422 - Small Change, France, 1976. Dir. Francois Truffaut.

Monday, February 26, 2018

422 - Small Change, France, 1976.  Dir. Francois Truffaut.

Gregory went BOOM!

So says two-year-old Gregory himself after having just fallen ten stories from his apartment window.  He was pursuing his family cat while his mother was inside distracted, talking to her friend and looking for her wallet.  People on the ground watched aghast as Gregory tumbled.  But he bounced on the ground and started laughing.  He was fine.

Francois Truffaut is looking at the lives of children, and he stands in favor of their resilience despite the hardships that beset them.  He tells the truth.  He shews their vulnerability, their helplessness, their longings and desires, and their attempts to negotiate to the best of their abilities the difficult world around them.

Truffaut seems to agree with James Agee, who wrote the screenplay for The Night of the Hunter (1955), and who has the legendary Lillian Gish as Rachel Cooper state three times that children abide.

When you're little, you have more endurance than God is ever going to grant you again.  Children are Man at his strongest.  They abide.

Lord save little children!  The wind blows and the rain is cold.  Yet they abide.

They abide and they endure.

The Night of the Hunter
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/01/027-night-of-hunter-1955-united-states.html

Small Change is a kind of French Our Gang, or Little Rascals.  It is a series of vignettes that follows children of a range of ages and celebrates their creativity and cleverness, their awkwardnesses and foibles.  It is sweet and sad, humorous and serious.  In the end it is optimistic.

We get to know Patrick and his friend Laurent and his other friend Leclou.  Patrick's father in a wheelchair.  Laurent's parents the hairdressers.  Leclou's troubled home life that leads to the arrest of his abusive mother.  The Deluca brothers, Mathieu and Frank.  The boy with the funny haircut, Richard Golfier.  Brouillard, the confident one.  The teachers, M. Richet and Mlle. Petit.

Jean-Francois Steevenin, who was Francois Truffaut's real Assistant Director, and who played the Assistant Director in the behind-the-scenes film Day for Night (1973), returns here as the boys' history teacher, Jean-Francois Richet, and he turns in a memorable performance as a likable and good-hearted man.  He AD'd and directed a few more times in his career, but from here on out he worked almost exclusively as an actor.  Our gain.

Small Change continues Truffaut's streak of making films with heart, about real people in real-life situations.

"Life may be hard, but it's also wonderful."