Summary
After having being discharged from the army for lapses of discipline, a 20-year old Antoine
Doinel seems ill-equipped to cope with civilian life. He first gets a job as a night
watchman in a hotel, but is soon given the sack. He is then recruited as a private
detective by an agency, his first assignment being to trail a magician with a secret love
life. Having bungled that case, Antoine is assigned to a shoe-shop at the request
of its owner, Monsieur Tabard, who is paranoid that everyone hates him, including his
wife. So preoccupied is he with his job that Antoine has little time for his girlfriend,
Christine. Things come to a head when Antoine discovers he is also falling
in love with Madame Tabard. And who is the myserious stranger who is trailing Christine...?
Review
Six years after Antoine Doinel appeared in the Antoine et Colette segment of the
compendium film L’Amour à vingt ans, François Truffaut
felt the time was right to resurrect his famous alter ego, who first saw the light of
day in Les Quatre cents coups.
By this time, Jean-Pierre Léaud, the young actor who played Antoine in these two
earlier films, had established himself as an actor in France, most notably for his appearance
in Jean-Luc Godard’s film La Chinoise. By the time Baisers volés
was made, Léaud had developed his own personality – a mixture of unpredictable
rebel, loveable good-for-nothing and womanising scamp – which was perfectly in tune
with Truffaut’s vision of the Doinel character.
In Baisers volés, Truffaut continues to use Doinel to relate incidents from
his own life, most notably his terrible experiences in the army. In 1951, after
having absconded without leave, a 19 year old François Truffaut was arrested
for desertion. He spent several gruelling months in a German prison before being
offered a dishonourable discharge.
In stark contrast to the elegiac poignancy of Les Quatres cents coups and the emotional
intensity of Jules et Jim, Baisers volés is a much lighter film,
a sentimental romantic comedy about a young man finding his feet (and constantly tripping
up) in an adult world. The film's title comes from a line in Charles Trenet's song
Que reste-il de nos amours? which is also used as the film's signature tune.
This is a film which also manages to capture the mood of the time it was made. The
year 1968 has a special significance in the recent history of France. The student
demonstrations and general strikes that year shook the de Gaulle government to its foundations
and resulted in a burgeoning youth culture. Although Truffaut sympathised with these
events, he never directly reflected them in his films, unlike his contemporaries.
Despite that, there is an air of quiet subversion which runs through Baisers volés
(and indeed the subsequent two Doinel films).
One major political event which marked Truffaut at the time he was making this film was
the decision by the French government to remove Henri Langlois from his post as director
of the Cinémathèque Française. Truffaut leant his support to
the outcry from well-known actors and directors to have Langlois re-instated, and this
meant he had less time than he planned to direct this film. Truffaut dedicated
Baisers volés to Langlois, and indeed the opening shot takes us right
up to the doors of the Musée du cinéma in Paris, appropriately closed for
business.
Truffaut believed that Baisers volés would fail at the box office because
of the distraction caused by the Langlois affair. He was wrong. This proved
to be his most successful film in France since Les Quatre cents coups, and it was
a surprising success in the United States.
© James Travers 2001
See also:
The life of François Truffaut
Les 400 coups
Tirez sur le pianiste
Jules et Jim
Farenheit 451
Le Dernier métro
Buy films by François Truffaut
More about the French New Wave
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