Cubussoli
Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
CommentsXp
Best movie ever!
FuzzyTagz
If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.
Stephanie
There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes
tonyking-2
One of the greatest classic films; saw it several times in the eighties on VHS video with an English soundtrack. It appears there is no DVD version available with an English soundtrack which seems strange and annoying as I would like to have a copy to keep. Along with Gone With The Wind and Dr Zhivago it is one of the best of its type. A complicated entwined WWII story or stories of various people brought together for a single purpose, a Unicef concert in Paris that may take a couple of viewings to piece it together but well worth it. The ballet performance to Bolero at the end is spine tingling,and from someone who does not really like ballet.....
P.S. Paaskynen
I share with the other commentators the love of this amazing film, which has been on my 10-best-ever list since I first saw it. The director has done a wonderful job of keeping together the various story lines, that cross each other time and again in different places and times, with their own theme scores that evolve as time passes.The main story in the film is of course the Second World War, which throws the stories of the four musical families together and mixes their fates.Many characters in the film are loosely based on musical icons (Josephine Baker, Herbert von Karajan, Glen Miller, Edith Piaf, Rudolf Nureyev, etc.) and the many sub plots, such as in the band of friends returning from the Algerian war, make the film into a rich experience of lives and fates that may confuse some at first sight, but that makes the film interesting and involving even after repeated viewing. The Bolero dance sequence at the end, in which all threads come together, never ceases to blow me away.
brunodutch
Magnificent movie. Overwhelming. I was interested to read that it had been drastically shortened. In places it's not easy to keep the story straight. The only aspect I thought not good was the American story. James Caan is not good and Geraldine Chaplin is bizarrely cast. But. Having said that, I can't think of many other movies with a similar sweep and ambition. Personally I still prefer Les Miserables; but that, I think, is one of the best movies of the last ten years.
talltale-1
Wow. I had seen a pared-down version of this amazing film when it was called BOLERO a decade or two back. Now that I have seen the uncut film, I'm in awe. As I grow older I seem to appreciate Claude Lelouch more and more. This one may be his masterpiece. Weaving together three generations and four families (German, French, American and Russian), the writer/director manages to run the gamut from wildly romantic to elegantly subdued (note the distanced reconciliation scene between mother and son late in the film) offering up whatever is called for at a given moment. Music is paramount to this movie--it is ever-present and holds the diverse threads together. The cast is amazing, too. What a coup. This is the kind of film I'll recommend to everyone, and now that it is out on DVD, movie lovers are all the luckier for it.
