BOLERO (LES UNS ET LES AUTRES)

France | 1981 | DCP | 177 min. | French with English subtitles
Director: Claude Lelouch
Cast: James Caan, Geraldine Chaplin, Robert Hossein

An epic historical fresco tracing the lives of four families of musicians from the mid-1930’s to the present, Bolero spans two generations and four countries. As in And Now My Love and Les Miserables, Lelouch explores the interplay between personal stories and the broader sweep of history. These family sagas were drawn mainly from experiences recounted to Lelouch from people he knew. “It is a film about memory. About my memories, my parents’ memories. All the stories in the film are true, they all happened to real people. But memory is a very strange thing, sometimes precise, sometimes bizarre. It is another world; it has nothing to do with reality” (Claude Lelouch).