Film Review: Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959)

Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows) is a genuine storyteller. An apology never heard never accepted. A dark sickening life insisting to walk away from everything.

A young lad Antoine Doinel is a confused puppet in Paris of the 1950s. His parents argue and fight, his teacher punishes and complains. He studies but he cannot make his mind. One day he is so disturbed that he quit home and school, and begins stealing.

This 1959 French film is directed by François Truffaut. The best aspect of the film is the tendency, the aptness, the realism of human behavior. The portrayal of characters and their character descriptions are extremely rich and marvelous (especially Antoine’s parents).

This easily is one of the best writings in European cinema due to the fact that ‘The 400 Blows’ was one of the earliest films of the French New Wave uprising. Legendary filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa and Satyajit Ray have considered the film as one of their favorites.

Another legacy is that Truffaut took the character Antoine Daniel with the same boy (Jean-Pierre Léaud) and made four more films on the character’s first love affair (Antoine et Colette in 1962), then another love affair (Baisers volés in 1968), then marriage (Domicile conjugal in 1970), and then separation (L’amour en fuite in 1979).

Highly recommended to all film critics and sensible filmgoers.

Ratings: 9.1/10

Film Review: Trans-Europ-Express (1966)

Trans-Europ-Express was a 1966 French experimental film about three people involved in establishing a film plot while riding on a train. During the travel, they discuss and present their idea about the plotline and its continuity for their next film. And the plot plays in the entire film with their commentary.

The French film industry was very thoughtful about the innovative approaches to filmmaking and this is why I choose this film. An around 100-minute film about the ifs and buts of future film projects where the makers try to reason their plot and bring it to an ultimate end.

Plus their plot ran the screen in a careful characterizing of the leading actor Elias (Jean-Louis Trintignant) whose cocaine consignment is mixed with his own sexual fantasies with the prostitutes. The detailing of intimate scenes is striking. This is called exploitation cinema where the film majorly focuses or emphasizes a subject within the main plotline. The director takes time in exploiting the actor’s dark sexual desires.

Special praise for the camera work who took some breathtaking shots of beautiful women in the film. Especially the hotel scenes, where Elias takes pleasure in Eva’s company. The enchantment is dominant.

The film is directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet who was vastly known for his artistic and experimental techniques in filmmaking. The film deserves praise for being different from the usual.

RATING: 7/10

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THE ART OF WAR – Paris Attack & the Proxy War

Predictions can meet your opinions and social media brains can vow the lost words framed in the past. It is an emotional rectifying bond of unheard whispers with uninvited gunshots. So when the music is loud, you are at temporary betrayal of daunting hope…

Unheard of your cost, the weapons had its say and the case was dismissed in the court of shadows. When bad things happen, word of mouth has no protection. The reason why yours and mine opinion differ is because we use our own brains for the textures to follow, to the faith we believe and methods we retrieve. Same methods are voiced to the readers and listeners, they tweet you and become a league. From here, if brain was wrong that day, you cannot expect the league today has its ideal foundation towards the solution. It will certainly drive a wrong road. Non-classified u-turn is unhygienic for melting egos.

A Friday night of many thousands of travelers, visitors, spectators, musical ear-folkers, sports-addict and concertgoers met their horrors in major European city – Paris. Gunfire and blasts were heard and the terror was installed by night. A series of mass shootings and suicide bombings has so far caused lives of 130 civilians and gashed around 350 others.

Locations were;

1) La Belle Equipe – A very popular Bistro, which was of full capacity when the shootings happened and killed at least 12. One witness said that the shooting at this site lasted for three minutes!

2) Le Carillon/Le Petit Cambodge – Former is café-bar and latter is a Cambodian restaurant. Both are located directly opposite to 408-year-old Saint-Louis Hospital. So far at least 12 are reportedly dead.

3) La Casa Nostra pizzeria – at this location is reported that a man with a machine gun fired on its terrace and killed 5 people.

4) Stade de France – creates massive center of media attraction due to the fact that a friendly football match between France and Germany was played and three explosions were heard after 30 minutes of the first half. The detail more worth is that French president Francois Hollande was seated there. He was rushed to safety after the second explosion.