I was not impressed by this film. I thought the 400 Blows, Truffaut's smashing New Wave success was much better. The story isn't a very strong one. It merely accounts the love lives of a romantic triangle. There isn't much sex, perhaps because of censors? Then it merely rolls over into WWI, shows some stock footage that has been widely viewed, and contributes very little to the film's narrative. The story is slow, which I don't mind so much, but there is little dramatic intensity. Only at the end with some very feigned actions sequences is there any dramatic tension. It gets really campy when the woman in the love triangle tries to kill one of the men with a revolver. Where does the pistol come from? It just appears out from under a pillow. Then is easily taken away. The action does not build up to any resolution. It happens all too quick and resembles some type of crappy student film.
Perhaps the most substandard aspect of the film was the voice over narration. I know that Truffaut may have been trying to go against the traditional screenwriting rule that you show and don't tell. Yet, it comes off very badly. There are a few sequences when it sounds like poetry, but for the most part it does little but attempt to link the story together haphazardly.
I was looking forward to this film. A French love triangle. It was hailed on the back of the DVD cover as one of Truffaut's best films. It was also called a major cinematic event. I was dissappointed. It had nothing like other New Wave films had. The new aesthetic style of Godard's Breathless with it's Jump Cuts or the displays of Parisian artistic life like in Cleo 5 to 7. Or even the intensity and childhood troubles displayed in Truffaut's 400 Blows. It was a lifeless film that lacked any dramatic action.
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