June 6th 2013. Pick Of The Day.
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Jean Gabin and Bourvil transport a black market butchered PIG ACROSS PARIS under midnight's cover in occupied France in Claude-Autant Lara's ink-black farce. Last day to catch this gem in its newly restored DCP at the Village East Cinema. Chose it already, so I pass it up as today's Pick in favor of a different tale of Parisian austerity.
Ted Kotcheff's THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ, an under-appreciated and knowing coming-of-age dramedy which boasts Richard Dreyfuss' first lead perf, also screens its last today at Film Forum. Never got to choose it, but I must pass it up once more, in favor of a portrait of struggling youth that lands with far greater impact. Next time, T-Kotch.
The Clearview Chelsea Cinemas present Edmund Goulding's adap of W. Somerset Maughm's THE RAZOR'S EDGE. A box office smash in its day, it represented one of the more successful attempts from Tyrone Power to gain some serious acting cred his action adventure flicks would never afford. TP, as he's unfortunately initialized, delivers the goods in this classic, and Anne Baxter bagged the little gold guy as the despondent widow whose journey of self-discovery ends not nearly as well as Powers' protagonist's. Not my Pick today though, as a different and heavier look at youth's bleak existentialism with far less romantic flair unspools this day. One which may also claim to have kicked off a whole film movement.
Francois Truffaut was 8 years old when he reportedly saw his first movie, Abel Gance's PARADIS PERDU. The auteur in the making practically lived at the movie theater thereafter, skipping school and inventing creative admittance to the venues that had perhaps become the home his parents, who'd fobbed him off on his grandmother, had never bothered to provide. Kicked fully and finally out of school he determined to make a film scholar of himself, and toward this goal he availed himself constantly of Henri Langois' Cinematheque Francais, where he immersed himself in the works of American masters such as John Ford, Howard Hawks and Nicholas Ray. Oh, and from shores nearby one Alfred Hitchcock, whom he'd later submit to a series of intimate and comprehensive interviews that would serve as basis for one of the better film texts the cinematically obsessed have enjoyed these last 50 years. Lemme not get ahead of myself tho. Ahem.
In 1950 Truffaut fatefully met one Andre Bazin, who would not only bail the budding cineaste out of a few real-world scrapes but invite him to write for his Cahiers du Cinema, what was fast becoming an important postwar film periodical. Truffaut responded by so enthusiastically embracing Bazin's auteur theory in his critiques that he wound up savaging the classic French film industry while praising Hollywood's. He somehow saw the killing of French cinema's past akin to exalting America's. And he was not alone. Among the writers Bazin's missive employed before they started their revolution were Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, and a screwy little knucklehead named Jean-Luc Godard. The controversial stance these maveriques adopted drew much derision from the established film communtiy, to the point where Truffaut was "not invited" to the 1958 Cannes film fest. What a difference a year would make.
Brimming with the desire to prove his point beyond the printed page Truffaut set about filming several shorts that displayed his sense of classicism, and the desire to undo it simultaneously. Then he decided to put it all on celluloid in long form, his personal film philosophy and aesthetic, as well as the circumstances that had led him to this point. It was a incredibly rare example of authorship meeting autobiography in the cinema, then just a 1/2 century old. The result was so powerful, so medium shattering, that the very Cannes festival that had effectively banned him a year earlier now awarded the fledgling filmmaker with their Best Director award. It remains among the most beloved films about disillusioned youth, of childhood gone amok, and is not only irrevocably imprinted on the mind of any filmmaker attempting a similar tale of our pre-adult years, whether it be QUADROPHENIA or FERRIS BUELLER, it only just kicked off the French Nouvelle Vague of the 60's. And we all know how that turned out. Sometimes a miserable childhood can propel a special soul to become a great artist and produce works of singular empathy. I'm glad Francie T chose to share his sadness and joy with the world from the very first.
Francois Truffaut's THE 400 BLOWS screens at MOMA as part of the museum's Auteurist History of Film series. Mommy and Daddy issues? This is cheaper than a therapist.
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Be safe and sound and make sue the next Nerfherder is too! Back manana with a new Pick! SUMMAH, STOCKAHZ!
-Joe Walsh
