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Sous les toits de Paris, with a panning glimpse of the locked Musée du Cinéma like a barred cathedral. (A '68 vision, "dedicated to the Cinémathèque Française of Henri Langlois.") Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), kicked out of the military ("For the general good, some individuals should not be allowed to clutter up the army") and bouncing from skit to skit with an antic deadpan. The hotel clerk's desk is just a temporary place for catching up on Cornell Woolrich, a whole agency of Lubitsch private detectives welcomes the lad once he's fired. (A maladroit snoop, he trails subjects by zigzagging across the sidewalk while hiding behind a newspaper.) In and out of jobs, on and off with the sweetheart (Claude Jade), thus adulthood. "Are you sure you understand yourself? Because I need to understand you." A screwball bildungsroman for François Truffaut, a rabbity Candide floating through a city of obsessive romantics. The shoe-store proprietor (Michael Lonsdale) calls for an investigation on the conspiracy of everybody not liking him, "my wife laughs all the time, except when I tell a joke." Said wife (Delphine Seyrig) enters like an enchanted siren, so impossibly cool and elegant and amused that Doniel must rush to the phone booth for a breathless description. "We want a report, not a declaration of love." (A Tashlin touch sees him spilling his coffee in her presence while the Eiffel Tower looms erect outside the window.) The girlfriend from Antoine et Colette is now married and spotted in the middle of a stakeout, the prestidigitator from L'Atalante is also married, much to the chagrin of the jilted autre homme. Pigalle hookers, trajectory of a letter, a lesson in Balzac from the "apparition" made flesh. "Les gents sont formidables," a man's epitaph and a cinéaste's credo. With Harry-Max, André Falcon, Daniel Ceccaldi, Claire Duhamel, Catherine Lutz, Martine Ferrière, Jacques Rispal, and Serge Rousseau.
--- Fernando F. Croce |