An impressionistic response to Truffaut’s, The 400 Blows 1959

The 400 Blows, or "faire les quatre cents coups” (to ‘raise hell’), directed by Truffaut, 1959

The luscious blacks and whites, the compositions of each scene, tight and densely woven, characters, spotlighted, singular, located in packed scenes, the tableaux of Paris we pass through in the late 50s, memorable, one wants to retain the whole film, its cave-like compositions, closeness, and the colour world we live in with that lense, that focus, the gentleness of Truffaut’s camera capturing common scenarios and traumatic inner realities, the realism of a mischievous hellion of a boy, Antoine, caught in an unwantedness.

His stepfather, Julien, tries to rein him in but has no real emotional commitment to the boy. His mother, Gilberte, was ambivalent about having him, his grandmother saved him, insisting on his birth, raised him until she grew too old and frail, and couldn’t keep him. In the film, his mother, while neglectful, does love him, does try intermittently, but doesn’t stand up for him when he gets into trouble. He runs away often and caring school friends look after him. Stealing, and then getting caught returning a typewriter he stole from the company where his stepfather works, he ends up in a Juvenile Detention centre. It is near the ocean, as he had requested, and his stepping, after a long run from the prison, into the ocean surf is a moment of freedom and the final exuberant scene.

The acting is remarkable. As The 400 Blows is semi-autobiographical, we know Antoine grows up to be the brilliant French director, Truffaut, for whom, at age 27, The 400 Blows is his first full-length feature.

For anyone who’s had a difficult childhood, it’s a film of deep understanding and surely resonates with many people on that level. In real life, it has a heroic ending in Truffaut’s success and place in French film history as a central figure in the French New Wave movement.

Yet, for me, it is the compassion he shows this young teen, the camera angles, dialogue, Antoine’s escaping and running, this boy who represents Truffaut himself, who is as he is, that fills one with appreciation as rich as the sumptuous scenes of black and white filmography.

And, lastly, for this viewer, the scene of the crowds of children watching a movie in a theatre, a film we don’t see, perhaps we are the movie being watched and enjoyed, an adorable ocean of small, young, trusting, loving faces, so sweet, will remain with me, a joy.

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Michelangelo Antonioni: 'Identificazione di una donna/Identification of a Woman' (1982)

Some thoughts I had on Antonioni's 'Identificazione di una donna/Identification of a Woman' (1982), now a review at IMDB:

While I feel that Antonioni was perhaps attempting to create too much of a plot in this film, and he almost creates 'a story' with a twist and a climax and a resolution, yet he cannot ultimately play by the Artistotelian rules of what drama is. We come so close, though. I savour that closeness, it is like the scene of Niccolo and Mavi driving through the fog. We sense ultimate meaning, the neatness of a story begun, enclosed now in a fog of unknowing, that contains vague threats, the tension leaving the main characters emotionally raw, and they part as we the audience part from any storyline resembling anything like a normal structure.

Antonioni does not move by classical plot lines. His movies are composed of intensities, emotional weights that fall through the characters. When the emotion builds to high pitch, something happens. People that we fall away from disappear out of our lives. Sometimes we look for them. Niccolo winds up the stairs of the building that is the address where Mavis perhaps now resides. They watch each other for a moment: he on the street looking up, she from the lit window looking down; nothing else happens.

Antonioni's movies are like life in this way. We do not know the 'grand plot' of our lives, if there is one at all, but are driven by our sensitivities, emotional entanglements, the intensities of our lives, those we love in the ways that we understand love. We are part of our environments, rich or poor, and while ideas exist, and politics, they do not drive us as strongly as our hearts, our questioning spirit.

While many people find Antonioni's films long, plot-less and perhaps nearly pointless, his movies make sense to me. They end, not with a resolution to a twist-turning, hair-raising story but with an understanding of a moment, an epiphany if you will. In this film, the asteroid that is turned into a spaceship heading towards the sun that Niccolo speaks to a child about is a brilliant ending. Not only a continuing poetic metaphor of the sun and our passion but the 'light' of insight is here. Imagination is highlighted, and the child, who could be his nephew or the son of Nadia, we do not know and it does not matter.

In Identificazione di una donna, Antonioni further develops the theme of the creative artist, the director, who is, here, searching for the identity of woman. It's beautiful. Respectful and adoring of women's sexuality, including bisexuality, the mystique of the woman who is not one, but many.

As with all of Antonioni's films, I found myself adoring the characters in Identificazione di una donna, their lives. Let yourself go, forget expectations, feel the force of the film at its core. We are like this. Undecided, with choices to make every moment of our lives.