With this, his sixth feature, the previously unknown Claude Lelouch became the Grand Prize recipient at the Cannes festival, an Oscar winner in the Foreign Film category, one of the most financially liberated of filmmakers, and a stylist — shooting quickly, mobilely, on the road, and from the hip — with a worldwide impact. His style is too often classed with advertisements of the take-a-puff-it's-springtime sort. In fact, it is many things, no more partial to the romanticism of foot-loose, rain-dampened weekend outings than to the mundanity of shapeless, stagnant, improvised chitchat. The firmest area in this extremely flexible, free-form romance between a glamorous Grand Prix racer and a withdrawn script girl is the careful tracing of the mechanics of wooing — from the chance meeting through the first restrained get-togethers, phone calls, and love notes, and the gradual erosion of the woman's resistance by his outside pressure and her internal weakness. Lelouch allows the characters considerable space to express themselves, through their manners and their vocations and their imaginations; and he, operating his own camera, alters his approach to fit the situation. Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimee, responding well to their freedom, flesh out the characters with body, detail, and conviction. (1966) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.