François Truffaut's The Man Who Loved Women begins with the arrival of the mourners at Bertrand's funeral…. When, in flashback, we see Bertrand …, the dedicated skirt-chaser whose lovemaking these women are honoring by their presence, it's a letdown. He's dead even when he's supposed to be alive…. Bertrand is like an elderly, dried-up pederast. There are, of course, joyless compulsive chasers, but Bertrand's chasing isn't intended to be joyless. Although his obsession may look to be about as exciting as building a two-foot replica of the Pentagon with toothpicks, he's meant to be irresistibly charming.

Bertrand's plight might have been a subject for one of Sacha Guitry's light farces—the absurd story of a roué who carries to extremes the proclivities that other men can keep in balance. And the movie has the structure of a boulevard farce. But it doesn't have a comic spirit. In its...