And Now My Love movie synopsis. Russian ballet dancer Tatiana (Rita Poelvoorde) loses a competition to become her school’s #1 ballerina, but marries Boris Itovich (Jorge Donn). The war blights their lives, but their son Sergei (Donn) eventually becomes a top dancer himself. Parisian music hall musicians Anne and Simon Meyer (Nicole Garcia and Robert Hossein) marry, only to be deported to a concentration camp. They cast their infant out to chance, and he grows up to be a lawyer (Hossein) who wonders where his son Patrick (Manuel Gélin) gets his musical ability. Big band leader Jack Glenn (James Caan) does USO duty while in the Army, but returns to his singer wife Suzan (Geraldine Chaplin).
Their children Sara and Jason (Chaplin and Caan) become respectively a big pop singer and a film director. German piano virtuoso Karl Kremer (Daniel Olbrychski) plays for Hitler in 1938, which complicates his career as an orchestra conductor later in life. Evelyne (Evelyn Bouix) comes to a sorry end after taking many lovers in wartime Paris, including German officers; her daughter Edith (Bouix) returns to Paris and eventually tries a career in dancing. Somehow, the multiple threads of so many creative lives converge at a charity dance concert of Ravel’s Bolero at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.
Claude Lelouch’s romantic drama Toute une Vie chronicles three different love affairs over three generations during the 20th century. Marthe Keller and Charles Denner portray different members of the families in each of the generations. The stories involve a cameraman’s son who suffers and survives internment in a concentration camp in World War II, and his daughter, who marries a man who begins adulthood as an ex-convict and a scoundrel but gradually matures and becomes a well-respected filmmaker living in New York. Each section of the film utilizes a style of filmmaking that is associated with the time period being portrayed. Lelouch earned an Academy Award nomination (along with co-screenwriter Pierre Uytterhoeven) for his screenplay in 1975.
And Now My Love (French: Toute une Vie), (Released as ‘A Whole Lifetime’ in Australia) is a French-Italian film released in 1974 by Claude Lelouch, starring Marthe Keller, André Dussollier, Charles Denner, and Charles Gérard. The American title derives from the use of the Gilbert Bécaud song “Et Maintenant” at the film’s climax; the song title literally translates as “And Now,” and the song became a worldwide hit when it was recorded with English lyrics as “What Now My Love”.
And Now My Love was nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1975. The film was also screened at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, but wasn’t entered into the main competition. The movie uses many songs by French singer Gilbert Bécaud, who also plays a fictional version of himself in the movie.
For the American release, captions indicated the names of his songs and when he was singing them, as well as other lesser-known French pop songs and performers. This was instrumental in demonstrating that Bécaud, who was not a familiar figure to English-speaking audiences, was a crucial element to the story, in that both protagonists are obsessed with him and his music, and that his presence was constantly hovering over their lives.
And Now My Love (1974)
Directed by: Claude Lelouch
Starring: Marthe Keller, André Dussollier, Charles Denner, Carla Gravina, Charles Gérard, Gilbert Bécaud, Judith Magre, André Falcon, Nathalie Courval, Annie Kerani, Gabriele Tinti
Screenplay by: Claude Lelouch, Pierre Uytterhoeven
Production Design by: François de Lamothe
Cinematography by: Jean Collomb
Film Editing by: Georges Klotz
Set Decoration by: Jacques Brizzio
Makeup Department: Michel Deruelle, Joël Lavau, Pierre Vadé
Music by: Charles Aznavour, Francis Lai
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: TF1 Vidéo (France), Embassy Pictures (USA)
Release Date: May 15, 1974 (France), March 21, 1975 (USA)
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