The first day of shooting

the famous theoretician of film who had been like a father to him and who had died unexpectedly at the end of the first day of this film's shooting. We will need to talk more about Bazin and about Truffaut's own childhood as our story proceeds. The story begins with the schoolboy's forbidden image of the pinup girl as we follow its circulation through the classroom. The power of images, both to fascinate us and to get us into trouble,

3:04 · jump to transcript →

Starting with this very first shot, which lasts nearly a full minute, you can see Bazin's protege, Francois Truffaut, striving for a kind of sincerity in his film, exactly as the master would have suggested, by prolonging the integrity of the individual shots. The 400 Blows is a treat for students of film and of what is termed visual literacy in many ways, not the least of which is the film's use is here of what we will refer to as expressive editing.

4:17 · jump to transcript →

David Kalat

It was, in fact, the very first scene shot by the special effects crew. It was a pretty inauspicious beginning. As they were dressing the set in preparation for the shoot, one of the crew members broke through the floor of the set by accident and fell onto the miniature diet building, which had been pre-stressed to break on cue. Well, sure enough, it shattered. They spent hours putting it back together again and restoring the set. Finally ready to proceed, Nakajima put on the Godzilla suit and took his position, only to crash through the floor himself.

1:04:06 · jump to transcript →