Les Uns et les Autres

As a bloated, all-stops-out melodrama this effort from Claude Lelouch takes some beating, though an hour may be enough for the majority of viewers before indigestion strikes. Starting in 1936, it chronicles the lives of four couples (played by actors in multiple roles) - American, Russian, French and German - and takes them through the obstacle race and marathon that is that thing called life. There is the Second World War, the Holocaust, the Cold War, Algeria and Vietnam. There is race relations, car smashes, cancer, the works. But most of all there is music which links everyone together in a sort of hey-ho, let's-go medley. Exhausting yet somehow amazing.