Word: truffauts
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Director Francois Truffaut, unlike Ingmar Bergman, does not resort to the surrealistic and the bizarre in emphasizing his meaning. The unfortunate is treated with naive gentleness and the psychological and symbolic intricacies that one comes to expect in director-dominated films is notably absent. Pictorial eloquence is achieved through simplicity and realism rather than stagey effects...
...telling his story of a 12-year-old boy unwanted at home and in trouble at school, Truffaut has capitalized on the youthful exuberance and curiosity of his protagonist. Young Antoine Doinel is often in flight and the main quality of the film is one of swirling motion. Streets, houses, neon signs, and country landscapes are constantly whizzing by in blurred succession. The camera only once focuses on the runner directly--in his last escape from a Correction Institution--otherwise, the viewer is absorbed in this kaleidoscopic world of the breathless fugitive...
...Truffaut's directorial talent is most expressive in the frequent silent sequences. The camera captures the alternating anxiety and joy of the hero through his wordless activity--whether bounding eagerly up a flight of stairs or tearfully staring through the bars of a paddy-wagon. These effects are heightened by the perceptive photography of Henri Decae and the delightful score of Jean Constantin...
...Parisian equivalent of Schwab's Drugstore in Hollywood, a place where young hopefuls loiter. In the late '50s, every young French director who had directed nothing wrote for Cahiers. One by one, they emerged - Claude Chabrol with The Cousins, François Truffaut with The 400 Blows. Only Jean-Luc Godard seemed to stay behind, and one day he disappeared with the Cahiers' petty cash. Chabrol and Truffaut wondered if Godard was trying to finance a film. They came to his aid, the money was amicably restored, and more was honorably found. Breathless (A Bout de Souffle...
Also on the program, and by way of contrast, is a lengthy short directed by Francois Truffaut, who was responsible for the extraordinary 400 Blows. Entitled Les Mistons, this film again deals with young children in a most charming manner. A group of young boys, stimulated by a neighborhood girl who has suddenly matured and fallen in love, are awakened to their own latent sexuality. Not knowing quite how to handle these new sensations, the youngsters follow the lovers around, shouting obscenities and generally heckling them...