rrenault wrote:
As for Truffaut, he certainly explores social class in every single one of his Doinel films. Social mobility is a theme throughout the entire series. What I mean about Godard having nothing to aspire to is that social mobility isn't something that someone born into a wealthy banking family needs to worry about. Having humble origins is a heavy cross to bear in postwar Western society in the wake of the rise of the middle class, especially if you come from a high context culture like France or Italy.
With an aristocratic mother and an adoptive father who was an architectural draughtsman Truffaut came from a chaotic and modest background, but not one which which was working class. His family's poverty had more to do with WWII and the deprivation of the post-war period, than with class. Truffaut's rootless childhood and adolescent troubles didn't have to do with poverty, they stemmed from being the son of an emotionally cold mother who was unable to love him as reflected by the aloof mother in The 400 Blows. Even though he is poor and struggles with dead end jobs early on, Antoine Doinel as a character isn't particularly defined by class and neither is class a prime concern of the series. Truffaut was a unique mixture of upper class (mother), middle class (father) and (in financial terms) working class and the Doinel films reflect that as class fluidity rather than class mobility.
