DabaDabaDa ...

It's not long time ago that I knew the French classic movie "Un homme et une femme". The love story was directed by Claude Lelouch with main actor Jean-Louis Trintignant and actress Anouk Aimee. Maybe the theme music is better known. "DabaDabaDa, Lalala, DabaDabaDa ... " That's the one. When I saw the film, I thought the back ground of the movie looked like Doville of France. And I checked it. Yes, it was.

I've been there once. It's an hour and half trip from Montparnasse of Paris by train. Doville was a charming seaside town. I remember the town made the twin city with the neighborhood Tourneville. Beach houses were lined and long board walk was set along the beach. There were also small port and a couple of casinos as a typical French scenery. It's surprising that I can't see any big change between the Doville in "Un homme et une femme" and the current town. I could not know it's Doville if the scenery was changed completely from the film.

The most characteristic things for the cost line of Normandy was a great range of tide. The scenery of the sea side was dramatically changed with tide. In the ebb tide, big sand bar was shown, and water was drawn back far away to the offshore. It might be an advantage for the strategy in wartime.

The town of Honfleur, slightly north of Doville, also had such kind of coast line. But much stronger character of the town was the fact that it had the river mouth of the Seine, obviously it's the same river which ran in Paris.
Many cargo ships up and down the stream. So actually the river mouth had heavy traffic . From the reason, the river mouth had to be kept away from accumulation of sand. So a mile long river bank was stretched into the ocean to keep the enough depth for the ship.
The long river bank was shown in the ocean when the tide fell. But once the water came back with flow tide, the bank sank down into the water in few minutes. It's the moment I knew the power of the universe.
The opposite side of the river mouth was big city named Le Havre. The huge industrial complex of the city showed many fires in the night. From the scenery, I felt like I was on the seaside somewhere in the middle east. The Honfleur also seems to be very popular for the location of film making. Because I saw the landscape sometimes in the movies.

Well, let's talk about "Un homme et une femme" again. It's true Anouk Aimee was beautiful actress. However the movie itself was quite typical love romance. The reason why the movie got the Canne Grand Prix and Academy foreign movie award in 1966 must owed to the simple story line. My favorite scene in the movie was this.
The hero of the story who was racing driver, acted by J.L.Trintegnan, came back to Doville from the Monte Carlo Rally. He pulled the car on the board walk, and was running up toward the girl friend playing with the children but he stopped. Instead of that, he turned on and off the headlight of his car, Ford Mustang. She noticed him. "DabaDabaDa ... " The theme was played over the scene.

The movie consisted of color part and B&W part. I heard it's came from the tight budget. So I'm very happy to see this scene in the color part. The yellow light of Mustang under the bluish cloudy sky looked so cool to me. Then I changed the headlight of my car into the yellow bulb shortly after the movie.