534 L'enfance nue

[swo17]

Yeah. I don't mind the L'Enfance Nue transfer either. I just don't understand why they didn't release it on blu ray, as well. Perhaps the assumption was there was no market for a blu ray release of L'Enfance Nue, but how is there any more of a market for a film like The Secret of the Grain?

Me either. My guess is they either mess around with Pialat fans (like that is new), or release all the cool stuff dvd-only (Dillinger is Dead).

These arguments would be more convincing if they somehow implicated the Illuminati.

[dad1153]

Just caught a 35mm screening of "L'enfance nue" at Film Forum, first time seeing the movie. I'm a stone-cold Pialat fan who gets something from each of his films I've seen. Even "Under the Sun of Satan," the closest a Pialat film has come to turning me off, had moments/scenes that have stayed with me. Considering Truffaut produced "L'enfance nue" (which is why it was shown as part of Film Forum's ongoing 'Tout Truffaut' series) and that he probably related to the 'troubled French youth' parallels to his "400 Blows" film it's amazing how unsentimental, detached, clinical yet approachable the plight of young François (Michel Terrazon doing a great Christian Bale-filtered Jean-Pierre Léaud imitation) is made by Pialat's well-framed mise-en-scène and generosity with every other character in François' life. The scenes between the elder woman and François relating and getting along are some of the warmest and most human moments I've seen in a Pialat film, the polar opposite of the on-screen acid from "We Won't Grow Old Together." But only in a Pialat-directed film about a foster child orphan, for example, would we

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be told by the elder surrogate mother about François crying after the death of the elder granny, something most directors would go out of their way to include in the film as a cheap sentimental counter-balance to all the other bad things we've shown François doing.

Even the ending, anti-climactic as it felt watching it in a stunned-by-silence theater crowd, has the glimmer of hope that François might be redeemable and on the right path. This is of course shattered by the fact that this is only the latest in the endless repeat cycles of François getting another chance. It's only our wishful thinking (as a collective audience) that could interpret the ending as potentially uplifting, but Pialat leaving it for us to interpret (the same way "400 Blows'" final frozen image did) is miles from where his latter, more cynical (clinical?) view of humanity would deposit the characters.

And, for the record since this is what most of the thread seems to be devoted too, this 35mm print of "L'enfance nue" (which broke a few times but hey, glad to sit and wait in silence for many uncomfortable minutes for the sake of authenticity) looked nothing like the Criterion still frames or disc (saw a few seconds of it years ago) and it matches the MoC images to a tee. Frankly I can't see how the Criterion "yellow" look would have been Pialat's choice given how most of his other films looked (stark contrast in simple, realistic colors) or how film looked back in the 60's/70's outside of theaters with used up/old bulbs. I can't see myself getting a disc of this anytime soon (this 35mm viewing should hold me a while), but this is definitely a case where MoC knocks the Criterion version by quite the leapin' summersault, picture-wise.

[tenia]

I have a very fond memory of the scenes where the adoptive grandpa shows François his medals and tells him about the war. It's a very warm sequence, where for one small moment, François seems to get the right loving attention, but also to get some kind of culture transfer. A transfer though, not a "shove it down your throat, that's how it should be so behave now !". He responds to it with what seems to be a real kindness, maybe even some respect, something I don't think he shows even once in the rest of the encounters he has.

[dad1153]

But that's what makes the movie effective for me: the little human moments, like when the grandma is sitting on her husband's leg for no reason. One moment (very few actually) François seems happy and like he has landed on the right family (the ending hints strongly at this), the next he's in trouble at school and/or being a real dick to this very kind people. That's how kids are/were, kind and gentle one moment and total shits the next, especially ones like François that are either holding back or working out their issues about why their parents abandoned them (Raoul, the older boy the grandparents adopt who is no angel, has clearly worked an outlet for his issues that François has yet to find). I think the fact François

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didn't steal the elder granny's money from her purse below the pillow and wrote to the grandparents in the letter he wished to be allowed to return to them in the summer

points strongly toward redemption, but Pialat lets us hope for that without providing any concrete or solid basis for François not messing again and falling down hard. All's possible in this messed-up kid's upbringing.

[zedz]

Pialat may have been an old grouch, but he does somewhat confirm a happy ending for Francois (and his foster brother) in his subsequent film La Maison des bois, though the boys have to travel back to WWI in order to find it. They're essentially in the same situation, but much, much more stable and happier.

[criterion10]

For what it's worth, I saw this screened last night at the Harvard Film Archive, and while the print was far from perfect, that hideous yellow tint on Criterion's release was nowhere to be found.