Film Diary: Les Quatre Cent Coups (François Truffaut, 1959)

[enitharmon]

It's a funny thing - just when I was thinking about how the bully comes to be a bully, I slip into my DVD player this wonderfully poignant story of Parisian schoolboy Antoine Doinel, slipping from high-spirited mischief to a life of petty crime. Antoine has no malice in him. His mother is having an affair, his stepfather is cold, his teacher is out of control of his class. In other words, he's a fairly typical Parisian schoolboy, and yet he's frustrated and lonely, and he's the one who always seems to get caught. Even when he's not doing anything she shouldn't be. Eventually he's committed to an institution for delinquents for stealing a typewriter. Actually, he's caught trying to return the typerwriter to its rightful owner having been unable to fence it. That sums up Antoine's life. Towards the end, a psychiatrist asks him if he tells lies. "Sometimes," he replies. "But people think I'm lying even when I'm telling the truth. And I prefer lying."

And there, but for the grace of god, go you and I.

And that's it. No car chases, no gratuitous sex, no pretty people, no special effects, no stirring soundrack. It works, too. We're rooting for Antoine, and at the last when he escapes from the institution, runs to the sea, and turns to look us right in the face, it leaves an indelible vision of the indomitable human spirit.

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Two weeks ago I neglected to journal The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962). An excellent, if rather far-fetched, Cold War thriller which really didn't deserved the recent remake. Angela Lansbury was amazingly chilling!

Comments

[romen-dreamer.livejournal.com]

There may not be any car chases, but if I'm remembering the correct film, therew *was* a scene with all the boys jogging through the town after their (schoolmaster? jailer? I'm not sure) and breaking off in twos and threes to pursue more interesting ventures. That was better-done than many a car chase or sex scene in most films.