"400 Blows" Response

400 Blows (1959, dir. François Truffaut) is a film that devolves; its protagonist, Antoine Doinel, never truly improves. He struggles to make the right decisions, instead attempting to free himself in whatever way possible. He further and further alienating himself from his family and authority until he’s isolated himself entirely.
At first, I would call the plot meandering, but I think that the main reason for this assessment is that the plot is incredibly realistic, it never feels overdramatized. Despite the severity of Antoine’s punishments, they never feel out of the realm of possibility. This feeling of rawness is supported by the cinematographic techniques employed throughout the film. Very rarely is anything other than natural light used, and in tandem with the longer shots, handheld cameras, and minimal use of flashy transitions, the whole film has a documentary feel.

By basing much of the story on his own life, Truffaut ensures that the actions depicted in the film come across as plausible, yet emotional. 400 Blows is never a tearjerker though, because it’s not a melodrama. In fact, the movie is largely a response to the overproduced, emotionally saturated films produced in France in the decades before. Truffaut was a critic before his time as a director, so he had a very clear idea about what was wrong with the cinema. This film seeks to right those wrongs.

400 Blows could have so easily been another film about an unfortunate youth with a heart of gold who eventually comes around and gets his act together, but Truffaut was not interested in that. Antoine (warranted) distaste at his upbringing increases throughout the movie, pushing him to make harder and harder decisions in the face of more and more unjust treatment. This isn’t to say that he’s a little angel; Antoine routinely messes up, gets given more chances, and then messes up again. He can’t catch a break, especially from himself. He tries so desperately to find his own life out of the mess that he was given, and eventually finds that if you cast off everyone and everything in attempt to be free, you’re left only with yourself and your loneliness.

"Forbidden Games" Response

Forbidden Games (1952, dir. René Clément) concerns itself primarily with the innocence of it’s two protagonists, Michel and Paulette. The movie chronicles their friendship following the death of Paulette’s parents at the hands of Nazi planes, and the games that the two of them create to cope with the horrors of war.

The movie is filmed with two distinct styles, one of which only appears at the beginning and possibly the end. Most of the movie is filmed to highlight the created world that the children have for themselves; much of the film is shot in studios, Paulette in particular is lit somewhat angelically, and the whole movie has a melancholic, nostalgic quality. At the beginning however, the style is drastically different. The camera is detached from any one particular character and instead focuses on the planes and the panic they ensue, interspersing actual war footage with shots of stampeding and cowering Parisians. The effect is that this sequence is far more realistic than any other portion, serving as the the trauma that Paulette is forced to respond to for the rest of the film.

This is probably the most visually stunning sequence in the film, but opening with this reduced the visual fidelity of the rest of the film in the process. I enjoyed the score and the themes of the movie, but the editing and cinematography of the film was not particularly noteworthy. Any film that doesn’t take full advantage of the medium is a little disappointing. Yes, the movie shot the children in ways to highlight their innocence and the peasants in a way to highlight their pettiness, but there wasn’t anything particularly inventive about the way these scenes were shot.

However, I think that the way that Clément handled the children’s game was masterful. Everyone can recall getting involved in some “game” from when they were children, whether it’s army men or trains, and how deeply invested they became in it. The weight that this game holds for Paulette and Michel is ramped up to eleven, because not only is it a fictional plaything, it also serves as a quasi-religious ritual used to grieve. It becomes Paulette’s entire world, and she has nothing left when it falls apart.

"Beauty and the Beast" Response

The world of Beauty and the Beast (1946), despite being a classic tale that has been told time and time again, exists in a mythology unique to the film and its director, Jean Cocteau. The whole film attempts to create an otherworldly, dreamlike atmosphere for its characters to inhabit and walk through, and it does a remarkable job at this (well, sometimes). The Beast’s castle, the most important setting of Cocteau’s “fairy tale without fairies”, bombards the viewer with information to reinforce this idea that the place that we are seeing exists in some other state.

The most effective method in which the film achieves this goal is through the use of special effects. The scene in which Beauty’s father first enters the castle might be the best in the entire movie. The ethereal, disembodied hands light the way to a room that seems entirely detached; other than the table and fireplace, the entirety of the room is pitch black, making it seem as though they were formed from a void. The eerie calmness of the living statues and arms paired with the lack of any underscoring or sound effects sets the stage for an fairy tale like no other.

Outside of this scene, the special effects and sound design are far less consistent. Some things, such as the talking door and mirror, are done with an elegance that helps them mesh with rest of the movie (by using a disembodied voice instead of, say, a mouth superimposed onto the door, the effect maintains an air of subtlety). In other parts, however, subtlety is thrown out the window, such as the swelling score upon the parting of branches to reveal a lackluster fake castle, or the ending in which the prince and Belle fly off into the sky through the magic of reverse projection. The feel of the movie is sometimes spot on, but other times it’s just too corny to take seriously.

Talking about the story of the film is not useless,but it does feel slightly redundant. We have all seen some version of Beauty and the Beast, likely the Disney version, so the moral lesson the fable is already known to most: if you act with kindness and goodness, you can overcome poverty and ugliness, but if you act with malice, your wealth or beauty will be worthless. The most most important difference between Cocteau’s version and the riginaltale is that he introduces the Avenant character to the story, who acts as a much stronger double to the Beast. Avenant is beautiful with an ugly core, and the Beast is ugly with a virtuous core. It’s only fitting that the movie ends with them switching exteriors to match their true natures.

And, as for any notions of an Oedipal relationship between Belle and her father, I think that these analyses may be reading into the text too far. Yes, their relationship is ambiguous, but it’s the relationship of a girl forced to act as a caregiver and servant in place of the mother would have with her father, nothing else. She loves him because he cares for her, unlike anyone else in her life up until meeting the Beast. Avenant may claim to love her, but he only felt lust. The Beast, despite his appearance, was a gentleman, and his caring spirit won him him Belle’s heart.