First feature

Truffaut, who was 27 years old when he directed this, his first feature-length film, takes credit for the original story of The 400 Blows, and fairly enough since it retells in fictional form the story of his own childhood. But then he gives an adaptation and dialogue credit to Marcel Moussy.

1:53 · jump to transcript →

As far as experience goes, I was a few years older than Truffaut and had started working in television on a series that was called It Could Happen to You. We dramatized contemporary social cases a little bit like what Paddy Chayefsky was doing in American TV at the time. Truffaut's friend, Andre Bazin, had advised him to watch some of the broadcasts. Having watched those programs, he got in touch with me. Concerning my experience with children, Truffaut had read my first novel.

9:06 · jump to transcript →

because it really struck me at the time, an interior traveling shot in the classroom where the grips pulled the desks out of the way one by one as the camera went forward. So you'd see the desk that had been thrown from the patch on both sides and the cameraman threading his way between them. Nothing could have been more different from the heaviness of shooting on TV. When I eventually came to direct my own first film, Saint-Tropez Blues, that was the only style of shooting that made sense to me. Deux. Jean.

34:46 · jump to transcript →

So I've got two more mouths to feed. And that's Gloria Castillo. This was her first film. And she was very nervous. A lot of Lawton's direction to her was simply trying to put her at ease. But she does a lovely job in this picture. Yes, she does.

1:08:32 · jump to transcript →

It crushed Lawton's spirit. It just totally threw him, which it shouldn't have. It was a brilliant, brilliant first film for a director. But he expected so much from it because he'd come off so many great successes with his stage plays, Kane, Mutiny, Court Martial, and so forth.

1:31:30 · jump to transcript →

David Kalat

Ifukube had gotten as far as he ever had by never paying attention to other people's advice. Ifukube's first film composition was for Snow Trail, which happened to be Toshiro Mifune's first film as well. Ifukube later scored The Quiet Duel for Kurosawa and argued with the temperamental director, which was a no-no, so that was his last job, scoring for Kurosawa.

1:17:30 · jump to transcript →