1 00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:02,480 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,480 --> 00:00:04,010 Commons license. 3 00:00:04,010 --> 00:00:06,340 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 4 00:00:06,340 --> 00:00:10,690 continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,690 --> 00:00:13,320 To make a donation or view additional materials 6 00:00:13,320 --> 00:00:17,035 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:17,035 --> 00:00:17,660 at ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:25,745 --> 00:00:27,370 DAVID THORBURN: There are various kinds 9 00:00:27,370 --> 00:00:32,210 of neorealisms, flavors of neorealism-- an Italian flavor, 10 00:00:32,210 --> 00:00:33,250 a French flavor. 11 00:00:33,250 --> 00:00:35,810 There is a kind of tonal difference 12 00:00:35,810 --> 00:00:37,350 that's worth paying attention to. 13 00:00:37,350 --> 00:00:41,010 And I maybe I can capture it over-simply in two 14 00:00:41,010 --> 00:00:42,500 short clips for you. 15 00:00:42,500 --> 00:00:44,670 So the first clip I want to show you 16 00:00:44,670 --> 00:00:48,950 is from an Italian neorealist film, the last really 17 00:00:48,950 --> 00:00:53,360 powerful fully neorealist film that De Sica himself directed, 18 00:00:53,360 --> 00:00:56,740 a film called Umberto D, made in 1952. 19 00:00:56,740 --> 00:00:57,406 [VIDEO PLAYBACK] 20 00:00:57,406 --> 00:01:02,285 -[SPEAKING ITALIAN] 21 00:01:02,285 --> 00:01:04,285 DAVID THORBURN: And this is our hero, of course. 22 00:01:04,285 --> 00:01:08,650 -[SPEAKING ITALIAN] 23 00:01:08,650 --> 00:01:11,374 - 24 00:01:11,374 --> 00:01:12,790 - 25 00:01:12,790 --> 00:01:16,385 - 26 00:01:16,385 --> 00:01:18,870 - 27 00:01:18,870 --> 00:01:24,834 - 28 00:01:24,834 --> 00:01:29,307 - 29 00:01:29,307 --> 00:01:32,786 [MUSIC PLAYING] 30 00:01:36,770 --> 00:01:39,280 DAVID THORBURN: And compare this-- think about this scene 31 00:01:39,280 --> 00:01:42,860 and then compare t-- to the opening scene of The 400 Blows 32 00:01:42,860 --> 00:01:45,120 and you'll feel a difference in mood, I think. 33 00:01:45,120 --> 00:01:47,390 Even the music is a part of it. 34 00:01:47,390 --> 00:01:49,910 So he's in great despair here, and we in the audience 35 00:01:49,910 --> 00:01:50,610 know that. 36 00:01:50,610 --> 00:01:54,110 [MUSIC PLAYING] 37 00:01:57,265 --> 00:01:59,696 -[SPEAKING ITALIAN] 38 00:01:59,696 --> 00:02:02,975 - 39 00:02:02,975 --> 00:02:04,350 DAVID THORBURN: Random dialogue-- 40 00:02:04,350 --> 00:02:06,080 we don't even know who said that. 41 00:02:06,080 --> 00:02:09,517 [MUSIC PLAYING] 42 00:02:14,920 --> 00:02:17,140 Did you see how Umberto looked at the man who 43 00:02:17,140 --> 00:02:19,120 sat down next to him? 44 00:02:19,120 --> 00:02:21,300 I think the purpose of that close look 45 00:02:21,300 --> 00:02:25,020 was to make the audience look at him too, pay attention to him, 46 00:02:25,020 --> 00:02:26,400 even though he never says a word. 47 00:02:31,840 --> 00:02:33,565 It's possible that these scenes might 48 00:02:33,565 --> 00:02:34,940 make some members of the audience 49 00:02:34,940 --> 00:02:37,190 think that he's thinking about jumping off a building. 50 00:02:40,240 --> 00:02:42,250 All right, freeze it, James. 51 00:02:42,250 --> 00:02:43,600 Back it up two seconds. 52 00:02:43,600 --> 00:02:46,100 This is the last moment in the scene that I want you to see. 53 00:02:46,100 --> 00:02:47,570 Look what happened here. 54 00:02:47,570 --> 00:02:48,822 Why are you smiling? 55 00:02:48,822 --> 00:02:49,950 AUDIENCE: It's because he was facing-- 56 00:02:49,950 --> 00:02:51,355 DAVID THORBURN: Speak up so everyone can hear. 57 00:02:51,355 --> 00:02:52,854 AUDIENCE: It's because he was facing 58 00:02:52,854 --> 00:02:54,430 towards the middle of the bus. 59 00:02:54,430 --> 00:02:56,197 And then, Umberto, he got up-- 60 00:02:56,197 --> 00:02:56,780 [END PLAYBACK] 61 00:02:56,780 --> 00:02:58,190 --and he turned right forward. 62 00:02:58,190 --> 00:02:59,415 DAVID THORBURN: Yes, as if he had more space. 63 00:02:59,415 --> 00:02:59,690 AUDIENCE: Yes. 64 00:02:59,690 --> 00:03:00,570 DAVID THORBURN: But then what else? 65 00:03:00,570 --> 00:03:01,580 What about the gesture? 66 00:03:01,580 --> 00:03:02,950 What do we feel about this man? 67 00:03:02,950 --> 00:03:04,080 Never says a word. 68 00:03:04,080 --> 00:03:06,360 Sits down next to him Umberto. 69 00:03:06,360 --> 00:03:08,970 When he goes like this, what do we feel about him? 70 00:03:08,970 --> 00:03:11,630 He has some horrible story too. 71 00:03:11,630 --> 00:03:17,650 He maybe is in much despair as Umberto. 72 00:03:17,650 --> 00:03:19,260 The point, of course, is remember 73 00:03:19,260 --> 00:03:23,680 I talked quite a bit in earlier lectures 74 00:03:23,680 --> 00:03:25,190 about what I called the retarding 75 00:03:25,190 --> 00:03:28,880 impulse in certain neorealist films 76 00:03:28,880 --> 00:03:33,190 and also in certain films of Renoir-- the extent to which 77 00:03:33,190 --> 00:03:36,920 what suddenly happens, as the camera is looking at the world, 78 00:03:36,920 --> 00:03:40,530 it finds a locus of interest that may 79 00:03:40,530 --> 00:03:42,640 be distracting in some sense. 80 00:03:42,640 --> 00:03:44,840 Now it doesn't truly distract in the sense 81 00:03:44,840 --> 00:03:48,030 that it takes you off completely on a digressive course. 82 00:03:48,030 --> 00:03:52,090 But what it reminds you of is the complexity of the world. 83 00:03:52,090 --> 00:03:55,190 What it reminds you of-- this particular scene 84 00:03:55,190 --> 00:03:58,530 especially-- is there's plenty of despair to go around. 85 00:03:58,530 --> 00:04:01,490 What it reminds you of is that the story that has not 86 00:04:01,490 --> 00:04:05,080 been told about this man-- this silent, suffering, 87 00:04:05,080 --> 00:04:08,600 working man who sat down next to old Umberto-- probably 88 00:04:08,600 --> 00:04:11,570 has a story, just as poignant, just as terrible 89 00:04:11,570 --> 00:04:13,637 as Umberto himself. 90 00:04:13,637 --> 00:04:15,220 And it's one of the ways that the film 91 00:04:15,220 --> 00:04:18,140 has of enlarging the implications 92 00:04:18,140 --> 00:04:21,320 of the individuated story that it tells. 93 00:04:21,320 --> 00:04:25,380 But the most significant thing about this moment-- 94 00:04:25,380 --> 00:04:29,490 so it's a moment in which the camera doesn't actually swerve, 95 00:04:29,490 --> 00:04:34,020 but even though our hero, the protagonist, moves off the bus, 96 00:04:34,020 --> 00:04:37,550 the camera stays briefly on that man with the hat. 97 00:04:37,550 --> 00:04:40,980 Can we watch it-- just the very end, James-- one more time, 98 00:04:40,980 --> 00:04:42,366 just to get another look at it? 99 00:04:42,366 --> 00:04:51,880 [VIDEO PLAYBACK] 100 00:04:51,880 --> 00:04:53,610 See, that's a gesture of, what, despair? 101 00:04:53,610 --> 00:04:54,193 [END PLAYBACK] 102 00:04:54,193 --> 00:04:55,100 Misery? 103 00:04:55,100 --> 00:04:55,990 Sadness? 104 00:04:55,990 --> 00:04:57,410 Sorrow? 105 00:04:57,410 --> 00:05:00,930 Reflection over what terrible things are about to happen? 106 00:05:00,930 --> 00:05:04,050 And the idea that that story has not been told 107 00:05:04,050 --> 00:05:06,870 is as significant for our understanding of the film 108 00:05:06,870 --> 00:05:08,320 as the story that is told. 109 00:05:11,770 --> 00:05:13,720 So there's a similar-- I don't want 110 00:05:13,720 --> 00:05:16,440 to call it a digressive impulse, but let's call it 111 00:05:16,440 --> 00:05:19,680 an impulse toward noticing what is not 112 00:05:19,680 --> 00:05:20,825 at the center of the story. 113 00:05:24,040 --> 00:05:26,620 We might call it an impulse toward a partial kind 114 00:05:26,620 --> 00:05:31,920 of abstraction, an attentiveness to the world that is always 115 00:05:31,920 --> 00:05:36,680 threatened or challenged by new options 116 00:05:36,680 --> 00:05:38,260 that it might want to look at. 117 00:05:38,260 --> 00:05:43,690 And not all of these impulses lead to misery or despair, 118 00:05:43,690 --> 00:05:46,010 even in the neorealist tradition. 119 00:05:46,010 --> 00:05:47,750 But the point I want to make is that I 120 00:05:47,750 --> 00:05:52,990 think the neorealist tradition lays more emphasis 121 00:05:52,990 --> 00:05:54,310 on social problems. 122 00:05:54,310 --> 00:06:01,410 Its stories are often parables of impoverishment or parables 123 00:06:01,410 --> 00:06:03,400 about disempowerment. 124 00:06:03,400 --> 00:06:07,080 Now the film you're going to see tonight, The 400 Blows, 125 00:06:07,080 --> 00:06:09,650 could in many ways be said to fit that description. 126 00:06:09,650 --> 00:06:14,760 But there's a lightness, a lyricism in it, 127 00:06:14,760 --> 00:06:20,630 that doesn't sustain the heavy mood, the mood of disturbance, 128 00:06:20,630 --> 00:06:30,020 the mood of-- if not tragedy-- of misery, or at least 129 00:06:30,020 --> 00:06:33,340 of very alert social awareness that 130 00:06:33,340 --> 00:06:35,159 permeates neorealist films. 131 00:06:35,159 --> 00:06:37,700 So here's a moment from the film you're going to see tonight. 132 00:06:37,700 --> 00:06:39,840 But it's a very distracting moment. 133 00:06:39,840 --> 00:06:42,850 You won't forget it, when you see it. 134 00:06:42,850 --> 00:06:45,626 And I'm doing a little harm to your experience of the film 135 00:06:45,626 --> 00:06:47,500 by calling your attention to it, because it's 136 00:06:47,500 --> 00:06:50,960 such a strange moment in the film. 137 00:06:50,960 --> 00:06:55,270 The hero is one of these two boys, the boy on the left. 138 00:06:55,270 --> 00:06:59,090 And the guy on the right-- if you're 139 00:06:59,090 --> 00:07:02,840 facing the film-- to your left is the hero, the protagonist. 140 00:07:02,840 --> 00:07:04,810 And the boy on the right is his best friend. 141 00:07:04,810 --> 00:07:07,560 The girl in the middle is a sister. 142 00:07:07,560 --> 00:07:09,860 And they're accompanying this girl-- this 143 00:07:09,860 --> 00:07:12,977 is in the middle of the film. 144 00:07:12,977 --> 00:07:15,310 We're not even told where they're going when it happens, 145 00:07:15,310 --> 00:07:18,050 but they're going to the park to watch a puppet show. 146 00:07:18,050 --> 00:07:21,840 And watch what happens. 147 00:07:21,840 --> 00:07:23,720 We're in the middle of the film. 148 00:07:23,720 --> 00:07:25,370 We already know a lot about the boys. 149 00:07:25,370 --> 00:07:28,966 The boys have played hooky, neither of them 150 00:07:28,966 --> 00:07:30,591 get along very well with their parents. 151 00:07:33,210 --> 00:07:33,876 [VIDEO PLAYBACK] 152 00:07:33,876 --> 00:07:37,117 [MUSIC PLAYING] 153 00:07:48,320 --> 00:07:54,316 -[SPEAKING FRENCH] 154 00:07:54,316 --> 00:07:57,802 [YELLING] 155 00:08:27,040 --> 00:08:27,540 - 156 00:08:27,540 --> 00:08:29,010 - 157 00:08:29,010 --> 00:08:30,480 - 158 00:08:31,950 --> 00:08:34,400 - 159 00:08:34,400 --> 00:08:35,325 - 160 00:08:35,325 --> 00:08:36,700 DAVID THORBURN: Freeze it second. 161 00:08:36,700 --> 00:08:40,860 They're talking about stealing a typewriter to get money, right. 162 00:08:40,860 --> 00:08:43,210 So all right, continue. 163 00:08:43,210 --> 00:08:45,710 -[SPEAKING FRENCH] 164 00:08:45,710 --> 00:08:49,085 [YELLING] 165 00:08:55,699 --> 00:09:02,702 - 166 00:09:02,702 --> 00:09:06,160 [YELLING] 167 00:09:11,594 --> 00:09:24,438 - 168 00:09:24,438 --> 00:09:26,414 - 169 00:09:26,414 --> 00:09:28,390 - 170 00:09:28,390 --> 00:09:33,824 - 171 00:09:33,824 --> 00:09:38,527 - 172 00:09:38,527 --> 00:09:39,110 [END PLAYBACK] 173 00:09:39,110 --> 00:09:40,693 DAVID THORBURN: One thing I should say 174 00:09:40,693 --> 00:09:45,760 immediately is that it is that this scene alone would give you 175 00:09:45,760 --> 00:09:47,670 a very false sense of the film, if this was 176 00:09:47,670 --> 00:09:49,630 all you ever saw of the film. 177 00:09:49,630 --> 00:09:52,130 And the fact is it comes as a tremendous shock 178 00:09:52,130 --> 00:09:53,680 when you're watching it. 179 00:09:53,680 --> 00:09:55,596 Although you enjoy it when you're watching it, 180 00:09:55,596 --> 00:09:59,070 you're wondering, why has Truffaut 181 00:09:59,070 --> 00:10:01,110 spent so much time on these faces, 182 00:10:01,110 --> 00:10:02,410 so much time on these children? 183 00:10:02,410 --> 00:10:04,310 We never go back to such a scene. 184 00:10:04,310 --> 00:10:06,320 None of the little children's faces 185 00:10:06,320 --> 00:10:09,500 that we see there do we ever see again in the film. 186 00:10:09,500 --> 00:10:11,000 Something happens to the movie here. 187 00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:12,646 It's almost as if it gets sidetracked. 188 00:10:12,646 --> 00:10:17,590 It's interested in the boy and in his friend. 189 00:10:17,590 --> 00:10:22,860 And when we're watching this scene, 190 00:10:22,860 --> 00:10:25,460 it certainly occurs to us in the film, my goodness, 191 00:10:25,460 --> 00:10:28,430 the scene might be useful, but why has it gone on so long. 192 00:10:28,430 --> 00:10:33,210 And I think the simple answer is that Truffaut, the camera, 193 00:10:33,210 --> 00:10:36,210 became preoccupied by the astonishing variety 194 00:10:36,210 --> 00:10:40,570 and vivid individuating complexity of those children's 195 00:10:40,570 --> 00:10:46,780 faces, that the drama of that became 196 00:10:46,780 --> 00:10:51,160 so interesting to the camera, to the filmmaker, 197 00:10:51,160 --> 00:10:53,290 that he couldn't quite desert it without giving it 198 00:10:53,290 --> 00:10:55,680 its just due, even though from a narrative 199 00:10:55,680 --> 00:10:59,810 standpoint it doesn't really advance the story very well. 200 00:10:59,810 --> 00:11:01,940 But that moment, when we do cut back 201 00:11:01,940 --> 00:11:04,120 to the two older boys sitting in the back, 202 00:11:04,120 --> 00:11:05,850 talking about stealing something, 203 00:11:05,850 --> 00:11:07,340 does justify this scene. 204 00:11:07,340 --> 00:11:08,300 Why? 205 00:11:08,300 --> 00:11:10,260 What does it show? 206 00:11:10,260 --> 00:11:12,340 That they're separated from innocence. 207 00:11:12,340 --> 00:11:14,460 That they're too old for this. 208 00:11:14,460 --> 00:11:17,120 They're sitting there, everybody else in the audience 209 00:11:17,120 --> 00:11:18,750 is absolutely rapt. 210 00:11:18,750 --> 00:11:20,210 Now they're a little younger. 211 00:11:20,210 --> 00:11:22,980 The implication is these boys can't participate 212 00:11:22,980 --> 00:11:26,080 in the joy of innocence any longer, that they're already 213 00:11:26,080 --> 00:11:28,740 too old for it in some sense, and almost 214 00:11:28,740 --> 00:11:34,210 because of their own behavior, the choices they've made. 215 00:11:34,210 --> 00:11:38,490 So the scene does further a central element in the film, 216 00:11:38,490 --> 00:11:42,420 clarifying our sense that especially the protagonist 217 00:11:42,420 --> 00:11:45,350 of the film is being wrenched too quickly out of childhood, 218 00:11:45,350 --> 00:11:50,270 is being forced out of childlike circumstances 219 00:11:50,270 --> 00:11:54,930 into circumstances that no child should 220 00:11:54,930 --> 00:11:58,710 have to should have to face. 221 00:11:58,710 --> 00:12:01,380 So it does in some sense dramatize that. 222 00:12:01,380 --> 00:12:04,240 But it dramatizes that in a very imperfect way 223 00:12:04,240 --> 00:12:06,160 if that were its primary purpose. 224 00:12:06,160 --> 00:12:09,540 And what we have to say is, no, that's not its only purpose. 225 00:12:09,540 --> 00:12:13,260 The film is stopping here and watching 226 00:12:13,260 --> 00:12:16,130 this joy in these children for the same reason 227 00:12:16,130 --> 00:12:19,400 that Jean Renoir stopped to watch 228 00:12:19,400 --> 00:12:22,440 Boudu do his tricks in the water-- 229 00:12:22,440 --> 00:12:24,400 not because it was furthering any plot, 230 00:12:24,400 --> 00:12:27,230 but because the spectacle of Boudu's pleasure 231 00:12:27,230 --> 00:12:31,970 became what was interesting that the film, to the filmmaker, 232 00:12:31,970 --> 00:12:33,050 and to the camera. 233 00:12:33,050 --> 00:12:36,910 And so one way to understand the difference between these forms 234 00:12:36,910 --> 00:12:40,890 of new realism, these kinds of neorealism-- the Italian 235 00:12:40,890 --> 00:12:42,900 and the French-- is to say that the French is 236 00:12:42,900 --> 00:12:46,970 more open to this lyrical joy, that there's a lighter tone, 237 00:12:46,970 --> 00:12:54,370 that the social and political dimensions of the story 238 00:12:54,370 --> 00:12:58,020 are not obliterated in Nouvelle Vague films. 239 00:12:58,020 --> 00:13:01,930 But they play a lesser role, they're less central. 240 00:13:01,930 --> 00:13:04,720 There is no programmatic social message 241 00:13:04,720 --> 00:13:07,020 in most of the Nouvelle Vague films, 242 00:13:07,020 --> 00:13:09,930 even though there is by implication-- 243 00:13:09,930 --> 00:13:14,590 as you'll see in The 400 Blows-- certainly a powerful critique 244 00:13:14,590 --> 00:13:19,390 of adult society and the ways in which disempowered creatures 245 00:13:19,390 --> 00:13:23,600 like children are treated in modern society. 246 00:13:23,600 --> 00:13:26,070 And that theme is there, it's at the center of it, 247 00:13:26,070 --> 00:13:29,660 and there's no question that it's significant. 248 00:13:29,660 --> 00:13:34,690 But it is surrounded by other complicating attitudes 249 00:13:34,690 --> 00:13:41,480 and things that make the version of new realism 250 00:13:41,480 --> 00:13:45,990 that the French develop in the decade beginning 251 00:13:45,990 --> 00:13:53,560 around 1959 different in tone from its origins. 252 00:13:53,560 --> 00:13:56,590 Well, let me very quickly say a little bit about the origins 253 00:13:56,590 --> 00:13:57,630 of the Nouvelle Vague. 254 00:13:57,630 --> 00:13:58,820 You're prepared for this. 255 00:13:58,820 --> 00:14:02,800 And if I showed you this film without any background, 256 00:14:02,800 --> 00:14:04,437 and I said, where does this come from, 257 00:14:04,437 --> 00:14:06,020 my hope is that most of you would say, 258 00:14:06,020 --> 00:14:10,170 oh, I can see Italian neorealist elements here, 259 00:14:10,170 --> 00:14:12,940 I can see Renoirish elements here. 260 00:14:16,600 --> 00:14:19,580 A really acute and perceptive student 261 00:14:19,580 --> 00:14:24,060 might even see that this line goes back to Chaplin. 262 00:14:24,060 --> 00:14:28,620 And Chaplin's films are committed 263 00:14:28,620 --> 00:14:31,580 to forms of realistic representation 264 00:14:31,580 --> 00:14:35,950 that is in a line, I think, with these later, more complex 265 00:14:35,950 --> 00:14:40,600 films, more visually complex films. 266 00:14:40,600 --> 00:14:44,810 And in fact, there's an allusion to Chaplin in tonight's film. 267 00:14:44,810 --> 00:14:46,070 I hope you'll watch for it. 268 00:14:46,070 --> 00:14:49,420 One of the teachers actually plays a Chaplin-like role 269 00:14:49,420 --> 00:14:50,599 at a certain point. 270 00:14:50,599 --> 00:14:52,140 And there's no question that the film 271 00:14:52,140 --> 00:14:55,950 intends to invoke the joy and pleasure of the Chaplin 272 00:14:55,950 --> 00:14:58,300 character in the memory of its audience 273 00:14:58,300 --> 00:15:02,040 when those allusions occur. 274 00:15:02,040 --> 00:15:05,900 So the origins of the Nouvelle Vague-- first in Jean Vigo 275 00:15:05,900 --> 00:15:09,400 and in French poetic realism, in the practices that 276 00:15:09,400 --> 00:15:13,290 are developed by John Renoir and other directors of the time, 277 00:15:13,290 --> 00:15:20,850 that kind of lyrical, improvisatory open camera 278 00:15:20,850 --> 00:15:23,120 of Renoir, and then the way in which those 279 00:15:23,120 --> 00:15:25,670 are adapted by the Italians, very much 280 00:15:25,670 --> 00:15:29,080 influenced by the French. 281 00:15:29,080 --> 00:15:33,820 So those traditions are at the center of the Nouvelle Vague. 282 00:15:33,820 --> 00:15:37,140 And the primary practitioners of the Nouvelle Vague, 283 00:15:37,140 --> 00:15:43,600 directors like Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, 284 00:15:43,600 --> 00:15:46,130 and Alain Resnais, and Jacques Rivette, 285 00:15:46,130 --> 00:15:49,350 and a number of other directors-- Louis Malle, 286 00:15:49,350 --> 00:15:51,890 a little older, one who would make magnificent films. 287 00:15:51,890 --> 00:15:55,350 It's a wonderful, wonderful group of really significant 288 00:15:55,350 --> 00:15:55,850 directors. 289 00:15:55,850 --> 00:15:59,590 Most of them still alive, but in their dotage now-- even older 290 00:15:59,590 --> 00:16:01,980 than I am, if you can believe that-- 291 00:16:01,980 --> 00:16:07,260 and with magnificent careers behind them, 292 00:16:07,260 --> 00:16:13,970 all starting in this moment of the late '50s when French film 293 00:16:13,970 --> 00:16:16,540 took a new energy from the critical discourses 294 00:16:16,540 --> 00:16:20,560 of the critics who were working for Cahiers du Cinema, which 295 00:16:20,560 --> 00:16:22,630 I'll talk about in a second. 296 00:16:22,630 --> 00:16:27,190 So one central source for the Nouvelle Vague 297 00:16:27,190 --> 00:16:29,160 are these earlier film traditions. 298 00:16:29,160 --> 00:16:34,970 And the directors who made the Nouvelle Vague were quite 299 00:16:34,970 --> 00:16:38,140 self-conscious about this-- many of them 300 00:16:38,140 --> 00:16:41,230 had spent a decade before they became directors writing 301 00:16:41,230 --> 00:16:45,100 for Cahiers du Cinema, the great magazine founded 302 00:16:45,100 --> 00:16:50,260 in 1951 by Andre Bazin, the critic I've talked 303 00:16:50,260 --> 00:16:52,030 about earlier in the course. 304 00:16:52,030 --> 00:16:58,650 And probably Truffaut was the most well-known 305 00:16:58,650 --> 00:17:01,950 of the critics who worked for the magazine. 306 00:17:01,950 --> 00:17:05,270 Truffaut spent at least seven or eight years 307 00:17:05,270 --> 00:17:09,960 working for Cahiers du Cinema before he made his first film. 308 00:17:09,960 --> 00:17:13,030 And in their time working for Cahiers du Cinema, 309 00:17:13,030 --> 00:17:15,890 they actually articulated certain theories 310 00:17:15,890 --> 00:17:16,920 of movie making. 311 00:17:19,530 --> 00:17:23,990 One of the theories that they articulated, 312 00:17:23,990 --> 00:17:26,630 or an aspect of their overriding theory, 313 00:17:26,630 --> 00:17:30,060 was articulated in an article-- a very famous article-- written 314 00:17:30,060 --> 00:17:34,870 by Truffaut himself before he became a director, before he 315 00:17:34,870 --> 00:17:36,390 became an actual director. 316 00:17:36,390 --> 00:17:41,560 And the title translated went something like this-- A Certain 317 00:17:41,560 --> 00:17:43,720 Tendency of French Cinema. 318 00:17:43,720 --> 00:17:48,430 He published this essay in Cahiers du Cinema in 1954. 319 00:17:48,430 --> 00:17:50,860 And it was an attack on what he called 320 00:17:50,860 --> 00:17:53,750 the tradition of quality, in quotes the "tradition 321 00:17:53,750 --> 00:17:56,310 of quality" in French movies. 322 00:17:56,310 --> 00:18:02,320 It attacked contemporary French movies for being stiff, 323 00:18:02,320 --> 00:18:05,430 for being too literary, for being too much 324 00:18:05,430 --> 00:18:07,020 of the establishment. 325 00:18:07,020 --> 00:18:10,780 And the other thing that article, 326 00:18:10,780 --> 00:18:13,360 and many other articles in Cahiers du Cinema did, was they 327 00:18:13,360 --> 00:18:16,250 began to write very favorably about American studio 328 00:18:16,250 --> 00:18:22,270 directors, the directors who worked under the Hollywood 329 00:18:22,270 --> 00:18:25,800 system most effectively, among them especially Hitchcock. 330 00:18:25,800 --> 00:18:28,890 And in fact Truffaut did a series of interviews 331 00:18:28,890 --> 00:18:32,110 with Hitchcock later published as a book, Truffaut 332 00:18:32,110 --> 00:18:34,890 on Hitchcock, or Truffaut/Hitchcock. 333 00:18:34,890 --> 00:18:38,090 I forgot the exact title in English. 334 00:18:38,090 --> 00:18:40,030 It has a different title in French. 335 00:18:40,030 --> 00:18:42,839 It's a very interesting series of interviews. 336 00:18:42,839 --> 00:18:44,630 And those of you who are interested in this 337 00:18:44,630 --> 00:18:45,580 might want to look at it. 338 00:18:45,580 --> 00:18:47,050 Because one of the comical things that 339 00:18:47,050 --> 00:18:49,008 happens in the interviews is you constantly see 340 00:18:49,008 --> 00:18:52,170 Truffaut, who's much more articulate and theoretically 341 00:18:52,170 --> 00:18:56,744 subtle than Hitchcock is-- abstractly, 342 00:18:56,744 --> 00:18:58,660 I don't mean Hitchcock's not a great theorist, 343 00:18:58,660 --> 00:19:02,040 but he's a practicing theorist-- and you constantly 344 00:19:02,040 --> 00:19:03,670 see Truffaut trying to turn Hitchcock 345 00:19:03,670 --> 00:19:05,980 into an intellectual and Hitchcock refusing, Hitchcock 346 00:19:05,980 --> 00:19:08,140 saying, no, no. 347 00:19:08,140 --> 00:19:10,300 It's almost as if Truffaut is disappointed 348 00:19:10,300 --> 00:19:13,560 that Hitchcock can't articulate the theories that Truffaut 349 00:19:13,560 --> 00:19:14,560 wants him to articulate. 350 00:19:14,560 --> 00:19:17,096 So Truffaut is constantly trying to make Hitchcock 351 00:19:17,096 --> 00:19:18,596 into a great director, and Hitchcock 352 00:19:18,596 --> 00:19:22,800 is often in the interview saying, I make genre movies, 353 00:19:22,800 --> 00:19:25,740 leave me alone, I just want to entertain people. 354 00:19:25,740 --> 00:19:26,750 So it's comical. 355 00:19:26,750 --> 00:19:31,180 And in fact I do think that the French inflated-- Truffaut 356 00:19:31,180 --> 00:19:33,430 especially-- inflated Hitchcock's reputation, maybe 357 00:19:33,430 --> 00:19:35,990 even beyond what it actually deserved. 358 00:19:35,990 --> 00:19:39,640 But in any case, it was subversive of the Cahiers du 359 00:19:39,640 --> 00:19:44,410 Cinema critics to write about American directors, studio 360 00:19:44,410 --> 00:19:47,390 directors-- because the American studios 361 00:19:47,390 --> 00:19:52,230 were held to be the essence of commercial popular art, nothing 362 00:19:52,230 --> 00:19:54,460 artistic in it at all. 363 00:19:54,460 --> 00:19:57,670 And in fact it was these French critics 364 00:19:57,670 --> 00:20:00,610 who first began to write about American directors 365 00:20:00,610 --> 00:20:03,980 in a way that showed respect, recognized their complexity. 366 00:20:03,980 --> 00:20:06,600 It's a great irony that the French recognized 367 00:20:06,600 --> 00:20:08,810 the artistic value of American movies 368 00:20:08,810 --> 00:20:10,590 before the Americans did. 369 00:20:10,590 --> 00:20:14,470 And at the very time that the Americans were swooning 370 00:20:14,470 --> 00:20:17,320 over European art cinema, this is the period 371 00:20:17,320 --> 00:20:19,280 when the Nouvelle Vague appears, when 372 00:20:19,280 --> 00:20:23,530 I was in college-- in the late '50s and early '60s. 373 00:20:23,530 --> 00:20:26,770 And it was an extraordinarily exciting time in the United 374 00:20:26,770 --> 00:20:28,580 States for people interested in movies, 375 00:20:28,580 --> 00:20:31,050 not because of the American movies that were being made, 376 00:20:31,050 --> 00:20:33,740 but because there was this astonishing-- what 377 00:20:33,740 --> 00:20:36,400 seemed like an astonishing-- flower of European 378 00:20:36,400 --> 00:20:37,610 and Asian cinema. 379 00:20:37,610 --> 00:20:39,800 It's also the moment of Kurasawa, 380 00:20:39,800 --> 00:20:43,500 as I'll mention next week when we talk about Rashomon, 381 00:20:43,500 --> 00:20:49,010 and Kurosawa's intervention in world cinema occurring earlier 382 00:20:49,010 --> 00:20:53,350 in the 1950s, at the same time as the Italian neorealists. 383 00:20:53,350 --> 00:20:56,890 So it was an incredibly exciting time. 384 00:20:56,890 --> 00:20:59,790 And educated Americans for the first time 385 00:20:59,790 --> 00:21:02,130 began to realize that the movies weren't just 386 00:21:02,130 --> 00:21:05,180 popular entertainment, but were serious works of art. 387 00:21:05,180 --> 00:21:07,641 The irony is they recognized this about European films 388 00:21:07,641 --> 00:21:08,890 but not about their own films. 389 00:21:08,890 --> 00:21:11,120 And it took another generation really 390 00:21:11,120 --> 00:21:14,760 before a serious attention to American movies 391 00:21:14,760 --> 00:21:19,240 was paid by American scholars and American critics. 392 00:21:19,240 --> 00:21:21,760 Interesting irony. 393 00:21:21,760 --> 00:21:25,210 A further articulation of some of 394 00:21:25,210 --> 00:21:29,440 the theoretical underpinnings of the Nouvelle Vague 395 00:21:29,440 --> 00:21:33,360 came from the director and theorist 396 00:21:33,360 --> 00:21:37,790 Alexandre Astruc, born in 1923. 397 00:21:37,790 --> 00:21:40,680 He was good director, admired director. 398 00:21:40,680 --> 00:21:44,090 But he's most well-known as a critic, a theorist. 399 00:21:44,090 --> 00:21:47,190 And his central theory, then elaborated and embraced 400 00:21:47,190 --> 00:21:49,800 by generations later including Bazin 401 00:21:49,800 --> 00:21:53,210 and the writers for Cahiers du Cinema, 402 00:21:53,210 --> 00:21:57,420 was focused on the term camera-stylo, 403 00:21:57,420 --> 00:22:02,140 camera-style, camera hyphen pen, as if what he imagined 404 00:22:02,140 --> 00:22:05,170 was that the camera should be wielded 405 00:22:05,170 --> 00:22:07,400 by the director with the same subtlety 406 00:22:07,400 --> 00:22:09,150 as the writer wields his pen. 407 00:22:09,150 --> 00:22:12,470 And It was an idea that the visual style of a film 408 00:22:12,470 --> 00:22:15,220 could have the suggestiveness and subtlety 409 00:22:15,220 --> 00:22:16,640 of a literary work. 410 00:22:16,640 --> 00:22:19,740 And when Astruc articulated this, 411 00:22:19,740 --> 00:22:21,870 it was rather a revolutionary idea. 412 00:22:21,870 --> 00:22:24,970 And it was elaborated, further picked up. 413 00:22:24,970 --> 00:22:26,820 And the directors of Cahiers du Cinema 414 00:22:26,820 --> 00:22:29,060 were very powerfully in favor of what 415 00:22:29,060 --> 00:22:33,120 came to be called the auteur theory-- author, that's 416 00:22:33,120 --> 00:22:34,260 French for author. 417 00:22:34,260 --> 00:22:35,870 And the auteur theory essentially 418 00:22:35,870 --> 00:22:38,480 is that the director of the film is 419 00:22:38,480 --> 00:22:40,850 an author who leaves his signature 420 00:22:40,850 --> 00:22:42,600 in every frame of the film. 421 00:22:42,600 --> 00:22:45,050 It's a radical over-simplification of course, 422 00:22:45,050 --> 00:22:47,930 because films are such collaborative enterprises. 423 00:22:47,930 --> 00:22:51,280 But it is still nonetheless true that it grants to the director 424 00:22:51,280 --> 00:22:54,220 a kind of respected authority that is certainly 425 00:22:54,220 --> 00:22:56,890 justified in the case of many, many films, 426 00:22:56,890 --> 00:22:59,440 where the director is the dominant and central 427 00:22:59,440 --> 00:23:00,440 creative energy. 428 00:23:00,440 --> 00:23:03,000 And this of course has been especially true in Europe, 429 00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:05,610 and even more especially true in France, 430 00:23:05,610 --> 00:23:08,210 perhaps, than in any other society. 431 00:23:08,210 --> 00:23:15,174 So auteur was a very important underpinning, encouragement 432 00:23:15,174 --> 00:23:16,090 to the Nouvelle Vague. 433 00:23:16,090 --> 00:23:19,120 So when these critics-turned-movie makers 434 00:23:19,120 --> 00:23:21,120 began to make movies, they had already 435 00:23:21,120 --> 00:23:24,190 made theory for why they were doing what they were doing. 436 00:23:24,190 --> 00:23:27,440 They were hostile to certain forms of pretentiousness 437 00:23:27,440 --> 00:23:29,390 in contemporary French films, they 438 00:23:29,390 --> 00:23:33,530 wanted some of the energy and power 439 00:23:33,530 --> 00:23:36,310 to entertain that they associated with the most 440 00:23:36,310 --> 00:23:38,610 gifted American directors, but they also 441 00:23:38,610 --> 00:23:43,000 wanted films that expressed a signature individuality. 442 00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:45,470 They thought films ought to be and were 443 00:23:45,470 --> 00:23:49,000 the expression of the sensibility of their director. 444 00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:52,140 And the film you're going to see tonight certainly 445 00:23:52,140 --> 00:23:54,610 embodies those values. 446 00:23:54,610 --> 00:23:57,550 One way to think about the moment at which the Nouvelle 447 00:23:57,550 --> 00:24:01,490 Vague emerges in both French and in global culture 448 00:24:01,490 --> 00:24:05,040 is to think of the year 1955-60-- I used to say just 449 00:24:05,040 --> 00:24:09,090 '59, but there's some dispute about when Jean-Luc Godard's 450 00:24:09,090 --> 00:24:12,540 film actually first appeared, whether it was 451 00:24:12,540 --> 00:24:15,560 '59 or '60, so I've added 1960. 452 00:24:15,560 --> 00:24:18,250 But these three films appeared within a very short time 453 00:24:18,250 --> 00:24:20,980 of each other in 1959-60. 454 00:24:20,980 --> 00:24:23,190 And all three of them are thought 455 00:24:23,190 --> 00:24:26,230 to be sort of the origins of the Nouvelle Vague, the moment when 456 00:24:26,230 --> 00:24:29,110 the Nouvelle Vague declared itself as a major film 457 00:24:29,110 --> 00:24:29,890 movement. 458 00:24:29,890 --> 00:24:34,070 But Hiroshima, Mon Amour was a dramatically important film 459 00:24:34,070 --> 00:24:35,360 when it first appeared. 460 00:24:35,360 --> 00:24:38,420 In the foreground of the film is a story of a love 461 00:24:38,420 --> 00:24:44,330 affair between a Japanese architect and a French woman. 462 00:24:44,330 --> 00:24:46,450 And the love affair is in the foreground. 463 00:24:46,450 --> 00:24:49,170 But in the background is Hiroshima and the dropping 464 00:24:49,170 --> 00:24:50,690 of the bomb on Hiroshima. 465 00:24:50,690 --> 00:24:53,710 And the story of the lovers-- I don't mean that it takes 466 00:24:53,710 --> 00:24:56,490 place while Hiroshima is going on. 467 00:24:56,490 --> 00:24:58,270 Hiroshima is remembered and invoked 468 00:24:58,270 --> 00:24:59,950 in the course of the film. 469 00:24:59,950 --> 00:25:02,660 So the foreground of the film are the lovers. 470 00:25:02,660 --> 00:25:05,200 The background of the film is this horrific event, 471 00:25:05,200 --> 00:25:07,800 the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. 472 00:25:07,800 --> 00:25:11,220 And the film plays with our sense of time. 473 00:25:11,220 --> 00:25:14,490 Its sense of the passage of time is confused in some sense. 474 00:25:14,490 --> 00:25:17,030 It's not linear in the traditional sense 475 00:25:17,030 --> 00:25:19,580 of an ordinary well-made film. 476 00:25:19,580 --> 00:25:25,060 And there's not exactly a surreal quality in it, 477 00:25:25,060 --> 00:25:28,945 but there's a quality in it that we 478 00:25:28,945 --> 00:25:30,820 might say that one of the things that happens 479 00:25:30,820 --> 00:25:33,190 is that time is sometimes treated subjectively 480 00:25:33,190 --> 00:25:35,120 rather than objectively in the film. 481 00:25:35,120 --> 00:25:39,611 And so the time frames you're in are often mixed or unclear 482 00:25:39,611 --> 00:25:40,110 in the film. 483 00:25:40,110 --> 00:25:43,980 The film was also much more explicit with its nudity 484 00:25:43,980 --> 00:25:45,880 than American audiences were used to, 485 00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:48,260 and it caused quite a scandal when 486 00:25:48,260 --> 00:25:49,500 it came to the United States. 487 00:25:49,500 --> 00:25:52,330 I remember the people who were in college with me at the time 488 00:25:52,330 --> 00:25:55,410 were very excited to see it, partly for that reason. 489 00:25:55,410 --> 00:25:58,120 Nudity was much rarer in the popular culture 490 00:25:58,120 --> 00:26:00,650 when I was your age than it is today. 491 00:26:03,220 --> 00:26:05,920 An even more dramatic and radical movie 492 00:26:05,920 --> 00:26:08,100 was Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, 493 00:26:08,100 --> 00:26:13,540 which tells the story of a third-rate criminal played 494 00:26:13,540 --> 00:26:16,040 with astonishing panache by Jean-Paul 495 00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:20,990 Belmondo with a cigarette stuck in his lips 496 00:26:20,990 --> 00:26:22,114 through most of the film. 497 00:26:22,114 --> 00:26:24,530 And there's one moment in the film where Belmondo walks up 498 00:26:24,530 --> 00:26:29,830 to a movie marquee, I think, outside a movie theater. 499 00:26:29,830 --> 00:26:34,480 And he sees a poster advertising a film with Humphrey Bogart. 500 00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:36,180 And he looks at the film and he tries 501 00:26:36,180 --> 00:26:39,570 to imitate a Bogart move-- he goes like goes, puts his arm, 502 00:26:39,570 --> 00:26:41,530 Bogart had a move like this. 503 00:26:41,530 --> 00:26:44,480 And he says something like this, Bogie 504 00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:46,160 he says in his French accent. 505 00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:49,290 And you can see in a certain way that he's patterning himself 506 00:26:49,290 --> 00:26:53,180 on Bogart, the Bogart who played ambiguous, sometimes criminal, 507 00:26:53,180 --> 00:26:54,550 characters in the movies. 508 00:26:54,550 --> 00:26:56,870 And it's one of the earliest examples of something 509 00:26:56,870 --> 00:26:59,180 that becomes really common in America, 510 00:26:59,180 --> 00:27:01,800 for example in the great television series 511 00:27:01,800 --> 00:27:04,720 The Sopranos, where all the gangsters are constantly 512 00:27:04,720 --> 00:27:07,940 invoking The Godfather and other fictional gangsters, 513 00:27:07,940 --> 00:27:10,570 and modeling themselves on them, or quoting scenes from them. 514 00:27:10,570 --> 00:27:13,690 Well, Belmondo's character in Breathless 515 00:27:13,690 --> 00:27:17,140 is one of the first gangsters to pattern himself on gangsters 516 00:27:17,140 --> 00:27:19,630 out of popular culture, instead of being a real gangster. 517 00:27:19,630 --> 00:27:23,230 And there's a moral ambiguity in the film that is never 518 00:27:23,230 --> 00:27:27,070 fully resolved, because the protagonist of the film 519 00:27:27,070 --> 00:27:30,690 is this-- we're not going to show that, James, we don't have 520 00:27:30,690 --> 00:27:32,414 time for it. 521 00:27:32,414 --> 00:27:34,580 I was going to show you a clip, but there's no time. 522 00:27:34,580 --> 00:27:36,420 It's quite a remarkable film. 523 00:27:36,420 --> 00:27:38,900 Some of you might want to look at it-- 524 00:27:38,900 --> 00:27:40,900 it's available from the film office. 525 00:27:40,900 --> 00:27:45,890 And the central ambiguity is that we identify 526 00:27:45,890 --> 00:27:48,280 in some degree with the protagonist-- we follow him 527 00:27:48,280 --> 00:27:49,504 all the way through the film. 528 00:27:49,504 --> 00:27:50,920 Very early in the film he actually 529 00:27:50,920 --> 00:27:54,330 commits a murder-- it's an accident, he doesn't intend it, 530 00:27:54,330 --> 00:27:55,690 it just sort of happens. 531 00:27:55,690 --> 00:27:57,730 But he still is a murderer. 532 00:27:57,730 --> 00:28:00,530 He steals a car in the very opening scene. 533 00:28:00,530 --> 00:28:02,590 And then he ends up murdering someone. 534 00:28:02,590 --> 00:28:05,480 He's on the run-- and for the rest of the film, 535 00:28:05,480 --> 00:28:06,320 he's on the run. 536 00:28:06,320 --> 00:28:07,870 He takes up with an American girl 537 00:28:07,870 --> 00:28:12,154 played by Jean Seberg who ends up betraying him to the cops. 538 00:28:12,154 --> 00:28:13,820 And in the very final scene in the film, 539 00:28:13,820 --> 00:28:15,150 he's shot down by the police. 540 00:28:15,150 --> 00:28:16,930 And we see him running down a street 541 00:28:16,930 --> 00:28:19,320 with a wound in his back, finally 542 00:28:19,320 --> 00:28:21,920 falling in a very dramatic way with his girlfriend 543 00:28:21,920 --> 00:28:23,150 coming and looking over him. 544 00:28:23,150 --> 00:28:25,100 And the ending of the ending of the film 545 00:28:25,100 --> 00:28:27,960 is very strange, because it leaves 546 00:28:27,960 --> 00:28:31,050 the audience uncertain about what its attitudes toward what 547 00:28:31,050 --> 00:28:32,790 has happened ought to be. 548 00:28:32,790 --> 00:28:39,210 Should we resent this betraying girlfriend as an evil character 549 00:28:39,210 --> 00:28:41,240 because she's sold her boyfriend out to the cop? 550 00:28:41,240 --> 00:28:45,030 On the other hand, her boyfriend is an amoral murderer and thief 551 00:28:45,030 --> 00:28:48,490 who doesn't seem to care about anyone, much less her. 552 00:28:48,490 --> 00:28:51,810 And yet there's a kind of charm and an erotic energy 553 00:28:51,810 --> 00:28:53,430 about the Belmondo character. 554 00:28:53,430 --> 00:29:01,030 So the film's moral and psychological grounding 555 00:29:01,030 --> 00:29:01,970 is unclear. 556 00:29:01,970 --> 00:29:06,560 And so it was very powerful and significant for that reason. 557 00:29:06,560 --> 00:29:10,750 And then finally The 400 Blows, even more successful film 558 00:29:10,750 --> 00:29:14,790 in a popular sense than either of those two, 559 00:29:14,790 --> 00:29:17,520 appears in the same time frame. 560 00:29:17,520 --> 00:29:20,890 And it won the best director's prize at the Cannes Film 561 00:29:20,890 --> 00:29:23,560 Festival in 1960. 562 00:29:23,560 --> 00:29:26,540 And it put Truffaut on the map. 563 00:29:26,540 --> 00:29:28,130 It made Truffaut a famous director. 564 00:29:28,130 --> 00:29:30,010 And he never really looked back after that. 565 00:29:30,010 --> 00:29:33,120 He went on to have quite a remarkable career. 566 00:29:33,120 --> 00:29:35,070 Let me say a couple of things about the style 567 00:29:35,070 --> 00:29:36,510 and tone of the Nouvelle Vague. 568 00:29:36,510 --> 00:29:40,630 Most of it applies to what we've already said about neorealism 569 00:29:40,630 --> 00:29:43,410 and about French poetic realism. 570 00:29:43,410 --> 00:29:45,610 So there's no reason to go through a lot of it. 571 00:29:45,610 --> 00:29:50,120 But let's jump to the bottom, to the items 572 00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:51,170 at the end of the list. 573 00:29:51,170 --> 00:29:54,490 First, the improvisatory aspect of, let's say, 574 00:29:54,490 --> 00:29:57,960 Renoir's practice becomes even more pointed 575 00:29:57,960 --> 00:30:00,710 and central in many of the Nouvelle Vague films. 576 00:30:00,710 --> 00:30:02,980 And there really is a sense in which they often 577 00:30:02,980 --> 00:30:06,270 would begin filming without having a full script, letting 578 00:30:06,270 --> 00:30:09,370 the story itself play out, discover itself 579 00:30:09,370 --> 00:30:11,130 as they were filming. 580 00:30:11,130 --> 00:30:13,020 Tremendous amount of collaboration 581 00:30:13,020 --> 00:30:15,810 between performer and director. 582 00:30:18,850 --> 00:30:21,250 So both plot and dialogue are often 583 00:30:21,250 --> 00:30:24,410 the result of a kind of inspired improvisation. 584 00:30:24,410 --> 00:30:28,490 Even more significant is the commitment in the Nouvelle 585 00:30:28,490 --> 00:30:30,940 Vague-- even more powerful, much more powerfully 586 00:30:30,940 --> 00:30:35,650 then than in the earlier realisms-- toward use 587 00:30:35,650 --> 00:30:38,450 of a style we might call a discontinuous style, 588 00:30:38,450 --> 00:30:42,420 a jumpy style, an edgy style. 589 00:30:42,420 --> 00:30:44,900 What's a jump cut? 590 00:30:44,900 --> 00:30:47,290 A jump cut is an edit that takes place 591 00:30:47,290 --> 00:30:49,460 in the middle of an action. 592 00:30:49,460 --> 00:30:52,850 A normal cut, or what we might call a classic cut. 593 00:30:52,850 --> 00:30:54,940 If a character is speaking and making 594 00:30:54,940 --> 00:30:57,860 a gesture-- say the camera's on me-- and he says, 595 00:30:57,860 --> 00:31:00,650 I insist on this idea more powerfully 596 00:31:00,650 --> 00:31:02,820 than any other-- like this, right. 597 00:31:02,820 --> 00:31:07,660 Well in a classic sense, you would 598 00:31:07,660 --> 00:31:10,090 wait until my fist came down before you cut. 599 00:31:10,090 --> 00:31:12,150 But if you did a jump cut, it would say something 600 00:31:12,150 --> 00:31:15,509 like, I insist on this idea more than any other. 601 00:31:15,509 --> 00:31:17,550 Or maybe not even let me get the word "other" out 602 00:31:17,550 --> 00:31:19,660 and it would cut to another scene. 603 00:31:19,660 --> 00:31:25,480 It creates a sense of discontinuity or of jaggedness 604 00:31:25,480 --> 00:31:27,985 that reminds you that life itself is not so smooth. 605 00:31:30,990 --> 00:31:33,300 And the other thing that the jump cut reminds you of 606 00:31:33,300 --> 00:31:35,100 is something else-- it reminds you 607 00:31:35,100 --> 00:31:36,510 of the presence of the editor. 608 00:31:36,510 --> 00:31:40,360 It reminds you that you are watching a film. 609 00:31:40,360 --> 00:31:42,090 It's a very quiet way of doing this, 610 00:31:42,090 --> 00:31:45,584 And these films have other, more explicit, ways of reminding you 611 00:31:45,584 --> 00:31:46,750 that you're watching a film. 612 00:31:46,750 --> 00:31:48,690 But there is in these films not only 613 00:31:48,690 --> 00:31:52,770 the use of discontinuous editing and what 614 00:31:52,770 --> 00:31:55,130 David Cook in his A History of Narrative Film 615 00:31:55,130 --> 00:31:59,800 calls elliptical editing, in which things 616 00:31:59,800 --> 00:32:04,480 are much more compressed, much more elliptical. 617 00:32:04,480 --> 00:32:06,940 Things are not always perfectly worked out. 618 00:32:06,940 --> 00:32:09,150 Remember I've talked about this earlier, how 619 00:32:09,150 --> 00:32:13,190 in classical Hollywood style if I were walking toward the door 620 00:32:13,190 --> 00:32:14,530 they would show me walking. 621 00:32:14,530 --> 00:32:17,200 When I got here, they might cut it, 622 00:32:17,200 --> 00:32:20,690 and then they might pick up the scene as I reached the door. 623 00:32:20,690 --> 00:32:24,509 But in a Nouvelle Vague film, they 624 00:32:24,509 --> 00:32:26,300 might show me going like this, and the next 625 00:32:26,300 --> 00:32:30,080 cut I'd be in the next room or in bed with my girlfriend. 626 00:32:30,080 --> 00:32:34,770 They wouldn't bother to show-- in my case, 627 00:32:34,770 --> 00:32:38,150 it would be my wife, please, important. 628 00:32:38,150 --> 00:32:40,580 But they wouldn't bother to show that progress, 629 00:32:40,580 --> 00:32:43,200 because it's silly, it's unnecessary. 630 00:32:43,200 --> 00:32:45,130 That's what is meant by elliptical editing. 631 00:32:45,130 --> 00:32:47,370 And it makes a greater demand on the audience. 632 00:32:47,370 --> 00:32:53,410 But it also has the effect of creating 633 00:32:53,410 --> 00:32:57,050 a continuous, quiet sense of what I call self-reflexiveness 634 00:32:57,050 --> 00:32:59,350 or self-awareness in the film. 635 00:32:59,350 --> 00:33:03,340 That is to say, you are aware at almost every moment 636 00:33:03,340 --> 00:33:05,030 of these Nouvelle Vague films that it 637 00:33:05,030 --> 00:33:08,490 is an artifact, that the film has been made by human hands, 638 00:33:08,490 --> 00:33:10,620 that various strategies and gestures have 639 00:33:10,620 --> 00:33:11,940 created these effects. 640 00:33:11,940 --> 00:33:14,990 And that distances you from the material in some sense. 641 00:33:14,990 --> 00:33:16,930 But it opens out a new topic. 642 00:33:16,930 --> 00:33:19,360 And that new topic is film itself. 643 00:33:19,360 --> 00:33:21,120 And many of the Nouvelle Vague films-- 644 00:33:21,120 --> 00:33:23,619 and especially the films that come after the Nouvelle Vague, 645 00:33:23,619 --> 00:33:26,520 but influenced by it-- turn out to be films 646 00:33:26,520 --> 00:33:29,810 that one of their topics is the making of movies themselves, 647 00:33:29,810 --> 00:33:31,220 films about film. 648 00:33:31,220 --> 00:33:33,890 And there are a couple of wonderful examples of this 649 00:33:33,890 --> 00:33:37,760 in Truffaut's own corpus of work, including 650 00:33:37,760 --> 00:33:42,410 a very lovely, gentle film called-- a light film, not 651 00:33:42,410 --> 00:33:44,380 as profound as his most powerful films, 652 00:33:44,380 --> 00:33:49,810 but a beautiful, beautiful film-- the French title 653 00:33:49,810 --> 00:33:52,580 is La Nuit Americaine. 654 00:33:52,580 --> 00:33:55,950 But it was translated in the English-speaking world as Day 655 00:33:55,950 --> 00:33:56,980 for Night. 656 00:33:56,980 --> 00:33:59,300 If you want to create the illusion 657 00:33:59,300 --> 00:34:00,760 that you're filming at night, you 658 00:34:00,760 --> 00:34:02,204 can put a filter on the camera. 659 00:34:02,204 --> 00:34:04,120 And even though you're filming during the day, 660 00:34:04,120 --> 00:34:07,650 it will look nighty, it will look dark. 661 00:34:07,650 --> 00:34:13,909 It's a strategy of directors of photography. 662 00:34:13,909 --> 00:34:15,960 And it's an allusion to that. 663 00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:19,989 It's called The American Night because this 664 00:34:19,989 --> 00:34:22,260 was a strategy that was especially associated 665 00:34:22,260 --> 00:34:25,920 with American movies, thought by the French-- especially 666 00:34:25,920 --> 00:34:27,429 by the Nouvelle Vague directors-- 667 00:34:27,429 --> 00:34:29,810 to be shocking and ridiculous, because you should 668 00:34:29,810 --> 00:34:30,800 film on location. 669 00:34:30,800 --> 00:34:33,659 You should minimize the falsity that 670 00:34:33,659 --> 00:34:39,269 is involved in setting up filters for your film-- faking 671 00:34:39,269 --> 00:34:40,810 that it's night when it's really not, 672 00:34:40,810 --> 00:34:45,000 or faking that it's day when it's right, that kind of thing. 673 00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:48,850 But the film, La Nuit Americaine Is about the making of a film. 674 00:34:48,850 --> 00:34:55,090 And in it Truffaut himself I think appears. 675 00:34:55,090 --> 00:35:00,270 He plays the director who is having trouble making a film. 676 00:35:00,270 --> 00:35:06,060 And is the film is interesting about character. 677 00:35:06,060 --> 00:35:09,970 It studies the psychological circumstances 678 00:35:09,970 --> 00:35:13,570 of its central characters with great subtlety and interest. 679 00:35:13,570 --> 00:35:15,920 It says powerful and interesting things 680 00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:18,890 about the erotic and personal connections 681 00:35:18,890 --> 00:35:20,500 among serious adults. 682 00:35:20,500 --> 00:35:23,160 And it also says something about what is involved 683 00:35:23,160 --> 00:35:24,230 in the making of a film. 684 00:35:24,230 --> 00:35:26,470 It's about making movies. 685 00:35:26,470 --> 00:35:29,680 Its subject matter is the making of a film. 686 00:35:29,680 --> 00:35:33,000 That level of self-reflexiveness or self-consciousness 687 00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:35,970 is always present in at least some degree in these films. 688 00:35:35,970 --> 00:35:40,540 And sometimes it can become an explicit central topic. 689 00:35:40,540 --> 00:35:42,540 These films, as I've already indicated, 690 00:35:42,540 --> 00:35:46,020 are full of allusions and references to earlier films. 691 00:35:46,020 --> 00:35:49,850 And I mentioned the references to Chaplin-- 692 00:35:49,850 --> 00:35:55,180 you'll see other references like this, I think, in the film. 693 00:35:55,180 --> 00:36:00,040 And one thing that happens in this film, for example, 694 00:36:00,040 --> 00:36:01,874 is that the characters go to the movies. 695 00:36:01,874 --> 00:36:04,040 There's a moment when the family goes to the movies. 696 00:36:04,040 --> 00:36:06,730 And the film that's playing is the title 697 00:36:06,730 --> 00:36:11,270 of a film by a friend of Truffaut's, Jacques Rivette, 698 00:36:11,270 --> 00:36:14,150 a film called Paris Belongs to Us. 699 00:36:14,150 --> 00:36:15,840 And it's a real film. 700 00:36:18,700 --> 00:36:22,470 So it's a kind of allusion in a way, to another film, 701 00:36:22,470 --> 00:36:23,770 to a friend. 702 00:36:23,770 --> 00:36:26,830 But again, there's a level of self-reflexiveness 703 00:36:26,830 --> 00:36:28,780 in which that sequence in the film 704 00:36:28,780 --> 00:36:32,324 is also a meditation on the role of movies in social life. 705 00:36:32,324 --> 00:36:33,740 I'll come back to that in a second 706 00:36:33,740 --> 00:36:38,180 when I talk a little bit about The 400 Blows itself. 707 00:36:38,180 --> 00:36:42,370 So let me say a word about Francois Truffaut. 708 00:36:42,370 --> 00:36:44,750 I hope you'll read more deeply about him 709 00:36:44,750 --> 00:36:48,370 in Wikipedia and in other places. 710 00:36:48,370 --> 00:36:52,200 His biography is very rich and interesting. 711 00:36:52,200 --> 00:36:55,890 One decisive thing to say about it is that in some sense 712 00:36:55,890 --> 00:37:00,290 The 400 Blows is a deeply autobiographical film. 713 00:37:00,290 --> 00:37:04,870 That is to say, Truffaut himself was born out-of-wedlock, 714 00:37:04,870 --> 00:37:06,090 lived with his grandmother. 715 00:37:06,090 --> 00:37:08,400 Not all the details are exactly the same in the film, 716 00:37:08,400 --> 00:37:10,650 but these details I'm giving you will show you 717 00:37:10,650 --> 00:37:15,780 how closely the film mirrors the reality of Truffaut's own life. 718 00:37:15,780 --> 00:37:19,940 He was raised by his grandmother until he was eight years old. 719 00:37:19,940 --> 00:37:23,290 Then he lived with his mother and his stepfather, 720 00:37:23,290 --> 00:37:25,200 who gave him his name. 721 00:37:25,200 --> 00:37:29,790 And you'll see that that's an issue in this film too. 722 00:37:29,790 --> 00:37:34,450 The father of Antoine Doinel, the central character, 723 00:37:34,450 --> 00:37:38,640 is his stepfather, not his real father. 724 00:37:38,640 --> 00:37:42,020 Lived with his mother and his stepfather until he was 14. 725 00:37:42,020 --> 00:37:44,820 Was constantly truant from school. 726 00:37:44,820 --> 00:37:46,500 His father ended up turning him in, 727 00:37:46,500 --> 00:37:49,320 and he spent time in a reformatory. 728 00:37:49,320 --> 00:37:51,530 To escape his parents and other miseries, 729 00:37:51,530 --> 00:37:55,110 he joined the army at the age of 18, but he hated the army. 730 00:37:55,110 --> 00:37:58,500 He was constantly looking for a chance to desert. 731 00:37:58,500 --> 00:38:01,380 He finally did desert the army, and he was arrested. 732 00:38:01,380 --> 00:38:04,490 He spent time in prison for desertion. 733 00:38:04,490 --> 00:38:06,120 And he was really in big trouble. 734 00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:08,460 But he had always loved film, even as a kid. 735 00:38:08,460 --> 00:38:11,560 And as a 14-year-old in Paris, he had found his way. 736 00:38:11,560 --> 00:38:15,790 You'll see that this is replicated in The 400 Blows, 737 00:38:15,790 --> 00:38:18,680 because the attraction of Parisian movies 738 00:38:18,680 --> 00:38:24,640 is one of the great escapes for this boy and his friend. 739 00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:27,520 So in his real life he loved movies, 740 00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:35,370 and he went to the French bibliotheque to watch films. 741 00:38:35,370 --> 00:38:41,540 And there he met Andre Bazin, who was already 742 00:38:41,540 --> 00:38:43,850 an eminent critic and was the co-founder 743 00:38:43,850 --> 00:38:46,630 of Cahiers du Cinema. 744 00:38:46,630 --> 00:38:52,860 Bazin intervened in his case, apparently used his influence 745 00:38:52,860 --> 00:38:56,890 to get him either released from prisoner or have his sentence 746 00:38:56,890 --> 00:38:59,130 reduced-- I don't know the exact details. 747 00:38:59,130 --> 00:39:01,740 He went to work for Cahiers du Cinema. 748 00:39:01,740 --> 00:39:03,040 And the rest is history. 749 00:39:03,040 --> 00:39:05,020 He worked for something like eight years 750 00:39:05,020 --> 00:39:07,060 as a critic for Cahiers du Cinema 751 00:39:07,060 --> 00:39:10,010 and then began to make his own films. 752 00:39:10,010 --> 00:39:12,310 And one of the most significant things 753 00:39:12,310 --> 00:39:14,920 about his life as a critic is that he 754 00:39:14,920 --> 00:39:18,760 was famous for being a nasty, incredibly 755 00:39:18,760 --> 00:39:20,250 unsympathetic critic. 756 00:39:20,250 --> 00:39:26,270 He was famous for the viciousness and unforgiving 757 00:39:26,270 --> 00:39:28,450 quality of his reviews. 758 00:39:28,450 --> 00:39:31,250 And think what it means that such a person should then, 759 00:39:31,250 --> 00:39:34,190 after eight years of doing this and making enemies 760 00:39:34,190 --> 00:39:35,890 all over the French film world, should 761 00:39:35,890 --> 00:39:39,780 take the risk of beginning to make a film on his own. 762 00:39:39,780 --> 00:39:42,100 In many ways very bold of him. 763 00:39:42,100 --> 00:39:45,370 But it's also true that the Cahiers du Cinema 764 00:39:45,370 --> 00:39:51,920 crew, as we might call it, including the great eminence 765 00:39:51,920 --> 00:39:53,790 of Bazin himself and a whole bunch 766 00:39:53,790 --> 00:39:59,410 of other ambitious young critics would-be directors, 767 00:39:59,410 --> 00:40:03,730 they constituted a kind of critical mass of folks 768 00:40:03,730 --> 00:40:04,980 with shared ambitions. 769 00:40:04,980 --> 00:40:06,760 So I don't want to make it appear 770 00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:14,290 that what Truffaut was doing was shockingly brave, 771 00:40:14,290 --> 00:40:16,260 or courageous, or self-destructive. 772 00:40:16,260 --> 00:40:20,360 But it was a dangerous thing, because he was certainly 773 00:40:20,360 --> 00:40:26,960 opening himself to revenge reviews by other people. 774 00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:31,010 And he was really infamous for being nasty to other directors, 775 00:40:31,010 --> 00:40:32,790 especially to French directors. 776 00:40:32,790 --> 00:40:35,860 You'll see on the outline that I've listed some 777 00:40:35,860 --> 00:40:38,270 of his most significant films. 778 00:40:38,270 --> 00:40:41,090 And the films that have asterisks next 779 00:40:41,090 --> 00:40:45,719 to them, those five films, are all about the same character 780 00:40:45,719 --> 00:40:47,510 that you're going to see in tonight's film. 781 00:40:47,510 --> 00:40:49,820 They're all about Antoine Doinel. 782 00:40:49,820 --> 00:40:51,970 And it's a unique film record. 783 00:40:51,970 --> 00:40:55,570 It's a series of autobiographical films, played 784 00:40:55,570 --> 00:40:59,250 by the same actor, who is a kind of Truffaut stand-in. 785 00:40:59,250 --> 00:41:07,430 And the second film that I have on the list, or rather 786 00:41:07,430 --> 00:41:10,240 the third film, Antoine and Colette, 787 00:41:10,240 --> 00:41:13,130 I have it in quotations because it's not a feature-length film. 788 00:41:13,130 --> 00:41:15,750 It's an episode from an anthology film 789 00:41:15,750 --> 00:41:19,880 that appeared in 1962 called Love at Twenty. 790 00:41:19,880 --> 00:41:23,400 It was a very flattering thing for the young director 791 00:41:23,400 --> 00:41:25,290 to be asked to contribute to that. 792 00:41:25,290 --> 00:41:26,760 And so that's another installment 793 00:41:26,760 --> 00:41:28,680 of the story of Antoine Doinel. 794 00:41:28,680 --> 00:41:30,730 And then the next one takes place 795 00:41:30,730 --> 00:41:37,160 in 1968, Stolen Kisses, again in 1970-- Bread and Board. 796 00:41:37,160 --> 00:41:41,120 And then finally, nine years later, the final Doinel film, 797 00:41:41,120 --> 00:41:42,160 Love on the Run. 798 00:41:42,160 --> 00:41:45,400 It ends in an ambiguous way, like all of the films. 799 00:41:45,400 --> 00:41:53,470 And one of the wonderful things, Jean-Pierre Leaud-- L-E-A-U-D, 800 00:41:53,470 --> 00:41:57,070 I don't know how to say it, Leaud, Leaud-- 801 00:41:57,070 --> 00:42:00,210 who plays Doinel, you can see him aging through these films. 802 00:42:00,210 --> 00:42:01,450 It's a wonderful sequence. 803 00:42:01,450 --> 00:42:04,070 And if you like The 400 Blows, you 804 00:42:04,070 --> 00:42:05,830 might want to watch the other films. 805 00:42:05,830 --> 00:42:08,230 The 400 Blows is probably the best of all of them, 806 00:42:08,230 --> 00:42:10,440 but they're beautiful films. 807 00:42:10,440 --> 00:42:12,640 And what they show is, in some sense, 808 00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:15,860 Truffaut returning to this autobiographical theme 809 00:42:15,860 --> 00:42:18,340 at different stages in his life. 810 00:42:18,340 --> 00:42:20,900 There are even some scholars who have suggested that there's 811 00:42:20,900 --> 00:42:23,590 a kind of analogy, or a mirror relationship, 812 00:42:23,590 --> 00:42:29,830 between the young Jean-Pierre Leaud, 813 00:42:29,830 --> 00:42:37,540 the 14-year-old who plays the central character in The 400 814 00:42:37,540 --> 00:42:45,070 Blows, that there's an analogy between his relationship 815 00:42:45,070 --> 00:42:48,810 to Truffaut and Truffaut's relationship to Bazin, 816 00:42:48,810 --> 00:42:51,460 as if what's happened is that Truffaut 817 00:42:51,460 --> 00:42:54,250 with his new young actor is re-enacting-- but now 818 00:42:54,250 --> 00:42:58,650 on the other side-- the mentor-mentee relationship 819 00:42:58,650 --> 00:43:04,840 that Bazin and Truffaut apparently enjoyed as well. 820 00:43:04,840 --> 00:43:07,840 I don't have time to talk about this remarkable list of films. 821 00:43:07,840 --> 00:43:10,750 The only film on this list that isn't wonderful, 822 00:43:10,750 --> 00:43:13,130 I think-- certainly worth looking at closely, 823 00:43:13,130 --> 00:43:17,080 maybe two that are not absolutely first-rate-- 824 00:43:17,080 --> 00:43:20,660 is the one in 1966, Fahrenheit 451. 825 00:43:20,660 --> 00:43:24,040 I mention it to you because it's such an interesting example. 826 00:43:24,040 --> 00:43:26,650 Based on the Ray Bradbury. 827 00:43:26,650 --> 00:43:27,970 And it is his worst film. 828 00:43:27,970 --> 00:43:30,010 It's his first film in English, he 829 00:43:30,010 --> 00:43:31,970 didn't know English very well when he made it. 830 00:43:31,970 --> 00:43:35,100 It's an oddly heavy-handed and wooden film. 831 00:43:35,100 --> 00:43:37,277 But I still have some kind of affection for it, 832 00:43:37,277 --> 00:43:39,110 even though it's not a very good adaptation. 833 00:43:39,110 --> 00:43:41,560 Because he was attentive to Ray Bradbury, 834 00:43:41,560 --> 00:43:43,420 attentive to the ambitions. 835 00:43:43,420 --> 00:43:46,620 It's a film that's theoretically much more interesting than it 836 00:43:46,620 --> 00:43:48,620 is in practice. 837 00:43:48,620 --> 00:43:51,060 But all the other films are very remarkable films 838 00:43:51,060 --> 00:43:53,650 and among the most significant films of their day. 839 00:43:53,650 --> 00:43:57,170 And let me just say one final word about the last film I've 840 00:43:57,170 --> 00:44:00,030 listed there, The Last Metro, which starred Catherine 841 00:44:00,030 --> 00:44:03,260 Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu. 842 00:44:03,260 --> 00:44:06,840 In a way it's a World War II film. 843 00:44:06,840 --> 00:44:08,930 It tells the story of a Jewish director who 844 00:44:08,930 --> 00:44:12,270 has to hide in the hidden basement of his theater 845 00:44:12,270 --> 00:44:15,290 while his wife, who is not Jewish, 846 00:44:15,290 --> 00:44:18,440 is able to run the theater above ground. 847 00:44:18,440 --> 00:44:20,750 And it tells the story of the importance of theater 848 00:44:20,750 --> 00:44:23,710 even during the war years, when Paris 849 00:44:23,710 --> 00:44:25,950 was occupied by the Germans. 850 00:44:25,950 --> 00:44:29,590 It's a very powerful and moving love story, as well as 851 00:44:29,590 --> 00:44:32,110 a story that celebrates the power of theater 852 00:44:32,110 --> 00:44:34,670 and the power of art in hard times. 853 00:44:34,670 --> 00:44:39,170 And it's a lovely, poignant, powerful film. 854 00:44:39,170 --> 00:44:41,170 I want to say a few words about the film itself. 855 00:44:41,170 --> 00:44:42,836 It's fairly straightforward, and I think 856 00:44:42,836 --> 00:44:44,030 you'll absolutely enjoy it. 857 00:44:44,030 --> 00:44:47,430 First the title, weird title, The 400 Blows. 858 00:44:47,430 --> 00:44:49,410 It comes from a French idiom. 859 00:44:49,410 --> 00:44:51,560 And the idiom means something like 860 00:44:51,560 --> 00:44:55,110 to sow your wild oats, to raise hell. 861 00:44:57,860 --> 00:45:00,450 [SPEAKING FRENCH] 862 00:45:00,450 --> 00:45:07,020 To do or to make the 400 blows means 863 00:45:07,020 --> 00:45:10,960 essentially to raise hell, to do a walkabout, something 864 00:45:10,960 --> 00:45:12,410 that young people do. 865 00:45:12,410 --> 00:45:15,740 And of course the title is very resonant. 866 00:45:15,740 --> 00:45:19,120 You end without any certainty about what 867 00:45:19,120 --> 00:45:25,230 the resolution of this wild behavior is going to be. 868 00:45:25,230 --> 00:45:29,340 The second important thing to say about the film, 869 00:45:29,340 --> 00:45:32,770 something I've implied earlier, is that it's 870 00:45:32,770 --> 00:45:34,270 a film that loves Paris. 871 00:45:34,270 --> 00:45:39,610 And in a certain sense the boy's odyssey through the film 872 00:45:39,610 --> 00:45:45,710 is an exploration of Paris and of Parisian delights. 873 00:45:45,710 --> 00:45:48,460 And again, think of what it says about the city, about 874 00:45:48,460 --> 00:45:51,970 this great city, in the time that the film was made, 875 00:45:51,970 --> 00:45:55,660 that boys of this age could wander around so safely 876 00:45:55,660 --> 00:46:00,350 and engage in so many remarkable adventures in the course 877 00:46:00,350 --> 00:46:05,010 of an ordinary day in Paris. 878 00:46:05,010 --> 00:46:08,880 So the film is attentive to the feel, the texture, 879 00:46:08,880 --> 00:46:10,940 of Paris, in something of the way 880 00:46:10,940 --> 00:46:14,040 that some of the Italian neorealist films 881 00:46:14,040 --> 00:46:17,790 were attentive to the physical texture of Rome, 882 00:46:17,790 --> 00:46:22,750 or of other Italian environments. 883 00:46:22,750 --> 00:46:25,690 The family romance at the heart of this film 884 00:46:25,690 --> 00:46:29,670 is one of Truffaut's subtlest achievements. 885 00:46:29,670 --> 00:46:31,740 And I just want to call your attention 886 00:46:31,740 --> 00:46:33,370 to how subtle it actually is. 887 00:46:33,370 --> 00:46:35,280 Watch how the story unfolds, and how 888 00:46:35,280 --> 00:46:38,510 in a very brief and elliptical way 889 00:46:38,510 --> 00:46:41,130 we come to understand the motivations 890 00:46:41,130 --> 00:46:44,100 and the unhappinesses of each of the major characters-- 891 00:46:44,100 --> 00:46:46,180 the mother, the father, and the son. 892 00:46:46,180 --> 00:46:48,650 What we discover fairly early is that the mother isn't 893 00:46:48,650 --> 00:46:50,180 that happy with her husband. 894 00:46:50,180 --> 00:46:52,310 She feels that she's losing her beauty, 895 00:46:52,310 --> 00:46:54,690 she feels trapped in an unhappy marriage. 896 00:46:54,690 --> 00:46:57,440 The husband is to her a kind of boring character. 897 00:46:57,440 --> 00:46:59,170 He's the boy's stepfather. 898 00:46:59,170 --> 00:47:03,180 Early in the film, we get a wonderful sequence. 899 00:47:03,180 --> 00:47:06,000 Remember, watch for the principle of multiplicity 900 00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:09,140 there, because so many things are going on simultaneously. 901 00:47:09,140 --> 00:47:12,170 The physical, and social, and economic environment 902 00:47:12,170 --> 00:47:14,100 within which the family lives is dramatized 903 00:47:14,100 --> 00:47:15,500 in those opening scenes. 904 00:47:15,500 --> 00:47:18,000 The boy's relation to his family is dramatized 905 00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:19,230 in those opening scenes. 906 00:47:19,230 --> 00:47:21,570 And the father's relation to the mother 907 00:47:21,570 --> 00:47:23,520 is dramatized in those opening scenes as well. 908 00:47:23,520 --> 00:47:25,070 And what we discover, of course, is 909 00:47:25,070 --> 00:47:27,780 that the father is actually-- even though he's 910 00:47:27,780 --> 00:47:30,410 the stepfather-- actually feels great affection for the boy. 911 00:47:30,410 --> 00:47:32,980 And they get along very well, much better 912 00:47:32,980 --> 00:47:35,460 than the boy gets along with his mother, who 913 00:47:35,460 --> 00:47:37,075 is actually his blood relative. 914 00:47:37,075 --> 00:47:39,810 And the mother's resentment partly has to do with the fact 915 00:47:39,810 --> 00:47:42,170 that she must feel that the boy has trapped her. 916 00:47:42,170 --> 00:47:43,980 And she's entering middle age, she 917 00:47:43,980 --> 00:47:45,930 thinks she's losing her beauty, she 918 00:47:45,930 --> 00:47:50,860 thinks she's chained to a child and to a marriage. 919 00:47:50,860 --> 00:47:52,030 And you can feel this. 920 00:47:52,030 --> 00:47:53,960 And there are certain moments in the film when 921 00:47:53,960 --> 00:47:56,840 the mother, for various reasons, is embarrassed over the fact 922 00:47:56,840 --> 00:47:58,790 that she seems to have been a bad mother. 923 00:47:58,790 --> 00:48:05,550 And she uses various strategies to reach out to her son. 924 00:48:05,550 --> 00:48:08,300 And some of them are kind of creepy, as you'll discover. 925 00:48:08,300 --> 00:48:12,020 She's a very complex character, and the least sympathetic 926 00:48:12,020 --> 00:48:14,450 character in the film, because she 927 00:48:14,450 --> 00:48:17,330 behaves in many ways so shockingly toward her son. 928 00:48:17,330 --> 00:48:21,170 But even she, the least sympathetic character 929 00:48:21,170 --> 00:48:24,530 in the film, is treated in the film with a kind of complexity 930 00:48:24,530 --> 00:48:26,060 that we expect from adults. 931 00:48:26,060 --> 00:48:27,768 In other words, we don't think that she's 932 00:48:27,768 --> 00:48:30,150 an evil villainess who would like 933 00:48:30,150 --> 00:48:32,360 to suck the blood of her child. 934 00:48:32,360 --> 00:48:33,480 Not at all, not at all. 935 00:48:33,480 --> 00:48:36,240 What you feel is that she's driven 936 00:48:36,240 --> 00:48:38,810 to her hostilities and her unhappinesses 937 00:48:38,810 --> 00:48:41,820 by the confined and unhappy circumstances of her life. 938 00:48:41,820 --> 00:48:44,430 Not that she's totally forgiven, but she's 939 00:48:44,430 --> 00:48:45,682 understood by the film. 940 00:48:45,682 --> 00:48:47,140 Something of the same kind of thing 941 00:48:47,140 --> 00:48:49,500 is true for the husband, who loves his wife 942 00:48:49,500 --> 00:48:52,150 and knows that his wife is probably dissatisfied with him, 943 00:48:52,150 --> 00:48:54,330 may be unfaithful to him. 944 00:48:54,330 --> 00:48:56,610 And that colors his relation to his son, 945 00:48:56,610 --> 00:49:01,290 with whom he often feels a great connection. 946 00:49:01,290 --> 00:49:02,880 So there's a great poignant sense 947 00:49:02,880 --> 00:49:06,500 that this dysfunctional family is less happy 948 00:49:06,500 --> 00:49:08,210 than it needs to be, if only it could 949 00:49:08,210 --> 00:49:09,920 understand its circumstances. 950 00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:12,950 There's one wonderful moment in the film where some 951 00:49:12,950 --> 00:49:14,870 of the hostility disappears. 952 00:49:14,870 --> 00:49:17,040 And it comes at a moment that I mentioned earlier 953 00:49:17,040 --> 00:49:19,340 where the husband and the wife go off to the movies 954 00:49:19,340 --> 00:49:21,540 together, taking their son with them. 955 00:49:21,540 --> 00:49:22,980 It's like a family outing. 956 00:49:22,980 --> 00:49:25,350 That's when they go to see the Jacques Rivette film. 957 00:49:25,350 --> 00:49:27,850 And it's the one moment in the film where 958 00:49:27,850 --> 00:49:30,380 all three of the central characters in the film 959 00:49:30,380 --> 00:49:32,970 are happy together. 960 00:49:32,970 --> 00:49:36,270 And you might ask, why? 961 00:49:36,270 --> 00:49:38,300 Well, the father is happy because the wife 962 00:49:38,300 --> 00:49:40,590 is paying attention to him and is doing something 963 00:49:40,590 --> 00:49:42,210 with the family. 964 00:49:42,210 --> 00:49:45,010 And the boy is happy because the family, the father and mother, 965 00:49:45,010 --> 00:49:47,600 aren't squabbling with each other 966 00:49:47,600 --> 00:49:49,430 and they're including him. 967 00:49:49,430 --> 00:49:53,510 And the mother is at least partly happy 968 00:49:53,510 --> 00:49:55,450 because she can see both of the men 969 00:49:55,450 --> 00:49:58,140 are delighted by what's going on and because she likes movies 970 00:49:58,140 --> 00:49:58,640 too. 971 00:49:58,640 --> 00:50:00,930 So one of the things that the film dramatizes is 972 00:50:00,930 --> 00:50:03,080 the importance of film in human life, 973 00:50:03,080 --> 00:50:07,000 is how film is a kind of escape or a respite from misery 974 00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:08,720 in certain ways. 975 00:50:08,720 --> 00:50:15,210 And so it's a kind of commentary on the centrality 976 00:50:15,210 --> 00:50:20,680 of the movies as a source of information, insight, 977 00:50:20,680 --> 00:50:23,070 and consolation. 978 00:50:23,070 --> 00:50:25,070 Pay attention to the way the film is structured. 979 00:50:25,070 --> 00:50:28,580 It's not unlike what I've said about the organic form 980 00:50:28,580 --> 00:50:32,150 of certain earlier Italian and French movies. 981 00:50:32,150 --> 00:50:34,600 The structure unfolds in a natural way. 982 00:50:34,600 --> 00:50:37,920 We don't feel that plot is driving the story, 983 00:50:37,920 --> 00:50:40,240 we feel that what happens in the film 984 00:50:40,240 --> 00:50:43,230 happens out of a kind of natural unfolding that 985 00:50:43,230 --> 00:50:47,040 is a function of both the environment and the characters. 986 00:50:47,040 --> 00:50:49,290 There's so much that I've left out here 987 00:50:49,290 --> 00:50:53,110 that I feel guilty about not having mentioned. 988 00:50:53,110 --> 00:50:55,060 I should mention one parenthetic remark, 989 00:50:55,060 --> 00:50:57,220 just because it's such a vivid detail. 990 00:50:57,220 --> 00:50:59,830 The film was made for a relatively small amount 991 00:50:59,830 --> 00:51:01,370 of money, even in those days. 992 00:51:01,370 --> 00:51:04,580 It cost $75,000 to make this movie. 993 00:51:04,580 --> 00:51:06,270 And in the United States alone it 994 00:51:06,270 --> 00:51:12,580 earned over $500,000, a gigantic amount of money in those days. 995 00:51:12,580 --> 00:51:15,450 So it was an astonishing success in that way. 996 00:51:15,450 --> 00:51:17,460 Let me end by saying one final word 997 00:51:17,460 --> 00:51:21,470 about the astonishing conclusion of the movie. 998 00:51:21,470 --> 00:51:23,897 The ending is beautiful in its own right. 999 00:51:23,897 --> 00:51:25,480 I mean there's a kind of visual beauty 1000 00:51:25,480 --> 00:51:28,830 that's constantly competing for your attention as you watch. 1001 00:51:28,830 --> 00:51:30,640 The boy, as you'll see in the story, 1002 00:51:30,640 --> 00:51:34,400 ends up in a kind of reform school. 1003 00:51:34,400 --> 00:51:36,270 His crimes are so modest and that's 1004 00:51:36,270 --> 00:51:38,860 part of what makes the film so poignant. 1005 00:51:38,860 --> 00:51:41,800 He's actually caught stealing-- not stealing-- the typewriter 1006 00:51:41,800 --> 00:51:44,880 that he was talking about stealing in that scene you saw. 1007 00:51:44,880 --> 00:51:47,250 He's caught when he's trying to return the typewriter. 1008 00:51:47,250 --> 00:51:49,260 He has an attack of conscience, and he 1009 00:51:49,260 --> 00:51:50,440 thinks I shouldn't do this. 1010 00:51:50,440 --> 00:51:52,280 And he's caught returning the typewriter, 1011 00:51:52,280 --> 00:51:55,360 and that's his big crime. 1012 00:51:55,360 --> 00:51:57,850 And you'll see, one of the things that happens to him when 1013 00:51:57,850 --> 00:52:00,790 he's kicked out-- he runs away from his family at one 1014 00:52:00,790 --> 00:52:02,910 point-- he spends nights in Paris 1015 00:52:02,910 --> 00:52:07,070 on his own, this 14-year-old child, boy. 1016 00:52:07,070 --> 00:52:09,360 Very interesting again, about the way 1017 00:52:09,360 --> 00:52:11,970 the film celebrates the city of Paris 1018 00:52:11,970 --> 00:52:17,790 as a nurturing, adventurous, exciting, not really dangerous 1019 00:52:17,790 --> 00:52:18,740 place. 1020 00:52:18,740 --> 00:52:22,450 But let me say one final word about the ending. 1021 00:52:22,450 --> 00:52:25,690 At the end very end of the movie, he kind of escapes. 1022 00:52:25,690 --> 00:52:28,020 He makes a kind of escape from this reform school 1023 00:52:28,020 --> 00:52:28,570 that he's in. 1024 00:52:28,570 --> 00:52:30,930 And it's an immensely beautiful sequence, 1025 00:52:30,930 --> 00:52:34,070 in which we see him running through a countryside. 1026 00:52:34,070 --> 00:52:38,147 And it's a tracking shot, an immense long tracking shot. 1027 00:52:38,147 --> 00:52:40,355 And the camera follows him as he's running-- running, 1028 00:52:40,355 --> 00:52:41,090 running, running. 1029 00:52:41,090 --> 00:52:46,734 And it goes on, in some sense, something like the scene 1030 00:52:46,734 --> 00:52:48,650 that I showed you, where the puppet show seems 1031 00:52:48,650 --> 00:52:50,799 to be going on forever. 1032 00:52:50,799 --> 00:52:52,340 When you're watching the film, you'll 1033 00:52:52,340 --> 00:52:55,050 see that it's strange, because the puppet show intervenes 1034 00:52:55,050 --> 00:52:57,890 in the movie without explanation and disappears from the movie 1035 00:52:57,890 --> 00:52:59,322 without explanation. 1036 00:52:59,322 --> 00:53:00,780 Something of the same kind of thing 1037 00:53:00,780 --> 00:53:03,049 is true here, where the beauty of the countryside 1038 00:53:03,049 --> 00:53:04,590 starts to compete for your attention. 1039 00:53:04,590 --> 00:53:06,900 But in any case, finally at the end of his run 1040 00:53:06,900 --> 00:53:10,520 he comes he comes to a verge, to an end. 1041 00:53:10,520 --> 00:53:12,974 He comes to the water, he comes to the sea. 1042 00:53:12,974 --> 00:53:14,640 He always said he wanted to see the sea, 1043 00:53:14,640 --> 00:53:17,070 but this is a very disappointing version of the sea. 1044 00:53:17,070 --> 00:53:18,840 And he runs up against it. 1045 00:53:18,840 --> 00:53:20,500 Watch how the music works. 1046 00:53:20,500 --> 00:53:22,900 There's a beautiful use of a stringed instrumen-- 1047 00:53:22,900 --> 00:53:25,290 I'm not sure what instrument, maybe a guitar. 1048 00:53:25,290 --> 00:53:27,540 But anyway, a beautiful stringed instrument 1049 00:53:27,540 --> 00:53:31,080 plays a melody that you've heard earlier in the film. 1050 00:53:31,080 --> 00:53:34,240 And we see him running up to this verge. 1051 00:53:34,240 --> 00:53:39,080 And then there's an astonishing moment 1052 00:53:39,080 --> 00:53:40,690 in which he comes to a stop. 1053 00:53:40,690 --> 00:53:42,280 And he's looking at the water. 1054 00:53:42,280 --> 00:53:45,020 And the camera freezes on him. 1055 00:53:45,020 --> 00:53:46,710 There's a freeze frame at the very end. 1056 00:53:46,710 --> 00:53:49,720 It's the most famous freeze frame in the history of movies. 1057 00:53:49,720 --> 00:53:55,050 And after this film, the freeze frame became a cheapo trick. 1058 00:53:55,050 --> 00:53:58,430 You began to find it in television commercials. 1059 00:53:58,430 --> 00:54:01,070 But at the time that he used this frieze frame, 1060 00:54:01,070 --> 00:54:03,530 it was an immensely dramatic effect. 1061 00:54:03,530 --> 00:54:06,950 I don't mean nobody had ever used such strategies before. 1062 00:54:06,950 --> 00:54:09,350 But it is one of the subtlest uses of a freeze 1063 00:54:09,350 --> 00:54:10,930 frame in the history of movies. 1064 00:54:10,930 --> 00:54:13,970 And one of the reasons I want you to watch for it 1065 00:54:13,970 --> 00:54:16,132 and pay attention to it, is listen to the music 1066 00:54:16,132 --> 00:54:16,840 as it's going on. 1067 00:54:16,840 --> 00:54:23,070 Because the tune is finally unfinished at the end. 1068 00:54:23,070 --> 00:54:26,126 In other words, where one final note that isn't played. 1069 00:54:26,126 --> 00:54:27,500 But you've heard the note before, 1070 00:54:27,500 --> 00:54:29,000 so you keep expecting it. 1071 00:54:29,000 --> 00:54:32,290 And that's part of the power of that freeze frame at the end. 1072 00:54:35,070 --> 00:54:38,160 I think he's looking at us when the freeze frame occurred. 1073 00:54:38,160 --> 00:54:43,050 But the point is, where is he going, what comes next? 1074 00:54:43,050 --> 00:54:45,077 The film doesn't really have an answer. 1075 00:54:45,077 --> 00:54:46,660 We don't know where the film is going. 1076 00:54:46,660 --> 00:54:48,870 We don't know what's going to happen to this boy. 1077 00:54:48,870 --> 00:54:52,490 So it ends on a note of open-endedness and ambiguity 1078 00:54:52,490 --> 00:54:55,950 that's powerful and profound. 1079 00:54:55,950 --> 00:54:58,640 But what we also know is that this has not 1080 00:54:58,640 --> 00:55:00,090 been an apocalyptic ending. 1081 00:55:00,090 --> 00:55:02,870 It's not a catastrophic ending. 1082 00:55:02,870 --> 00:55:04,454 The boy is isolated, the boy is alone, 1083 00:55:04,454 --> 00:55:06,370 he doesn't know what's going to happen to him, 1084 00:55:06,370 --> 00:55:08,230 he doesn't know whether he'll be recaptured, 1085 00:55:08,230 --> 00:55:10,030 he doesn't know where he's going to go. 1086 00:55:10,030 --> 00:55:12,776 But I don't think we have any sense that he's going to die. 1087 00:55:12,776 --> 00:55:15,150 We don't have any sense that this is the end of his life. 1088 00:55:15,150 --> 00:55:16,570 We have a sense, maybe, that this 1089 00:55:16,570 --> 00:55:18,300 is the beginning of his life. 1090 00:55:18,300 --> 00:55:21,430 So that there's a profound uncertainty, 1091 00:55:21,430 --> 00:55:24,980 a kind of beautiful uncertainty, a beautiful ambiguity 1092 00:55:24,980 --> 00:55:27,640 at the end of the movie, that is partly 1093 00:55:27,640 --> 00:55:33,250 captured in the complex relation between sound and image 1094 00:55:33,250 --> 00:55:35,240 at the end of this movie. 1095 00:55:35,240 --> 00:55:38,190 Those of you who have never seen The 400 Blows 1096 00:55:38,190 --> 00:55:40,990 are in for a really great treat. 1097 00:55:40,990 --> 00:55:43,610 The final films in this course are among the greatest films 1098 00:55:43,610 --> 00:55:44,800 ever made. 1099 00:55:44,800 --> 00:55:46,730 I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. 1100 00:55:46,730 --> 00:55:48,670 I still remember the place in which 1101 00:55:48,670 --> 00:55:51,710 I saw this film and the exhilaration I felt when 1102 00:55:51,710 --> 00:55:55,490 I came out of watching it, with the recognition that movies 1103 00:55:55,490 --> 00:55:59,490 could be what great novels had been.