Proposal
I would like to choose a topic about a 90’s film as my final assignment. Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows is a French drama that is my topic I want to do in my final. This movie was previewed out on May 4th 1959 at Cannes then it is released on June 3rd 1959 in France. The story was inspired by Truffaut’s own early life. The reasons why I choose this topic are because it was a touching movie; I like this kind of movie that can influence my feelings. It was also is a very beautiful film, which shot in black and white in Paris in a chill season. Other than that, I like the style that Truffaut shot in some of the scene especially the final shot was special. It was a zoom in to a freeze frame, shows the character looking into the camera. I would like to take this film as my reference in the future and for my final assignment.
World Cinema: Term Paper
The 400 blows is one of the great films in 50’s, it is a 1959 French drama
film, and was directed by François Truffaut. It was François Truffaut’s
first and most personal feature film that came from his own depressed
childhood, so he bases Antoine (Jean-Pierre
Leaud, the 14-year-old star) on himself, including in terms of
appearance. It's also one of the most important and influential
films ever made. This film is about a troubled youth growing up in Paris and apparently collides into a life of
crime that helped define the new wave era in France; it displays many of the
characteristic traits of the movement.
The film's famous final shot is a
zoom in to a freeze frame, to shows him (Antoine) looking directly into the camera. He just run away
from a house of detention, and is on the beach, between the land and water, meaning
between past and future. It is the first time he has seen the sea. In the film,
for pure effect everything was adds to the impact of the final shot. We meet Antoine
when he is in his early teens, and living with his mother and stepfather in a
crowded walkup where they always busy of each other's way. The mother (Claire
Maurier) is a blond who likes tight
sweaters and is was distracted by poverty, by her bothersome son, and by an
affair with a man from work. The stepfather (Albert Remy) is a nice enough
sort, easy-going, and treats the boy in a friendly fashion although he is not
deeply attached to him. Both parents are always away from home a lot, and don’t
have the patience to pay close attention to the boy. They judge him by
appearances, and by the reports of others who misunderstand him. To give agree
with these issues, Antoine turns to a life with petty criminal activity and
dreams of giving up school to start making a real living, he wants to get out
of the city to see the ocean, something he has always dreamed of.
At
school, Antoine’s teacher (Guy Decombie) has been typecast he as a troublemaker. When a pinup calendar is
being passed from hand to hand, when it is in his hand the teacher noticed. The teacher ask him to stand in the corner, he makes faces to his classmates and writes a lament on the
wall. Then, the teacher orders him to decline his
offending sentence, as punishment. His homework is incomplete. Rather than
return to school without it, he skips. His excuse is that he was sick. After
his next absence, he says his mother has died. When his mother appears at
his school, he is named as a liar.
The boy finally quits school after
being caught by his teacher that he plagiarizing Balzac’s
essay. To more trouble and eventually to
a downward spiral, he and a friend steal a typewriter from his stepfather work place to finance his plans to leave home,
he gets caught while trying to return the typewriter and he is sent to the juvenile
detention home.
In this film, his parents left him
at the mercy of social services because they said “If he came home, he would
only run again”. When he was put in a police wagon with prostitutes and thieves
and wants to be driven through the dark streets of Paris, his face looking out
through the bars and looks very depressed and he cried. At this part it was
very touching, the expressions of his sadness and disappointed can felt.
Bicycle thieves
This movie is given an name of Oscar in 1949, usual voted one
of the greatest films of all time, admire as one of the start of Italian
neorealism, it is a simple, powerful film about a man who needs a job. In
addition, what we collect from these entries is that De Sica
and his writer were finding inspiration close to the ground in those days right
after the war, when Italy was paralyzed by poverty.
The
story of the Bicycle thieves is simple to understand. Ricci (Lamberto
Maggiorani), a man who every morning joins a hopeless queue to looking for a
job. One day there is a job for a man with a bicycle. His wife Maria (
Lianella Carell) strips the sheets from their bed, and
he is able to pawn them to redeem a bicycle.
The
bicycle allows Ricci to go to work as a poster-hanger, to paste the cinema
advertisements on walls. Maria, meanwhile, goes to thank the Wise Woman, who
predicted that her husband would get a job. Ricci, waiting for her impatiently,
finally he leaves his bicycle at the door while he climbs upstairs to see
what's his wife doing; De Sica is make fun of us, since we expect the bike
could be gone when Ricci returns, and it's still there.
Then,
of course, it is stolen. Ricci and his son Bruno (
Enzo Staiola) search for the bicycle, but that's an
impossible task in the bigger of Rome, and the police are no help. Finally
Ricci gives up and he tells Bruno "You live and suffer". Then, in a
scene of great cheer, they eat in a restaurant, Bruno even allowed drinking a
little wine; the boy looks wistfully at a family eating platters of pasta, and
is told by his father, "To eat like that, you need a million lira a month
at least."
After awhile, Ricci saw the
bicycle thief, and pursues him into a whorehouse. When they arguing, a cop
arrives, but can do nothing, because there is no proof and only Ricci is
witness. Then, in the famous closing sequence of the movie, Ricci
is convinced
to steal a bicycle by himself, is a continuing the cycle of
theft and poverty.
The different between the 400 blows and bicycle thieves
The 400 blows is a French New Wave
venerable classic that was relation to personal influence and filming technique.
In 1945, the Italian film industry experienced economic and political crisis.
However, experienced Italian filmmakers, such as Vittorio De Sica like bicycle
thieves generated the idea to work outside of studios and reflect the effects
of World War II in their films. This movement became as Italian Neorealism. The
Bicycle Thief is mostly about looking for a stolen bike, with nice little human
moments thrown in. This movie managed plan
careful to give the Bicycle Thief its realistic look. Especially, crowd
scenes were meticulously staged and drilled, including one for which director
Vittorio De Sica hired 40 street vendors. The Roman fire department provided a
"surprise" rainstorm for another scene. In addition, De Sica shot
with as many as six cameras at once to get the untrained actors' spontaneous
performances from several angles. The 400 Blows is about adventures of a
kid who just can't get any respect from adults. Neither of these films is sentimental,
but rather just shows people how they are. The 400 Blows is more entertaining
overall. Neither movie is optimistic in regard to the characters, but The 400
Blows is less of a downer.
The
400 blows
-
In the ending, the famous and special final shot is a zoom in to a freeze frame, to shows
him (Antoine) looking directly into the
camera.
-
In this film,
François Truffaut
use a lot of
Hitchcock’s style, who was his favorite filmmaker.
-
Both parents are busy to
their work, and don’t have time
to pay close attention to the boy.
-
Antoine’s parents don’t understand him and they also
don’t believe him.
-
Antoine’s parents are not care enough to him, so he
tries to do something not good to attract their attention.
-
In this movie, it shows violent. Antoine’s stepfather
would slap hard on his face and he easy get angry when Antoine do something
wrong.
-
The only happy moment that Antoine with his family is
when they together going to cinema watch movie.
-
They not even sit down and listen or let
Antoine speak out his feeling. When they noticed he skip school and lying, they just
scold him strictly.
-
No one was respect and care his feeling.
-
He
has a dream, and he wants to start making a
real living, he tried get out of the city to see the ocean, something he has
always dreamed of.
Bicycle thieves
- In the end, there
is different from the 400 blows. The final shot is the camera man takes Antonio and his son Bruno’s back walk on the busy street.
Slowly, we cannot see them anymore because they were into the crowd.
- - The film's final shot
of Antonio and Bruno walking away from the camera into the distance is a respect
to many Charlie
Chaplin films, who was De
Sica favorite filmmaker.
- - In this film, Ricci is an unemployed man
in the depressed post-WWII economy of Italy, he wants to gets a good job but he
have to needs a bike for hanging up posters.
- - But on his first day of
work, the bicycle is stolen. He and his son explore working-class Rome looking
for their bike and in search of the thief, who always seems a few steps ahead
of him.
- - Ricci finally manages to find and caught
the thief but with no proof, so he has to abandon his result. But he and his
son know well that without a bike, Ricci won't be able to keep the job.
- - In bicycle thieves, there have shows a family love where in
the 400 blows don’t have that love or relationship. When Ricci
noticed his bike has been stolen, he and his son Bruno keep finding the bike,
Ricci will always look back and waiting for his son because his son was very tired
and getting slowly. This part shows concern of a fatherly to his son.
- - When suddenly, Ricci saw a lot of people
ran to the lake because has a boy was drowning and he thought might is his son,
so he quickly go and see. He was very worried his son safety.
- - This film can be successful was the
writers and director focus on some universal truths, it were about human
nature, love, pride, survival and family values.
François Truffaut
Truffaut was born in Paris on 6 February 1932
and he began to hard-working go to the movies at 7. He was also a great
reader but not a good student. He left school at 14 and started working. In
1947, aged 15, he founded a film club and met
André Bazin,
a French critic, who becomes his protector. Bazin helped
illicit of Truffaut
and also when he was put in jail because he wastes the army. In 1953, he
published his first movie critiques in "Les Cahiers du Cinema." In
1954, Truffaut directed his first short film.
He also directed
Les Mistons (1957), considered the real first step
of his cinematographic work. The other big year was 1959, the huge success of his first
full-length film
The 400 Blows (1959) It was the beginning of the new
wave, a new way of making movies in France. This was also the birth year of his
first daughter
Laura
Truffaut.
From 1959 until his death, François Truffaut's life and films
are mixed up. Truffaut (1984) died of a brain tumor, at 52, but he
left behind 21 films (not include shorts and screenplays). Truffaut
was the most popular and successful French film director ever. His main themes
were passion, women, childhood and faithfulness.
Vittorio De Sica
Vittorio De Sica was born into poverty in
Sora, Lazio (7
July
1901). He was an
Italian director and
actor, a leading figure in
the
neorealist movement.
His favorite filmmaker was
Charlie
Chaplin. He
grew
up in Naples, and he started as an office clerk in order to earn money to
support his poor family. He was increasingly good in acting, and made
his screen debut when teens and he joining a stage company in
1923. By the late 1920s he was a successful performance idol of the Italian
theatre, and repeated that achievement in Italian movies, mostly light
comedies.
He
turned to directing in 1940, making comedies in a similar way, but with his
fifth film The Children Are Watching Us (1944), he
revealed before unsuspected depths and an extraordinarily sensitive touch with
actors, especially children. It was also the first film he made with the writer
Cesare Zavattini who make Shoeshine (1946) and Bicycle Thieves (1948). Bicycle Thieves was a heartbreaking
study of poverty in postwar Italy which won special Oscars before the foreign
film category was officially established.
Then, Bicycle Thieves was
also cited by Turner Classic
Movies as one of the 15
most influential films in cinema history.
In
addition, he loves gambling. Because of it, he often
lost large sums of money and accepted his work
that might not otherwise have interested him. He never kept his gambling as a secret from anyone; in fact, he projected it on characters
in his own movies, like Count Max (which
he acted in but did not direct) and The
Gold of Naples.
After
the box-office drop of Umberto D. (1952), he
returned to directing lighter work, he appearing in front of the camera more
frequently. Although Yesterday, Today and tomorrow (1963) won him
another Oscar, but it was generally accepted his career as one of the great
directors was over. However, just before he died he made The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970), which
won him another Oscar, and his final film was A Brief Vacation (1973). Vittorio De Sica died at 73 after a surgery of removal a
cyst from his lungs.
Confidentially
Yours
Confidentially Yours is a 1983 French
film directed by François Truffaut. It is based on the novel The Long Saturday Night, by the
American author Charles Williams, and it was Truffaut's last film. Other than that, the film
had a total of 1,169,635 admissions in France and was the 39th highest grossing
film of the year.
The premise of the film is simple.
Julien Vercel (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is a luckless businessman who is under
suspicion for murdering his wife and her lover but his smart and beautiful
secretary Barbara (Fanny Ardant), who is hopelessly in love with her boss, and
tries to solve the murder and prove his innocence while Varcel spends most of
the film hiding in a basement store room in his office. From the film's first sequence,
showing Barbara walking to work with a happy step, the film puts a new twist on
Truffaut's usual man-woman plots. The relationship that livens up the film
isn't between the leads. It's between Ardant and Truffaut's admire camera.
She's not just the film's centerpiece; she's its reason for being.
Confidentially
Yours is a romance, comedy, murder movie that was the last film Truffaut made.
Francois Truffaut was love for the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Then, it should
be no surprise to find Truffaut paying respect to the "Master of
Suspense". He likes many of Hitchcock's films it mixes murder with humor,
with the two leads misunderstanding each other, a good deal of misdirection, and
everything turning out okay and he was using Hitchcock style in his film.
In
addition, the film belongs to Ardant. She's a tall, leggy actress with a strong
face who strides along with confidence and seems to look upon life's mysteries
with humor and a little skepticism. She's great in this film. Twenty years
later, in middle age playing a wordly aristocrat in Ridicule, she proves she
hasn't lost a thing.Confidentially Yours won't be added to any list of
Truffaut's great films, but it is a very undertaken and enjoyable piece of
work. If you like Truffaut, Ardant or Hitchcock, its well takes your time to
watch.
This movie does seem like a "real" Hitchcock movie but it
doesn't have a certain feeling to it. We are watching a "forgery" in
a sense. Truffaut, for however talented he may be, he can't really pull this
off completely. Confidentially Yours is a
fun, and exciting entertainment by one of the greatest French directors of all
time. It just can't really hold up to Hitchcock classics like "Rear
Window", "North by Northwest", and "The Birds.
At first, the story line gets too complicated to follow, and
coincidences occur left and right, but Truffaut by this point he was only
interested in making good entertainments and in that he was succeeded
admirably.
Compare
or the improvement of Francois Truffaut
previous and
latest movie
First, the main differences between
Truffaut previous movie and latest are the use of camera movements and angles. Although
Renoir had made a resourceful and fresh use of traveling and long takes,
Truffaut masters this technique as anyone else does. The camera was moves smoothly;
it nearly swings or floats from angle to angle following an action. Truffaut
enjoys playing around with the camera: extremely long takes as we have never seen
in any of the previous films like some of them in the classroom, other in
Antoine's friend house, or a magnificent take at the end of the film in which
we see Antoine, then a panoramic view and then Antoine again, running towards
the sea. He also shoots from impossible angles, like those at the beginning
from below the Tour Eiffel, or the nearly zenithal take following the jogging
students in the streets. Or he teases us with the fake black out, when Antoine
goes down the stairs to throw away garbage. Or shows us inner feelings through
close-ups like the scene in which Antoine lies to his father telling him he did
not take his map.
However, the
most difference is the treatment of action. Truffaut is an observer, a very
good photographer. He was happy takes a shot in shooting casual, long scenes
like the boy tearing away his notebook pages; the whole sequence of Antoine's
arrival at his empty home is excellent, the three reflections in his mother's
mirror in which she will look afterwards, or Antoine combing his hair, laying
the table. Also the spinning ride, or the long traveling following the escape
of Antoine. They are long, but not slow. They keep tension up, as if everyday
acts and decisions could be heroic and transmit the greatest interest and
attraction. It looks like a documentary on human life!
Truffaut's aim was trying to make a realistic and moving film,
which, by watching his film, I realized that he had done very well. He also
combining the humor and drama too, we have the defining French film of the 20th
century. A black and white film that is actually full of colour in his film.
Conclusion
As a conclusion, compare between Francois Truffaut previous and latest movie. I more like the Francois Truffaut latest movie,
Confidentially Yours than his first movie, The 400 Blows. The reasons are the
story of Confidentially Yours is more interested and attract to me especially
the end of the twist ending. Through Francois Truffaut’s movies, we can know
his style was like Hitchcock style because
he is his favorite filmmaker to learn from him. Other than that, I like the
beautiful lady named Barbara in this film that she was giving a great
performance. However, The 400 Blows was Francois Truffaut first movie and it really a great movie
that was the begin of the New Wave in France. Francois Truffaut also has his
own famous final shot is a zoom in to a freeze
frame that the actors
in his movie, their eyes were looking directly to the camera. For example, the
two movies I had mentioned. I also have compare Francois Truffaut’s movies with
another filmmaker called Vittorio De Sica, who was directed
Bicycle Thieves. He also has his favorite filmmaker to learn his style in the
movies that Charlie Chaplin who was his most favorite director. So, in the movie of Bicycle Thieves was
basically speeding up. Other than that, De Sica has a lot of movements in his
movie like when a person walk there would have a car pass by. Both of the filmmakers have their own long
term and difference style, not to say who are not good. They were really great
filmmakers in cinema but I more like Francois Truffaut than De Sica is because the story he think
in his movie and the style was I like and wants to learn from him
