From any other director the teacher's speech at the end, which basically announces the moral of the story, would have offended me as heavy-handed. From Truffaut it was spot-on. Why is this? It is this ability to defy convention or story telling taboo, without seeming like a radical twit (see most of Godard's films, minus a few indisputable masterpieces), that I most admire about Truffaut. Who's with me?
shareI agree. I think it could be said that many of his films are neorealistic, being that he tries to avoid creating fake realities. To accomplish this in this film and others, I imagine, one has to have an imagination to make things seem realistic, but not boring, but also not too theatrical, because that's when, as you said, things could get too heavy handed.
shareIt was clever to have the teacher talking to the children, who might need it spelled out to them, so that it occurs naturally and he doesn't appear to be talking down to the audience, or not trusting them to get it.
I agree with you. It is often the craftmanship, that turns talent into genius.
"I hate quotations, tell me what you know." Ralph Waldo Emerson.
It's simply not heavy-handed. There is no emotional soundtrack throbbing with strings, and the teacher is not sniffing away tears in front of a large audience. No one starts a slow clap.
I'm with you, literatelover.
cras amet qui numquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet
I agree with you ... at least somewhat. I watched this movie, and I was
getting irked about the time I kept seeing such bad bahavior from Leclou,
the abused kid.
His behavior started to get worse and worse, and his situation seemed to
go completely unnoticed ... typical French I'm thinking. The mother who
left her kid alone and who fell out the window, and the bratty bahavior
of most of the kids. I was about to shut it off.
Then the medical exam and the end was somehow transforming, and my whole
idea of this movie changed over a few seconds ... it was really weird.
I started to like this movie, and then to really like it. I did like
the little lecture at the end form the principal, and the fact that the
woman teacher broke down because she did not pay enough attention to
Leclou to know this was happening.
This is a great movie that I now really can appreciate how that dramatic
tension builds and then resolves at the end with some talk ... and then
the boy and girl meet ... which I thought was really brilliant ... the
girl going to the bathroom, and the other girls telling the boy she
went to get kissed ... it was so cute ... sometimes I think kids really
do have their priorities correct and maybe they should lower the voting
age to 14 or so since that seems the be about the average intelligence
of people who vote anyway.
From a writing perspective, it reminds me of what we call deep point of view. I feel like Truffaut included the lecture scene because it was what would really have happened. As an example, I was in college during 9/11, and one of my teachers didn't even teach, he just fielded questions and tried to perform some kind of damage control--well, they all did. Teachers (true ones) have a passion to impart wisdom and a compassion for the age their students are at. This was obvious throughout the film in this particular teacher, so even though it was a "risky" choice movie-wise to put the viewer through a lecture, it made perfect sense story-wise. I did not feel like he was Truffaut's mouthpiece; I felt like it was Truffaut following his character where he would naturally go (even if some of it was Truffaut's own opinions...with writers it's always a tug of war between your personal views and the needs of the work).
shareNormally I don't care for sermonizing in films and would prefer any moral points be made through characterization and action (i.e., the "show and tell adage creative writing teachers love). But for some reason the speech worked here for me, because, as the poster above me noted (seven years ago!) there is sometimes a time and a place for clear didacticism. Maybe knowing that Truffaut himself had been neglected as a child helped. I felt the same way about the speech at the end of "The Great Dictator" by Chaplin who had also had a difficult childhood.
share