Les Uns et les Autres

Les Uns et les Autres (The Ones and the Others) comes from Claude Lelouch, who wrote and directed this French musical epic of 1981. It follows fifty years of European history, from the 1930s to the 1980s, across generations. Many critics rate it, with Un Homme et une Femme, as Lelouch's best work. It won the Technical Grand Prize at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival and drew 3,234,549 admissions in France, making it the sixth most-seen film of its year. In the United States it was distributed as Boléro, after the Maurice Ravel orchestral piece used in its music.

The story follows four families from different countries whose destinies touch under the shadow of the Second World War. Ravel's Boléro is the film's recurring motif, and music and dance become the shared language of characters linked across generations. The cast is large and international: Robert Hossein, Nicole Garcia, Geraldine Chaplin, Daniel Olbrychski, Fanny Ardant, James Caan, Jacques Villeret, Richard Bohringer, Évelyne Bouix, Jean-Claude Brialy and Alexandra Stewart are among them.

Spoken in French and German, the film runs about 184 minutes. Two years later a version nearly twice as long was broadcast as a six-part television film.