A NOUS LA LIBERTE

SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA.ORG

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1931 - France (Film Sonores Tobis)

DIRECTOR: René Clair
SCRIPT:  René Clair
PHOTOGRAPHY: Georges Périnal
MUSIC: Georges Auric

     My word, I was so ready to hate this film I should probably hang my head in shame and think about what I've (nearly) done. In my defence though I'd like to say that all I had to start with was the year, 'freedom' in the title and a glimpse of a review (I avoid reading about films before watching them so that I don't get my opinion influenced too much) from which my eye fished out words like 'left-wing', 'socialist' and 'propaganda'. My heart sank and was not far from knocking out a sizeable hole in the bottom of the Mariana Trench but then I have spotted another word that made me stop recoiling from the anticipated terror. A 'comedy' it said. And with that single word a tiny flicker lit up at the end of the tunnel. Thankfully it wasn't a train either.

THE 400 BLOWS (LES QUATRE CENTS COUPS)

SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA

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1959 - France (Les Films du Carrose/Sedif Productions)

DIRECTOR: François Truffaut
SCRIPT: François Truffaut, Marcel Moussy
PHOTOGRAPHY: Henri Decaë
MUSIC: Jean Constantin

     Will it not be a little bit worrying if I start with the words 'I was dreading this film so much'? And also, if I add that I have not had seen this film before, I knew nothing about it and all I knew about the director was just his significance to the La Nouvelle Vague? I guess it would, if I were a pay-for film critic, but thankfully I am nothing more than a one-of-a-billion cinema enthusiast occupying a tiny little corner of those mighty internets. It still doesn't make it quite OK but at least there's no one here to kick me out of this job, and then again, appreciate the honesty. After all I must be the only person (or at least one of very few) who doesn't mind to admit to it, instead of copy&paste-ing fragments from Wikipedia pretending, that I knew it all since I was five.

     So, yes, the bottom line is that THE 400 BLOWS surprised me, and surprised me positively which is the kind of surprising I don't mind in the slightest. So let's break it down into a handful of paragraphs to see why.

TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER (2 OU 3 CHOSES QUE JE SAIS D'ELLE)

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1967 - France (Anouchka, Argos, Carrose, Parc)

DIRECTOR: Jean-Luc Godard

SCRIPT: Jean-Luc Godard, Catherine Vimenet

PHOTOGRAPHY: Raoul Coutard

  

   It is quite funny, how deciding on watching the films from 1001 MOVIES... in alphabetical order rather than chronological, accidentally put together two films that suddenly created some sort of a context for each other. In the red corner, an Italian Marxist Bertolucci with his 1900 and in the... other red corner a French Marxist, Godard with TWO OR THREE THINGS... You think a draw? Of course not, that would be far too easy and too little fun as well. Only because they both hark back to the same ideology, doesn't mean there are any similarities. Which is just as good because there are none. And actually, I tell you what, forget Bertolucci. Godard deserves some punches without anyone else's help.