Our local cinema’s repertory series this week was a double feature of two films by French New Wave director Francois Truffaut. I balked at “French New Wave” because my history with the genre is a rocky one, but I thought the big screen would improve the experience, plus I’m a sucker for double features, and the gloomy weather (rain) warranted holing up in a theatre for four hours. Lucky for me, Truffaut wasn’t a terribly experimental filmmaker; his movies don’t have many of the painful hallmarks of French New Wave style, like disjointed scenes, morphing characters, trippy visual effects, and aimless plots.
First was Jules et Jim (1962), a movie set in the 1910s and beyond, about a decades-long love triangle between Austrian Jules, French Jim, and French Catherine, an enigmatic woman who demands total devotion from both of them. Catherine and Jules get married and move to Austria, and after World War I, Jim goes to visit them and their young daughter. He finds Jules resigned and despondent about Catherine’s infidelities, and when Catherine shows an interest in Jim, Jules encourages it so that they can all live together. It’s obvious to me that Catherine is a total nutcase, but so light-hearted and beautiful that Jules and Jim cannot help but to love her deeply while loving each other out of a deep bond that was forged before Catherine came into their lives. The movie is remarkable in that it’s a love story that is more about fraternal love than romantic love. Because women are crazy.
The 400 Blows (1959) is literal translation of the French Les Quatre Cents Coup, which misses the colloquial meaning “to raise hell.” It’s a semi-autobiographical movie about a young boy named Antoine who is deemed a troublemaker by his parents and teachers even though he’s just a typical, neglected-at-home boy who dabbles in petty crime. His mother is a self-absorbed, short-tempered woman who piles chores and criticism upon Antoine, and his father is kindly but oblivious. After getting in major trouble at school, Antoine runs away from home and stays with a school friend and then they plot to steal a typewriter from his father’s office, which lands Antoine in the hands of the authorities. It’s amazing how quickly Antoine’s situation escalates to such dire, helpless delinquency. Filmmakers have long sought to capture how the spirited energy of youth is crushed by twisted adults, but I have never seen it done with as much care and even-handedness as The 400 Blows.
After the double feature, Mr. P and I sludged back home through the rain, the rain-slicked ice, and vast puddles. As we ate dinner, the conversation somehow turned to the Smurfs. (Yes, we may be an ole married couple, but we haven’t completely run out of things to talk about.) “Do you know the Smurfs?” I asked. “The little blue creatures that live in the woods?”
“That sounds familiar,” Mr. P said, and I googled an image of the Smurfs, upon which he said, “Ah, Les Schtroumpfs!”
“What? You had the Smurfs in France?”
“We called them Les Schtroumpfs!”
My mind was blown: French Smurfs?! It turns out the Smurfs originated in Belgium and thus spoke French. Upon reflection, this really isn’t surprising — after all, the Smurfs were exemplary Socialists.
