Scheduled film for May 1, 2009

THE FOUR HUNDRED BLOWS
For 1 May 2009

Les Quatre Cents Coups (The Four Hundred Blows) was Francois Truffaut's first feature film (1959). A feared film critic till then, he soon became the darling of the New Wave and an international celebrity, the most popular French filmmaker of his generation.  The film also started a relationship with French actor, Jean-Pierre Leaud, who plays Antoine and later appeared in other Truffaut films, including several as Antoine at different ages.
    Considered one of the earliest New Wave films, the film has more in common with neorealism (Truffaut had been an assistant director to the great Italian neorealist director, Roberto Rosselini).
    Neorealism was a style developed in Italy after the war, with minimal plot, untrained performers as actors, natural (location) settings and lighting, and an emphasis on everyday reality. French critic, Andre Bazin (to whom The Four Hundred Blows is dedicated) refers to a scene in a neorealist film where the camera focuses on a young woman killing ants in her kitchen sink. A sequence like that would be edited out of a Hollywood film unless it were part of the plot. There are many such moments in Truffaut's first film, including Antoine making supper with his father, drinking a bottle of milk, or escaping reformatory.
    What is interesting in The Four Hundred Blows is a shift in style, midway in the film, from neorealsim to a more poetic realism with emphasis on form rather than content, ending with the famous freeze frame.
    When studying editing one must look for the moments when the editor stays with a shot as much as for more spectacular montages, where the editing is meant to be noticed.
    What to look for in editing:

    1. Is the cut on the speaker or the listener(s)?
    2. Is the cut on movement or action?
    3. Is the cut an ellipsis (shortening time)?
    4. Does the cut extend time (as in a suspense film)?
    5. Is there intercutting (within the same scene)?
    6. Is there parallel editing showing two or more actions at the same time and what is its purpose (suspense? contrast? irony?)?
    7. Is there an overlap (of dialogue or music) from one cut to another (sound bridges)?
    8. Is the cut a shock cut from the previous shot (from silence to noise, from war to peace, etc.)?
    9. Are the cuts short or long? When?
    10. Is there a cut on scale (from close to far or reverse)?
    11. Is there a match on action, so not easily noticed ("invisible" cutting)?
    12. Is there a form cut (from one shape or action to one similar)?
    13. Are there optical effects, such as fades, wipes, dissolves? For what purpose?
    14. Are there montage sequences that express mood or theme, such as the Nature cuts in On Golden Pond?
    15. Are there montage effects, such as (in Chaplin's Modern Times) a cut from city commuters to a herd of sheep, as if to make a simile (commuters are like sheep)?
    16. Are there jump cuts (a cut that doesn't follow smoothly from the previous cut)?
    17. What is the relationship between the cut and the soundtrack (dialogue, sound effects, and music)? For example, in The Four Hundred Blows we can hear the sound of a policeman typing Antoine's statement as Antoine's stepfather descends the stairs.
    These are just the most obvious things to look for in editing.

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