122 - Antoine and Colette, 1962, France. Dir. Francois Truffaut.

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

122 - Antoine and Colette, 1962, France. Dir. Francois Truffaut.

Love at Twenty.

An anthology film.

Produced by Pierre Roustang.

With five different directors from five different countries directing five different short films.

About people falling in love.

At age 20.

France - Francois Truffaut, "Paris" ("Antoine and Collette")
Italy - Renzo Rossellini (nephew of Roberto Rossellini), "Rome"
Japan - Shintaro Ishihara, "Tokyo"
Germany - Marcel Ophuls (son of Max Ophuls), "Munich"
Poland - Andrzej Wajda, "Warsaw" ("Warszawa")

Photographs by Henri-Cartier Bresson
Score by Georges Delerue

Antoine is 17.

Okay, so he is not 20.

But he is young and about to fall in love for the first time.

This is Antoine Doinel we are talking about.

The kid from The 400 Blows.

He escaped from a juvenile center.  He was recaptured and put in another one.  A psychologist took interest in him.  He was put on probation.  He now lives on his own and works at a record company.

The Count of Monte Cristo is playing at the cinema.

Antoine lives across the street, in an apartment behind a great neon PARKING sign.

His radio alarm goes off.  A song plays.

Mornings I wake up singing. / At night I dance into bed. / I never care / About the bombs in the air / That one day'll kill us all / Why don't they make peace instead.

He turns it off.  He puts on a record.

J.S. Bach

He goes to work.

His meets his friend Rene for lunch.

They share old times.

Remember the time we were drinking and smoking at your house and your father walked in?

We see a flashback.  A scene that Truffaut must have filmed during The 400 Blows and then not put it in.  With Patrick Auffray also back from The 400 Blows.  In the flashback.  And here.

Antoine and Rene go to the concert.

Berlioz.

At Berlioz he sees a girl.  He watches her.  She glances back and catches him.  She looks back several times throughout the concert.  He looks at her often.

This scene is well edited.  The thirty-minute time limit has helped Truffaut tell his story economically.  One imagines his love of Hitchcock is at play here.

Over the next eight days he runs into her three more times.

At a concert of Eroica.

At a concert of Russian composers.

Finally, he gets her.  She responds.  They become friends.

Antoine and Colette meet often and trade books and records.  They discuss hi-fi at coffee shops.

Hi-fi.  There is a time capsule for you.

They go to lectures.

Pierre Schaeffer, for example.

He takes some books to her.  She is not in.  He offers them to her parents.  They invite him in.  They become friends.

Her father talks to him about Victor Hugo.  He denounced evil but gave no cure for it.

He writes her loves letters.

She writes back.

Dear Antoine, your love letter was very nicely written.  It suggests a man with experience.

She continues to be his friend.

He is in the Friend Zone.  But does not know it.

He goes across the street.  He rents an apartment.  At the Hotel de l'Europe.  Across the street from her.

She and her parents arrive home and park.  Parallel park.  One must park on the street here.

They see Antoine up on the balcony across the street.  They all act excitedly.

They visit his apartment.  They make a big fuss about it in front of him.  He is accepted by her family.

She herself will ask, "Where is one better off than in the bosom of his family?"

Truffaut believes in family.

As time passes Colette goes out with her other friends and other boys, while Antoine comes over looking for her and ends up spending time with her parents.

He finally gets to take her to the cinema.

To--

Actualities
Movietone
Fox.

He takes her hand.  She lets him.  He puts his arm around her.  She tolerates it.  She does not seem to appreciate it, however.  He moves in to kiss her.  She pushes him away.  He tries again.  She pushes him away more forcefully.  In front of all those people.  Sitting there in the dark.

He gets up and leaves.  She stays and finishes the film.

The film she is watching shows a skier crashing.  Similar to what we would see years later on ABC's Wide World of Sports.  The skier crashing.  The agony of defeat.

She stops by to invite him to dinner.  He confronts her.

I can't take these games anymore.  With you blowing hot and cold.  Stop leading me on!

She does not know what he is talking about.  They are friends.

She had come to invite him to dinner.  He comes to dinner.  They are finished.  They are having tangerines.  He has a tangerine with her family.  He looks defeated.

A knock on the door.

A tall, handsome man comes over.  She introduces him around.  He is her date for the evening.  They leave.

Antoine spends the evening with her parents.

His Love at 20--at 17--turns out like so many people's first love.

Sudden.  Intense.  One-sided.

And over.