautifully tell a beautiful love story about a beautiful man and a beautiful woman, – everything could work out for them, but they yearn not for that “important thing that should happen in the life of every person,” but for that which cannot be returned.

– Beautiful, is not it? This man with a dog.

— Do you know the sculptor Giacometti? He once said an amazing thing: he said that if he had to choose what to save from a burning house, a Rembrandt painting or a cat, he would save the cat.

– Yes. And then he would let her go.

“He seems to be saying: between art and life, I choose life.”

– How wonderful it is!

High words or the meaningless chatter of lovers, which seems to be filled with meaning only by himself? The characters discuss art – cinema, music – and this endless conversation means nothing, the words can be replaced by any others, they are not important, only the Man and the Woman are important. It’s as if Lelouch is filming commercials for a long, happy life: drives in a Mustang, the deserted beaches of Deauville, Aimée’s gentle smile—and the camera selflessly focuses on the characters, blurring the rest of the world. The heroine’s flashbacks, in which her dead stuntman husband fools around, works, and dies, do not reduce this pathos, but in an unexpected way emphasize it. There is no more tomfoolery, all the fools have died, now everything is serious. It’s Complicated. “After all, love is stronger than us,” as it is sung in the voiceover.

Claude Lelouch said that he based all his films (and first of all “A Man and a Woman”) on the idea that “all suffering and tears are worth three simple words: “I love you.” The film was called the quintessential “nightmare of the era” and “a stupid movie,” in reality it was the quintessence of the pathos of the 1960s: words came into conflict with reality: “Be realistic – demand the impossible.”

“Rain People”

Francis Ford Coppola, 1969
Starring: Shirley Knight, James Caan, Robert Duvall

In 1967, the Hays Code was abolished in the United States, and it became possible to show on screen what was previously thought could undermine the moral foundations of viewers. The “rain people” undermined these foundations.

The entire previous history of cinema was based, in one way or another, on the existence of a hero who embodied certain moral ideals of society. In the late 1960s, the hero finally freed himself from these ideals. Now he could allow himself to be confused and not know what he wanted.

The heroine of Rain People, Natalie, a New York housewife who has just found out she is pregnant, gets into her car and drives to the other side of the country, “as far west as possible,” just because she doesn’t know where. she still has to get away from herself. She calls her husband from pay phones, but she can’t even say “I’m pregnant,” only “she’s pregnant… she… I.” It was with good reason that critic Roger Ebert compared this film to Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, explaining that these are mirror stories: Easy Riders go to Florida for a middle-class dream, a middle-class lady goes west in search of freedom – or, more accurately, Liberty. She meets a fellow traveler – a huge guy, a former American football player, who, after an injury, is only able to follow orders.

– Do you always do what you are told?

– More often.

– Why?

– It’s simple.

She feels responsible for this person, she is looking for a place for him in life – anything, just not to think about what to do with her own life.

We can consider that this is another film in which, like the other two from this collection, something – a bus, a barge, a car – moves to the music, and the viewer reads Despair, Love or Freedom in this movement. Yes, like many American stories of the late 1960s and early 1970s, this is a story about freedom. James Caan played a man who should have been a hero – but, injured, can only smile or obey. “Rain People” is one of the first films of the New Hollywood, films in which the heroes want freedom, but do not fully understand where to go for it or what they can do there.

“I’m not impressed by your fucking honesty…” the husband shouted into the telephone receiver of a confused Natalie. “I don’t want you to talk about how you feel, I want you to do something.”

High words against action, fucking honesty against the usual life – “Rain People” also turns out to be a pathetic – and tragic – story not of love, but of the desire for it. The 1960s are essentially all about this: the desire for love.

“Long Happy Life”

Gennady Shpalikov, 1966
starring: Kirill Lavrov, Inna Gulaya

In “A Long Happy Life,” Gennady Shpalikov’s only directorial experience, there is more pathos of the sixties—and its collapse—than in the main “thaw” film, Khutsiev’s “Ilyich’s Outpost,” also filmed according to Shpalikov’s script. A man – cheerful, convincing, born in 1932, like all the main “sixties” – gets on a bus somewhere on the edge of the populated world, in one of those “young cities” where young people live their young lives. On the bus, he meets a young woman, beautiful and gentle, who is traveling from a working-class village to the city of N. to watch “The Cherry Orchard” staged by the Moscow Art Theater. It’s soon night, both their pulses are racing with desire; they run away from the performance and talk about important things.

— People constantly lose each other only because they have forgotten how to speak simple words. I need you. Simple words.

– Even too much.

– Just right. Simple words: you are very good. And immediately everything falls into place.

Pick-up artist or the love of your life? A coward who ran away from his own happiness, or a person who could not cope with “simple words”? The Soviet space of the 1960s was filled with heady hopes for a long, happy life, but also with a sober understanding that these hopes were unjustified, especially after 1963, when Khrushchev from the rostrum promised “frosts” to everyone. “Ilyich’s Outpost” was hit by these frosts, “A Long Happy Life” might not even get to filming. During the discussion of the literary and director’s versions of Shpalikov’s script, the speakers criticized the author: “everything came down to a terribly petty story,” “I painfully searched for the idea, I sincerely wanted to find it and did not find it.” But one of the most important Soviet playwrights, Alexander Volodin, said at the discussion: “For a long time we thought that the main thing is ideas. If you simply love life, see the beauty in it, be amazed by the beauty of life, see the beauty of a woman, the beauty of nature, the beauty of art, then more correct ideas will suddenly arise from here.”

Here’s what’s important: both the author and the characters in A Long, Happy Life no longer think that ideas are the most important thing. They are not going towards Communism or towards a Bright Future, it is important for them to find Happiness, to catch Love, to find a Person, “…a woman with whom you can live your whole life. Don’t be scattered around, but just like this, for life, no matter what happens.” This is what the hero of “A Long Happy Life” says and seems to believe himself.

The lofty words of previous eras have turned into tinsel, as one of the heroes of Aksenov’s “Colleagues” put it, but new ones have come to their place, to their pedestal. Where in every Soviet apartment a portrait of the leader hung, in the 1960s a portrait of Hemingway appeared: “he was hanging in a sweater in all the apartments / with subtext in his fist…” – laconic, courageous, knows the power of words, and even a sweater Beautiful. Many more years will pass before it turns out that it is possible to do without portraits. An unfaded square of wallpaper will remain on the wall.

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