Another Man, Another Chance

This is not a western, this is a dramatic love story set in the Old West. If you think Sergio Leone's "Once Upon A Time In The West" is slow and artsy you won't enjoy this film because it is even slower and more artistic. Good performances by Caan and Bujold can't help speed the pace of this drawn out love story. The only action takes place in the first 20 minutes of the film. The rest is pure love story which is okay but we've seen it all before in Lelouch's "A Man and a Woman."

James Caan is very believable and does a great job. But could there be any worse cinematography than this? Camera shots taken directly into the sun, then transitioning in and out of shadows-very amateurish.

Frenchman and his wife come to Old West America circa 1870 in search of new lives for themselves, but he is soon killed and she becomes acquainted with a shy, gentle widower. US-French co-production from writer-director Claude Lelouch, who has keen eyes and stirs up an appropriately dusty, windswept scenario. Unfortunately, the film (in English, French and Spanish) is lumbering and overlong at 130mns. The casting of James Caan and Genevieve Bujold seems promising at the outset, but their characters generate little interest. Fascinatingly detailed, however, with beautiful cinematography by Stanley Cortez and Jacques Lefrançois, but a narrative that might've stood some tightening. ** from ****

After years of searching, when I finally got a copy I was almost nervous that I wouldn't like it, but I was not disappointed. OK - it's flawed: some scenes run on too long, there is a lack of overall refinement, Beethoven's 5th pops up in some odd places (why would you, when you have Frances Lai making the soundtrack?) but even these flaws somehow add to its overall unique, slightly odd flavour. The tone is of elegiac 1970s Westerns but it's more of a historical romantic drama than that. Westerns-wise, it feels somewhere between Heartland and Heaven's Gate with a touch of The Grey Fox (there is even a small but pleasing turn from Richard Farnsworth). However, you can tell it is European - and not American - made. It's not quite as artistic as some people make it out to be, it's more naturalistic, casual even, with some scenes and dialogue occurring in the unvarnished manner of Mike Leigh films. I loved seeing the American west from the French perspective and how the movie showed the immigrant experience. Respect is given to working class struggles in a way that you'd expect from such European cinema. I loved too how the story built, watching their two lives in separate countries (and cultures) gradually circle inwards towards their inevitable meeting. Through all the hardships of that era and in life in general, love blooms in a relatable way. And just when you'd decided this was a romance drama after all, it finally reminds you that 'this IS a Western' with an ending scene that satisfies as much as any decent revenge Western. In all - a quiet epic.

Photographer Francis Huster convinces Genevieve Bujold to abandon their native Paris and make a new life in the American west. They get married on the wagon train and settle in a small but growing city; he is shot because of his incessant picture taking. Meanwhile, veterinarian James Caan has a nagging wife, who wants they to move from their ranch. She dies in childbirth.

Director Claude Lelouch is the most unabashedly romantic director since Frank Borzage. As a result, you keep wondering when Caan and Mlle Bujold are going to stop mourning and start living again. There's no sign of the ineluctable workings of fate here, just the chance of a rebirth in the New World, with Caan at his most masculine, and Mlle Bujold indescribably cute.

Veteran cinematographer Stanley Cortez has his last credit here, capturing, along with Jacques Lefrancois, Lelouch's wide-eyed view of the beauties and weirdnesses of the Old West.