1784 French song
"" (, "Pleasure of love") is a classical French love song written in 1784 by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini (1741–1816); it took its text from a poem by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (1755–1794), which appears in his novel "Célestine".
The song was greatly successful in Martini's version. For example, a young woman, Madame Julie Charles, sang it to the poet Alphonse de Lamartine during his cure at Aix-les-Bains in 1816, and the poet was to recall it 30 years later.
Hector Berlioz arranged it for orchestra (H134) in 1859. Louis van Waefelghem arranged the tune for viola d'amore or viola and piano in the 1880s. It has been arranged and performed in various pop music settings.
In popular culture.
The tune is heavily featured as a theme to the 1939 feature film "Love Affair" starring Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne, with Dunne also performing the song within her role as a singer
The song served as the main theme of, and was sung by Montgomery Clift in, the 1949 movie "The Heiress".
The opening sequence of the Christmas comedy film "We're No Angels" (1955), directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Humphrey Bogart, contains the song "Ma France Bien-Aimée" which borrows the music of "Plaisir d'amour".
The melodies for Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love" (1961) and the 20th century Christian hymn "My God Loves Me" are based on "Plaisir d'amour".
Mado Robin's version of the song plays in Djibril Diop Mambéty's 1973 film "Touki Bouki" when Nori and Anta go to visit a rich patron's estate in order to convince him to fund their trip to Paris. It is repeated a few times more throughout the remainder of the film.
A church choir performs this song for exhausted members of Easy Company in the episode entitled "The Breaking Point" in HBO's acclaimed miniseries Band of Brothers.
In the 1966 movie "Batman", the song was being performed by an on-stage singer (Julie Gregg) in a romantic restaurant that Bruce Wayne (Adam West) had unwittingly taken Catwoman (Lee Meriwether) to on a date, thinking she was the Russian journalist "Kitayna Ireyna Tatanya Kerenska Alisoff".