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2 articles from 2009

4 December 2009 7:08 AM, PST | The Auteurs | See recent The Auteurs news »

I like the new poster (see below) for the re-release of Francois Truffaut’s 1976 film L'argent de poche, but for me nothing can beat the kitsch charm of the original British poster which takes a number of memorable vignettes from the film and turns them into what looks like a teen romance paperback. In the UK the film was called Pocket Money (the literal translation) and legend has it that it was Steven Spielberg who suggested the American title Small Change.

L’argent de poche was Truffaut's biggest hit in France since The 400 Blows, and, after opening the 1976 New York Film Festival, went on to great success in the Us too. It's a strange film: mostly plotless, a combination of gentle humor, bitter social commentary and lovely magical realism ("Gregory went Boom!") populated by shaggy haired youngsters in bell bottoms. I've seen it twice before over the years and …

13 November 2009 6:36 AM, PST | The Auteurs | See recent The Auteurs news »

Updated through 11/13.

François Truffaut: A Winter Portrait, running Tuesdays through December 22 at the French Institute Alliance Française in New York, showcases the less-heralded work of the 1970s. "The 'efficiency' of his output during the decade could be cause for quality-control concerns," writes Justin Stewart in the L Magazine. "Nearly always using the same small crew, the same cinematographer (the great Nestor Almendros), and making his own Hitchcockian cameos, Truffaut produced a run of films that have an unsurprisingly similar tenor, even as he seesawed from melodrama (The Story of Adele H.) to a lighthearted kids romp (Small Change). It's because all is nuance in them. Elements like the relentlessness of Adele H.'s devotion to love itself (not the man), which that led Pauline Kael to consider it a half-comedy, or the horrifying windowsill leap by a kid in Small Change, pull the movies back from the edge of …

2 articles from 2009