Last Monday🌒OT of 2022

Good post-Noel evening. The kids got to pick the holiday film on Saturday and older kid picked this one - the first installment in The Adventures of Antoine Doinel: a Boy Escaped (1959)*. 

René and Antoine at the cinema. It's one of my favorite holiday movies. Early on, a sign reads something about Joyeux Noël. About halfway through an unsteady Père Noël crosses the street. Near the end, the young delinquents pass a Christmas tree. But mostly it's about child abuse and neglect, playing hooky and watching movies, plagiarizing Balzac. You know, hijinks. Funny and sad, just like Christmas. 

Younger kid opted out, muttered something about "... you and your Nouvelle Vague merde. You promised me a rive gauche film tonight. Agnès Varda! Alain Resnais! Chris Marker!" and went to bed early.** 

Noticed a couple of things I didn't remember from previous viewings - 

It's dedicated to André Bazin, Truffaut's mentor and surrogate dad at Cahiers du Cinéma, who saved him from a life of crime probably. Bazin died, age 40, during the first day of shooting this film, Truffaut's first. 

Music is composed by Jean Constantin - had to explain to daughter why I chuckled.

Teen Jean Pierre Léaud is phenomenal as Truffaut's alter ego. Les Quatre Cents Coups is a French expression meaning "raising hell", which is what the kids do but also what the adults in French society are doing to their kids maybe.

I... know a lot about this movie? and also the French New Wave? (Truffaut and Godard esp.) is what I discovered when discussing what makes this movie great with spouse and older kid. Truffaut died in his early 50s in '84, before I even knew his work though I'd no doubt seen him in Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, but he averaged about a movie a year since 1959. I adore Godard, but he had a true ambivalence about film. Truffaut was in love with film, and it showed. Started discussing the movie with the family and ended somewhere around Truffaut's influences and those he influenced, and once I started talking about Assayas and Léaud portraying an aged New Wave director in Irma Vep, I gave up the ghost. In fact, if you read this far, you did better than my family, who dropped the veil of polite indifference rather early. You can wiki the rest if you're interested.***

I wanted to jump right to his second film, Tirez sur le Pianiste†, right after but no one was interested. That's also a Christmas movie, shot between November, '59 and January, '60.

My kids are home until the 2nd week of January, my wife until the day after New Years. I'm already tired. 

Do what you must below. Have a pleasant OT. I've said my somewhat truncated piece. I'm already gone.

*A couple of other favorite holiday/non-holiday movies, if that topic doesn't bore you to tears as it does me, are Eyes Wide Shut and Calvary.

**Actually she had a touch of fever and scratchy throat. So the three of us watched Truffaut instead of His Dark Materials.

***You won't because you aren't. Your time is precious and your interests your own. ~ boring ass sqrl

†Based on Down There by David Goodis. The core of the book is still there, but the movie is equal parts silly and serious. I love it.