Soft Skin
Pierre is in a hurry to the airport and almost misses his plane for Lisbon. If he had missed that flight, the events that follow would not have occurred: Truffaut's fourth feature film is study of the delicate balances, or Soft Skin, of life and the important role that circumstances might have in life. The title of the film, The Soft Skin is notable for the multiple images and meanings it suggests. The film's title can refer to Nicole's seductive, soft skin but It can also signify the unstable quality of life.
Pierre Lachenay is a harmless figure, almost a common man. Having achieved certain success in the literary field it seems that he has everything under control. Nicole, apart from her physical appeal, she offers, as a woman, Pierre an opposite angle on life, a non-intellectual and romantic one.
One must note that Truffaut uses this actor to allow us to see him as a common man, that could be anybody. Nicole, for her part, is attracted to Pierre's intellect see likes listening to him, hear him talk and quote, and through the conversation he brings out her own natural intelligence. She brings to him what he does not have and vise-versa.
Quickly Pierre's life self-destructs. He is fully aware of what he is doing and yet there is a clear ambivalence in the acting: he is aware that his wife knows that he is cheating but he still offers Nicole to call her the day after. He does not really want to give up his home life for Nicole and neither does his wife after the incident, yet it seems that the destructive affair cannot cease to continue, an affair that will lead to his own physical destruction.
The Reims sequence is particularly effective in showing that Nicole is not that important to Pierre, and she is even standing in his is business, derailing him from his nature of work by telling him to busy her stockings. The Reims scenes, the breaking up scenes with his wife, and many others, clearly show the film's view of men and women as fundamentally different. Men are intellectual, rational, and cannot express feelings. Women are governed by emotion, and in opposition to the abstract world of men. Franca, like Catherine from Jules and Jim, destroys Pierre, is an idealist she wants to have everything or nothing. The extensive filming of mechanical maneuvers or objects in this film such as at the gas station the camera focuses on the numbers on the pump, and the airplane’s dashboard, the sequences of driving shows the destructive, perhaps unstoppable, irrational power of the eros.
Nicole is beautiful, funny, gracious, and attentional but in the same time inaccessible, like Catherine. She is the ideal woman of Pierre, he treats he as so by photographing her, watching her, and touching her, and making her dress as he wants like in Vertigo. She is not a common mistress since one can note the difference of age, he will call her several times “ma petite fille”, my daughter. This ideal, these photographs will be Pierre’s death sentence, by another woman who also sees her life being destructed. Every character will hurt himself and hurt the person he loves in his turn.
Truffaut in this movie chooses to minimize the dialogues, the neutral tone of Pierre is most noted although the general tone of the movie keeps shifting with the emotions of the women, that can be in two opposites feelings and express them in the same time. Whereas Pierre cannot undo something that had been said “we cannot go backwards like this” says Pierre at the door steps, his face is, almost, always motionless. Yet the camera is very often fast moving, placing successive actions adding much to the nervousness of the plot. And so does the hesitating camera the gives very often Pierre’s point of view, such as the scene in the elevator going up, seeing Nicole leaving, and going down.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Jules and Jim
This is the third movie of Francois Truffaut, after Shoot the Pianist, this is also an adapted movie from a story. After the first "failure" with the Shoot the Pianist, he decides to take the risk and adapt the book of Henri-Pierre Roche.
Throughout the book one can feel through the script, without have reading the book, that the literary aspect has been highly conserved. This was one of the goals that Truffaut, and perhaps, the New Wave wanted to achieve: opting to a different kind of adaptation by respecting the original form of the story though a cinematographic approach. The spectator, without knowing that it is an adaptation, is carried away in a dreamy-like mood, with the help of the off-voice, the collage of voices and images and the music, that one might be in while reading a book, while playing on the aspects of tenderness and coarseness.
To explain the dreamy-like mood mentioned above, one might not that the movie evolves incessantly with an energy that is present throughout the movie, starting from the prologue till the walk out of Jules.
The importance of the off-voice is noted starting from the beginning of the movie describing the two men, showing Jules and Jim together. The off-voice is not used as usually in order to narrate a past or introduce a flash back in order to give simple information; it is omnipresent and plays a role in the placement of the characters and the story itself, with a highly literary expression such as "Round eyes like marbles" among many others. One must note that the importance of the off-voice is not informative but rather to give a tone carried throughout the movie
Therefore the importance of the relation, as we have seen in the Shoot the Pianist and later on with his other movie, between literature and cinema.
Catherine is before all an image of perfection projected a statue and work of art. Before meeting the incarnation of the picture and the statue Truffaut, awaits the spectator perhaps to give a sensation of a dream, fantasy, and admiration that is common is Truffaut's movies. Catherine in this perspective belongs to a different category of women, it is suggested that she is divine.
Like Catherine, the statue and the lady that does not talk at the bar, are mysteries that do not talk or that surprises every time: making the face the important element in the filming. When Catherine appears, her face, like in the filming of the statue, decomposed by a circular movement which contributes to the dreaminess and to the shifting into another dimension. She goes out of realism; she becomes again an image, in order to enter perhaps into this enigma.
We are in the same time, in the present and the past; that is given by the off-voice and the in-voice giving birth to an ambiguous time frame, giving the dynamicity, the energy of the movie. The narration of the first world war using archives pictures, mixing different types of pictures, documentary and fiction. But Truffaut gets this tonality through the autonomy of the camera that goes in a circular motion, like in the game around the table.
Like, later in his movies, Truffaut uses the medium of writing and reading letters to tell love stories between his characters that are so distant from each other, this is an movie in many it parts.
Jules and Jim is built on constant oppositions: past and present, image and reality. Intimacy and public sphere, joy and death. Perhaps to make the movie constantly in relation with the public and grasp their attention, and so creating a sort of common ground.
This is the third movie of Francois Truffaut, after Shoot the Pianist, this is also an adapted movie from a story. After the first "failure" with the Shoot the Pianist, he decides to take the risk and adapt the book of Henri-Pierre Roche.
Throughout the book one can feel through the script, without have reading the book, that the literary aspect has been highly conserved. This was one of the goals that Truffaut, and perhaps, the New Wave wanted to achieve: opting to a different kind of adaptation by respecting the original form of the story though a cinematographic approach. The spectator, without knowing that it is an adaptation, is carried away in a dreamy-like mood, with the help of the off-voice, the collage of voices and images and the music, that one might be in while reading a book, while playing on the aspects of tenderness and coarseness.
To explain the dreamy-like mood mentioned above, one might not that the movie evolves incessantly with an energy that is present throughout the movie, starting from the prologue till the walk out of Jules.
The importance of the off-voice is noted starting from the beginning of the movie describing the two men, showing Jules and Jim together. The off-voice is not used as usually in order to narrate a past or introduce a flash back in order to give simple information; it is omnipresent and plays a role in the placement of the characters and the story itself, with a highly literary expression such as "Round eyes like marbles" among many others. One must note that the importance of the off-voice is not informative but rather to give a tone carried throughout the movie
Therefore the importance of the relation, as we have seen in the Shoot the Pianist and later on with his other movie, between literature and cinema.
Catherine is before all an image of perfection projected a statue and work of art. Before meeting the incarnation of the picture and the statue Truffaut, awaits the spectator perhaps to give a sensation of a dream, fantasy, and admiration that is common is Truffaut's movies. Catherine in this perspective belongs to a different category of women, it is suggested that she is divine.
Like Catherine, the statue and the lady that does not talk at the bar, are mysteries that do not talk or that surprises every time: making the face the important element in the filming. When Catherine appears, her face, like in the filming of the statue, decomposed by a circular movement which contributes to the dreaminess and to the shifting into another dimension. She goes out of realism; she becomes again an image, in order to enter perhaps into this enigma.
We are in the same time, in the present and the past; that is given by the off-voice and the in-voice giving birth to an ambiguous time frame, giving the dynamicity, the energy of the movie. The narration of the first world war using archives pictures, mixing different types of pictures, documentary and fiction. But Truffaut gets this tonality through the autonomy of the camera that goes in a circular motion, like in the game around the table.
Like, later in his movies, Truffaut uses the medium of writing and reading letters to tell love stories between his characters that are so distant from each other, this is an movie in many it parts.
Jules and Jim is built on constant oppositions: past and present, image and reality. Intimacy and public sphere, joy and death. Perhaps to make the movie constantly in relation with the public and grasp their attention, and so creating a sort of common ground.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Love on the Run
This is the recapitulation, the prolongation and the ending of the Antoine Doinel cycle through the probable transition to adulthood. The transition from reality to the literary fiction, starting from the first game words "vais" and "vêts"; laying down the first important issue of "staying" and "leaving", it is a movie that has a double opening, the second time when Antoine open the curtains.
"A work of art can't be a settling of old scores; if it is, the it's not a work of art." The flashback from the precedent movie expresses Truffaut's sentiments and objectives of reconciliation. And through Lucien's "the faults were not entirely theirs" Antoine's incessant run and search of the motherly love can stop; he recognizes her love and the "strange way of showing it".
The "settling" is omnipresent, starting from the beginning with Doinel's Les Salades de l'Amour, interrupting once again the opening of the movie, summarizing the nineteen volumes, seems to underline the importance of this number, and auto-portraying himself in the same time: "Herein lies proof of the poor guy's trouble with women" and his mother's love. Criticizing himself in summarizing gradually with the flashbacks proving again that "the faults were not entirely theirs".
The theme of childhood and reconciliation is also shown through Colette and the Draguignan law-case where she has to defend a man that killed his son, and the fact that she chooses to defend him in spite of the death of her own child, an element that expresses the theme of forgiveness.
In the past Doinel is considered to be self-centered and "egoist", as Colette calls him and Christine before her. The past movies were all about him; here through Colette's narrative the spectator is driven away from Doinel to her own life; although one can recognize in the Draguignan law-case, the similarities between Charles and Antoine: in their marital life; between the murderer and Antoine: the killing of persons (the kid and the consideration of killing the protagonist). The similarities in the speech with Xavier especially when he declares: "I never sell books with the word "Love" in the title".
On must also not the importance of the theme of death, in Colette's law-case and her child as we have seen above. But also in the case of the kid in the train, that is saved at the last moment. And even with the murderer in the cinema, in the movie. One can draw two parallels with Doinel's protagonist, and Truffaut's Doinel; commonly, the three kids that had lack of attention of their parents.
Literature transforms his "true" experiences, like with Balzac in the 400 Blows, Antoine rewrites and reassembles, like in the torn pieces of the picture, his life in short stories in juxtaposed and unordered flashbacks until the last disturbance of the fast moving camera of the last scene, mixed with the 400 Blows. Insisting on the common ground like the handkerchief; or the fact that Sabine kisses him in the cinema while a boxing match is projected, in opposition to the other scene with Christine. Ruptures become reconciliation, like his mother's lover and him in front of her tomb in opposition to the first time Antoine has seen them together. This movie is summarizing, puzzling and suggests a positive "fuite" rather than a closed clear ending, because as they says it themselves in front of the mirror, "we can't be certain it will last".
This is the recapitulation, the prolongation and the ending of the Antoine Doinel cycle through the probable transition to adulthood. The transition from reality to the literary fiction, starting from the first game words "vais" and "vêts"; laying down the first important issue of "staying" and "leaving", it is a movie that has a double opening, the second time when Antoine open the curtains.
"A work of art can't be a settling of old scores; if it is, the it's not a work of art." The flashback from the precedent movie expresses Truffaut's sentiments and objectives of reconciliation. And through Lucien's "the faults were not entirely theirs" Antoine's incessant run and search of the motherly love can stop; he recognizes her love and the "strange way of showing it".
The "settling" is omnipresent, starting from the beginning with Doinel's Les Salades de l'Amour, interrupting once again the opening of the movie, summarizing the nineteen volumes, seems to underline the importance of this number, and auto-portraying himself in the same time: "Herein lies proof of the poor guy's trouble with women" and his mother's love. Criticizing himself in summarizing gradually with the flashbacks proving again that "the faults were not entirely theirs".
The theme of childhood and reconciliation is also shown through Colette and the Draguignan law-case where she has to defend a man that killed his son, and the fact that she chooses to defend him in spite of the death of her own child, an element that expresses the theme of forgiveness.
In the past Doinel is considered to be self-centered and "egoist", as Colette calls him and Christine before her. The past movies were all about him; here through Colette's narrative the spectator is driven away from Doinel to her own life; although one can recognize in the Draguignan law-case, the similarities between Charles and Antoine: in their marital life; between the murderer and Antoine: the killing of persons (the kid and the consideration of killing the protagonist). The similarities in the speech with Xavier especially when he declares: "I never sell books with the word "Love" in the title".
On must also not the importance of the theme of death, in Colette's law-case and her child as we have seen above. But also in the case of the kid in the train, that is saved at the last moment. And even with the murderer in the cinema, in the movie. One can draw two parallels with Doinel's protagonist, and Truffaut's Doinel; commonly, the three kids that had lack of attention of their parents.
Literature transforms his "true" experiences, like with Balzac in the 400 Blows, Antoine rewrites and reassembles, like in the torn pieces of the picture, his life in short stories in juxtaposed and unordered flashbacks until the last disturbance of the fast moving camera of the last scene, mixed with the 400 Blows. Insisting on the common ground like the handkerchief; or the fact that Sabine kisses him in the cinema while a boxing match is projected, in opposition to the other scene with Christine. Ruptures become reconciliation, like his mother's lover and him in front of her tomb in opposition to the first time Antoine has seen them together. This movie is summarizing, puzzling and suggests a positive "fuite" rather than a closed clear ending, because as they says it themselves in front of the mirror, "we can't be certain it will last".
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Domicile Conjugal
The scenario depicts the difficulties of communal life of the young couple. The scenes of the daily life, in the apartment and the courtyard, are truculent and tender at once. Domicile Conjugal is full of emotion, simplicity and truth always present is Truffaut’s cinema.
The couple are now married Christine gives violin lessons, and Antoine has a unordinary job: he dyes and sells flowers. Doinel gets a new job where he maneuvers radio-controlled boats around a pond; imaginary jobs that seems to go out of the child in Doinel’s mind. They live in building full of interesting characters, such as the man who never leaves his room; the opera singer who fights with his italian wife, the surrealistic person with the guy that borrows money from him. With it comes the aspect of repetitions and habitude of the characters.
In bed Antoine and Christine are always reading there is no sexuality, they are a typical married couple even before Christine becomes pregnant, worst, after the birth Antoine becomes even more distant. He teases her about her breasts but in a very brotherly way. Sexuality is always seen outside the marriage life, for instance the Doinel contact with the prostitutes is very tender. His declaration in the street sums it: "You are my sister, my daughter, my mother." Christine replies simply, "I'd hoped to be your wife."
He is still restless (literally he cannot sit on the floor while having dinner with Madame Butterfly) even after having his own family he still feels spitefulness towards his mother: “Mother’s Day is an invention created by the Nazis,” he says and that “[he] [likes] parents that are not [his] own”. The Domicile Conjugal is a much safer place if one compares it the 400 Coups, most of the action takes place in the apartment, in the building, or the court inside the building.
The film comic and sad in the same time, Antoine has not fully changed and not achieved fully what he wants, like his quest of the absolute red and there is always one flower that refuses to change color. This aspect of humor and sadness of fully expressed when Christine makes herself look like Madame Butterfly, that is in the same time surprising, comic and dramatic. So as the casual appearance of the filming of the scenes that contributes to this last effect. In the same way the camera creates the effect of the tension, attractiveness, suspicion, or curiosity between the characters. Geography and devices mount the effects mentioned before, like the role of the television, dinner table, the phone cabinet, windows among others, as bonding or separating objects.
It seems that comfort and safety represented but the building and the home, is not a position where Antoine can stay, and as soon as he gets out of this location trouble finds him. And the brothel is the only place where he finds momentary refuge.
The scenario depicts the difficulties of communal life of the young couple. The scenes of the daily life, in the apartment and the courtyard, are truculent and tender at once. Domicile Conjugal is full of emotion, simplicity and truth always present is Truffaut’s cinema.
The couple are now married Christine gives violin lessons, and Antoine has a unordinary job: he dyes and sells flowers. Doinel gets a new job where he maneuvers radio-controlled boats around a pond; imaginary jobs that seems to go out of the child in Doinel’s mind. They live in building full of interesting characters, such as the man who never leaves his room; the opera singer who fights with his italian wife, the surrealistic person with the guy that borrows money from him. With it comes the aspect of repetitions and habitude of the characters.
In bed Antoine and Christine are always reading there is no sexuality, they are a typical married couple even before Christine becomes pregnant, worst, after the birth Antoine becomes even more distant. He teases her about her breasts but in a very brotherly way. Sexuality is always seen outside the marriage life, for instance the Doinel contact with the prostitutes is very tender. His declaration in the street sums it: "You are my sister, my daughter, my mother." Christine replies simply, "I'd hoped to be your wife."
He is still restless (literally he cannot sit on the floor while having dinner with Madame Butterfly) even after having his own family he still feels spitefulness towards his mother: “Mother’s Day is an invention created by the Nazis,” he says and that “[he] [likes] parents that are not [his] own”. The Domicile Conjugal is a much safer place if one compares it the 400 Coups, most of the action takes place in the apartment, in the building, or the court inside the building.
The film comic and sad in the same time, Antoine has not fully changed and not achieved fully what he wants, like his quest of the absolute red and there is always one flower that refuses to change color. This aspect of humor and sadness of fully expressed when Christine makes herself look like Madame Butterfly, that is in the same time surprising, comic and dramatic. So as the casual appearance of the filming of the scenes that contributes to this last effect. In the same way the camera creates the effect of the tension, attractiveness, suspicion, or curiosity between the characters. Geography and devices mount the effects mentioned before, like the role of the television, dinner table, the phone cabinet, windows among others, as bonding or separating objects.
It seems that comfort and safety represented but the building and the home, is not a position where Antoine can stay, and as soon as he gets out of this location trouble finds him. And the brothel is the only place where he finds momentary refuge.
Baisers Volés
In the Stolen Kisses, Antoine Doinel has just left the army, dismissed for behavioral reasons, in love with Christine Darbon,he goes to visit after going the stop at the brothel. He makes various jobs: night-guard in a hotel, he is fired despite his having participated unwillingly in the discovery of adultery by a private detective. This last helps him get a job in the detective agency, the director of the agency entrusted him with a visit to the shoe store of Mr. Tabard, Antoine falls in love with Madame Tabard the femme exceptionnelle; one must note that she is always dressed in white or surrounded by it, and specially the “apparition” in the first time they meet and later, where she is standing by the window and the Eiffel Tour holding the disc. All the women have the common points to be pretty, each one exceptional in her way, symbolizes by their legs, hair and skin and often, like Antoine’s mother, looking in mirror.
Fired once again, Antoine is hired to repair televisions. Christine calls in a false pretext to repair a television she broke herself. One sees the scene where Antoine is fixing the device, to an empty scene, an empty apartment; The camera follows the scattered parts of the television on the ground replaced by Christine’s shoes, to lead us in the parents room where Antoine and Christine are sleeping together. The next morning, desire is replaced by a more socialized love. During breakfast, despite the proximity of the couple, writing, the way of Antoine expression, they exchange in small notes and we understand that Antoine asked her to marry him.
The instability and the provisional are the main themes of this movie where both love and death are present: “occasional love is a way to feel ourselves alive” shifting constantly form fiction to reality and vise-versa, as one can see in his language and the music. Along the movie different kinds of love scroll: the corporal love at the brothel; the social love with Christine; and the spiritual love with Madame Tabard; the rejected love of Mr. Tabard; and abandoned love of Mr. Albani. Every character is immersed in a love triangle. And it shows from the beginning, when Antoine is dismissed from the army until the end when the man who follows Christine, addresses her and calls essentially into question the happiness between her and Antoine.
Like in the previous movies of Antoine Doinel, music, literature, cinema, and specially writing have an important role of in the expression of the protagonist. The music in Stolen Kisses contributes in the definition of the character one can mention again the moment of “apparition” or the moment when the camera leeds us to Antoine and Christine in bed.
This movie is happier that the 400 blows and Antoine and Colette, the comic almost present everywhere even in the most serious dialogues in the investigators office, where the stories of life merge with those of the fantasy, like it is the case of the illusionist. The movie ends with an achievement of Antoine. Stolen Kisses describes a kinds of relationships of persons that are more mature and more complicated, dealing with philosophical questions about the circle of life for instance. Yet has much in common with the simplicity of Antoine and Colette, and keeps closely the importance of the family and adoption.
In the Stolen Kisses, Antoine Doinel has just left the army, dismissed for behavioral reasons, in love with Christine Darbon,he goes to visit after going the stop at the brothel. He makes various jobs: night-guard in a hotel, he is fired despite his having participated unwillingly in the discovery of adultery by a private detective. This last helps him get a job in the detective agency, the director of the agency entrusted him with a visit to the shoe store of Mr. Tabard, Antoine falls in love with Madame Tabard the femme exceptionnelle; one must note that she is always dressed in white or surrounded by it, and specially the “apparition” in the first time they meet and later, where she is standing by the window and the Eiffel Tour holding the disc. All the women have the common points to be pretty, each one exceptional in her way, symbolizes by their legs, hair and skin and often, like Antoine’s mother, looking in mirror.
Fired once again, Antoine is hired to repair televisions. Christine calls in a false pretext to repair a television she broke herself. One sees the scene where Antoine is fixing the device, to an empty scene, an empty apartment; The camera follows the scattered parts of the television on the ground replaced by Christine’s shoes, to lead us in the parents room where Antoine and Christine are sleeping together. The next morning, desire is replaced by a more socialized love. During breakfast, despite the proximity of the couple, writing, the way of Antoine expression, they exchange in small notes and we understand that Antoine asked her to marry him.
The instability and the provisional are the main themes of this movie where both love and death are present: “occasional love is a way to feel ourselves alive” shifting constantly form fiction to reality and vise-versa, as one can see in his language and the music. Along the movie different kinds of love scroll: the corporal love at the brothel; the social love with Christine; and the spiritual love with Madame Tabard; the rejected love of Mr. Tabard; and abandoned love of Mr. Albani. Every character is immersed in a love triangle. And it shows from the beginning, when Antoine is dismissed from the army until the end when the man who follows Christine, addresses her and calls essentially into question the happiness between her and Antoine.
Like in the previous movies of Antoine Doinel, music, literature, cinema, and specially writing have an important role of in the expression of the protagonist. The music in Stolen Kisses contributes in the definition of the character one can mention again the moment of “apparition” or the moment when the camera leeds us to Antoine and Christine in bed.
This movie is happier that the 400 blows and Antoine and Colette, the comic almost present everywhere even in the most serious dialogues in the investigators office, where the stories of life merge with those of the fantasy, like it is the case of the illusionist. The movie ends with an achievement of Antoine. Stolen Kisses describes a kinds of relationships of persons that are more mature and more complicated, dealing with philosophical questions about the circle of life for instance. Yet has much in common with the simplicity of Antoine and Colette, and keeps closely the importance of the family and adoption.
Antoine et Colette
From the beginning of the short film we feel a change of tone. Unlike the 400 Blows, the music and the alarm of the first scene indicate a certain joy of a young man who became responsible.
The cinema, literature and music are the main occupations of Antoine. Antoine and Colette met at a concert; they exchanged books, letters, and went to the cinema, the times he tried to kiss her.
It seems that Truffaut's approach to the film is a love that goes against the usual cliché painted is romantic movie that one can watch in theaters; it is a story that shows a different reality, closer to the reality of life. This love in a way remained to Colette at the stage of simple relation of friendship (which can be observed in language and tone by Colette when he comes to meet her and she refuses to go out with him). Instead of finding love and a girlfriend, he finds a family who quickly adopts.
The theme of the good family is directly in contrast to that of the 400 Blows. The stepfather of Colette is boss of a company, the family is in a good economic situation, the father and mother make a good couple, they are almost together and always smiling; Colette, unlike Antoine, finished her schooling; the stepfather summarized "we have the sun."
Adults are represented differently the first example is that of parents of Colette see before, then we note that the flashback's René's father was restored as a good person because pretended not to have seen Antoine when he was hiding behind the bed.
But He realizes "I've gotten off to a bad start" and René, using a comic tone, content of his relationship with his cousin, shows him her letters and implicitly shows him how a good relationship should be. Again here we have a contrast between the rushed way chosen by Antoine and the patient chosen René: "she cut her hair like a Jean of Arc and I still like her."
The attempt of the kissing scene in the cinema is the time of the fall as it is shown in the screened movie, a way to approach the cinema and the reality. A time chosen Antoine, which does not a romantic approach and ends by failure.
From the beginning of the short film we feel a change of tone. Unlike the 400 Blows, the music and the alarm of the first scene indicate a certain joy of a young man who became responsible.
The cinema, literature and music are the main occupations of Antoine. Antoine and Colette met at a concert; they exchanged books, letters, and went to the cinema, the times he tried to kiss her.
It seems that Truffaut's approach to the film is a love that goes against the usual cliché painted is romantic movie that one can watch in theaters; it is a story that shows a different reality, closer to the reality of life. This love in a way remained to Colette at the stage of simple relation of friendship (which can be observed in language and tone by Colette when he comes to meet her and she refuses to go out with him). Instead of finding love and a girlfriend, he finds a family who quickly adopts.
The theme of the good family is directly in contrast to that of the 400 Blows. The stepfather of Colette is boss of a company, the family is in a good economic situation, the father and mother make a good couple, they are almost together and always smiling; Colette, unlike Antoine, finished her schooling; the stepfather summarized "we have the sun."
Adults are represented differently the first example is that of parents of Colette see before, then we note that the flashback's René's father was restored as a good person because pretended not to have seen Antoine when he was hiding behind the bed.
But He realizes "I've gotten off to a bad start" and René, using a comic tone, content of his relationship with his cousin, shows him her letters and implicitly shows him how a good relationship should be. Again here we have a contrast between the rushed way chosen by Antoine and the patient chosen René: "she cut her hair like a Jean of Arc and I still like her."
The attempt of the kissing scene in the cinema is the time of the fall as it is shown in the screened movie, a way to approach the cinema and the reality. A time chosen Antoine, which does not a romantic approach and ends by failure.
The 400 blows
François Truffaut
When one watches the 400 Blows for the first time one cannot recognize a clear plot or think to where the succession of actions is heading. The pace of the movie is slow, with many scenes that seem irrelevant to the plot, such as the image of the mother looking at herself in the mirror, or the two women talking in the street.
The main character, Antoine Doinel, is surrounded by problems: he experiences difficulties at school, starting from the first scene where he gets introduced by the punishment. The moment he gets home he start doing his deeds whether it is putting coal in the fireplace, preparing the table for dinner or preparing the punishment that the teacher assigned to him. During all this time he is alone at home; the moment his mother enters she acts cold and barely answers his salutes, few moments later she mentions unfairly his bad grades. In the first minutes of the movie her sentences are composes of orders and criticism.
In the middle of the movie after several mischief the relation with his parents seem to get better and better specially with his mother who tries to win him back, showing her love and tires to encourage him to improve his grades by offering him money. Through to movie, money, love (in its different forms), and friendship have an important role. The world both of the adults and the kids seem to turn around money and sexuality. But one must take into account the friendship of his friend René that is always with him even during his mischief, gives him a shelter, and comes to visit him in the detention center.
It is shown and mentioned several times the importance of cinema for Doinel; he passes by the cinema, he watches movies and a puppet show, he goes with his parents to the cinema, his mother mentions to the judge the he likes to watch movies above everything; nothing seem to interest him but cinema and, at a moment, literature.
All the adults in the movie represent authority seeking authority; the parents, the teachers, the officers, the guards in the detention center and even the priest they go by on the stairs. The adults seem to form a group on one hand and the children on the other.
The moment after they have been expelled, although it was originally for a good intention and misinterpreted by the teacher; they talk, rather on an adult ton, about their future and there is mentioned the sea. Which after the escape from the detention the sea symbolizes liberation, escape, and limits. Limits because the moment he reaches the water he stops and the camera zooms and freezes on his face.
François Truffaut
When one watches the 400 Blows for the first time one cannot recognize a clear plot or think to where the succession of actions is heading. The pace of the movie is slow, with many scenes that seem irrelevant to the plot, such as the image of the mother looking at herself in the mirror, or the two women talking in the street.
The main character, Antoine Doinel, is surrounded by problems: he experiences difficulties at school, starting from the first scene where he gets introduced by the punishment. The moment he gets home he start doing his deeds whether it is putting coal in the fireplace, preparing the table for dinner or preparing the punishment that the teacher assigned to him. During all this time he is alone at home; the moment his mother enters she acts cold and barely answers his salutes, few moments later she mentions unfairly his bad grades. In the first minutes of the movie her sentences are composes of orders and criticism.
In the middle of the movie after several mischief the relation with his parents seem to get better and better specially with his mother who tries to win him back, showing her love and tires to encourage him to improve his grades by offering him money. Through to movie, money, love (in its different forms), and friendship have an important role. The world both of the adults and the kids seem to turn around money and sexuality. But one must take into account the friendship of his friend René that is always with him even during his mischief, gives him a shelter, and comes to visit him in the detention center.
It is shown and mentioned several times the importance of cinema for Doinel; he passes by the cinema, he watches movies and a puppet show, he goes with his parents to the cinema, his mother mentions to the judge the he likes to watch movies above everything; nothing seem to interest him but cinema and, at a moment, literature.
All the adults in the movie represent authority seeking authority; the parents, the teachers, the officers, the guards in the detention center and even the priest they go by on the stairs. The adults seem to form a group on one hand and the children on the other.
The moment after they have been expelled, although it was originally for a good intention and misinterpreted by the teacher; they talk, rather on an adult ton, about their future and there is mentioned the sea. Which after the escape from the detention the sea symbolizes liberation, escape, and limits. Limits because the moment he reaches the water he stops and the camera zooms and freezes on his face.
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