Two Short Films by FranA§ois Truffaut (1963)

François Truffaut's 1957 short "Les Mistons" (roughly translated to "The Brats") is an early testament to Truffaut's affinity with kids and his first exploration of impossible love. Five boys palling around one summer fall for a teen beauty, but as the narrator (one of the five) describes, "Too young to love Bernadette, we decided to hate her--and torment her." These adolescent boys are neither cute nor innocent, but Truffaut sympathizes with the frustration born of budding hormones and sexual mystery. In 1962, he revisited similar territory in the sketch "Antoine and Collette." The second film to feature alter ego Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), it was originally made for the omnibus film Love at Twenty but has outlived its companion shorts. As romantic and gently ironic as The 400 Blows is harsh and haunting, this modest 20-minute lark finds a teenage Antoine pursuing the lovely, lithe 20-year-old Colette (Marie-France Pisier) like a lovesick puppy dog. The comic sweetness of this episode sets the tone for all future Doinel films, and Léaud, who matured into the poster boy for the French new wave, displays the lanky charm and self-effacing egotism that propelled him through some of the greatest films of the next two decades. --Sean Axmaker Amazon.com

Truffaut Shorts To Treasure

This review refers to "Les Mistons" and "Antoine & Colette" - Two Short Films by Francois Truffaut, DVD edition Fox Lorber World Class Cinema Collection...

If you are already a fan of Truffaut, then I don't have to tell you that he has quite a gift for filmmaking. If you are just getting to know him, these two short films are a good place to start. In the span of only 17 minutes("Les Mistons") and then again in 30 minutes("Antoine & Colette"), Truffaut manages to convey a story that captivates, with characters we care about, that draw you in from start to finish. These two will give you a taste of his work in both comedy and drama.

From 1957 "Les Mistons" (The Brats), finds a group of young boys, who have become obsessed with an "older woman". They are taken with her beauty, and intrigued by her behavior(especially her romantic escapades with her boyfriend). Not old enough or experienced enough in the ways of the world to show their admiration properly, the adolescents taunt and annoy her.

In another story of young love gone awry, "Antoine and Colette", a young man(Jean-Pierre Leaud) has fallen deeply for a girl he knows from school. She is friendly with him, but does not return the same deep affection he feels for her. He does everything imaginable to gain her attentions, including cozying up to her parents, and even taking an apartment across the street. This film, from 1962 is the second in the "Antoine Doniel" series.

At times showing their age, I thought the transfer of these old French shorts looked pretty good. The sound was always clear and distinguishable during both the dialouge and narration portions. The English subtitles were clear and well placed. Another reviewer mentioned they had trouble with a freezing problem at about the 23 minute mark of "Antoine", my copy did not have this problem.

Aspiring filmmakers, admirers of Truffaut, lovers of Short film, French film, and lovers of love in general, will find these to be pieces of cinema to treasure.

Merci Beaucoup....enjoy...Laurie

January 23, 2005

Les Mistons: What a discovery!

A boy bends down to smell the bicycle seat of a beautiful girl. A young woman laughs and giggles her way through a game of tennis with her lover. An elderly man sprays water at a young rascal. Forgettable yet utterly unforgettable moments are captured on film in Truffaut's enchanting short film LES MISTONS.

LES MISTONS is a beautifully conceived story that seizes the attention from start to finish. Truffaut brings together the artistic endeavour and human spontaneity that characterized the best of the French Nouvelle Vague in the '50s and '60s. It is a real pleasure to watch a simple tale told so engagingly, so cinematically, a tale in which the the smallness of everyday life intersects with the vastness of human existence and emotion. August 16, 2004

GREAT movies, LOUSY dvd

I am reviewing the dvd itself, not the 2 short films by Truffaut, which are great. You cannot watch the entire film of Antoine & Colette, because the picture freezes at 23 mins. into a 30 min. film. This is a manufacturing defect of which I informed Fox-Lorber well over a year ago. I must have purchased over ten copies from different sources at that time. All were the same on every dvd player I tried. Apparently Fox-Lorber doesn't care, because they keep re-issuing the dvd without fixing the problem. They have the same problem with their dvd release of Mrs. Dalloway. BE WARNED!!! April 21, 2002

The rise and fall of a great Great director.

Francois Truffaut's first three features are, for me, the most precious things in the universe, and if I am only allowed to take one thing to heaven it will be one of these. The rest of Truffaut's oeuvre, for some bizarre reason, is rather forgettable, ranging from the slight but entertaining ('Stolen Kisses') through the dense and stodgy ('The Green Room') to the plain embarrassing ('Such a Gorgeous Kid like me').

These two shorts go some way to providing an answer for this fall. 'Les Mistons' is a short made two years before Truffaut's first feature, when he was still best known as a polemical critic. It is a very sad tale about young lovers spied on by a group of brats, and has the casual tragic force of Renoir's 'A Day in the country' or Demy's later 'The Umbrellas of Cherbourg'; and yet is most memorable for its sheer schoolboy-like joy in location shooting, trickery and allusion, affirming cinema's power over life's transience.

'Antoine and Colette', the second film in the Antoine 'The 400 Blows' Doinel series, was originally an episode in a portmanteau film 'Love at Twenty' (also featuring Marcel Ophuls and Andrej Wajda). It is a slick piece of entertainment about the romantic difficulties of a now very together young man. All the trauma and life of the first film is neatly ironed out. June 29, 2001

MYSTERY GIRLS

Two years before LES 400 COUPS, french director François Truffaut shot LES MISTONS (1957), a short movie dealing with children and a young couple. Gérard Blain and Bernadette Lafont impersonate the lovers followed by the bunch of " mistons ". Both actors will become, with Jean-Claude Brialy who appears briefly as a character of the movie chosen by Gérard and Bernadette, THE actors of the french " Nouvelle Vague " (1958-1965).

It's quite strange to find in LES MISTONS a lot of themes Truffaut will treat in his next movies, for instance the tragic love affair (DEUX ANGLAISES ET LE CONTINENT, L'HISTOIRE D'ADELE H, etc...), the children (LES 400 COUPS, L'ARGENT DE POCHE).

ANTOINE ET COLETTE has been shot in 1962 for L'AMOUR A 20 ANS, a movie composed of four different films about the same theme. It's a movie absolutely necessary for those of you interested in the saga of Antoine Doinel, the cinematographic double of François Truffaut and young hero of THE 400 COUPS.

Since a dozen movies of François Truffaut are now available in the DVD standard zone 1, this DVD could be a valuable addition to your library.

Good image and sound transfer.

A DVD for the curious ones. April 21, 2000

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