Influence & homage

Once again and somewhat paradoxically, the limited means of the New Wave directors helped to create a new dimension of realism in the movies by leaving the artifices of the studio behind. These scenes of the family coming back home from the movies are the first scenes of family joy and mirth that we've seen. It's hard not to be aware that it's a film, a movie, that has put them in this good mood. If Marcel Carnet's 1945 classic Children of Paradise had been cinema's homage to the theater, with the New Wave we begin to get cinema's homage to the cinema,

52:34 · jump to transcript →

Antoine protests his innocence, and in a way we know he is right, for the passage he copied was in his memory, and his act of plagiarism was more of an homage and an act of expression of admiration than it was the lazy dependence of a cheat. But the schoolroom rules leave no room for emulation, the beginnings of a real love of literature.

53:59 · jump to transcript →

The 400 Blows is not an autobiographical film, but I was inspired by certain circumstances in my life. I could have chosen another subject and used my memories or thoughts in the same way. I wanted most of all to paint a portrait, the most accurate portrait possible, of a particular time during adolescence. That is to say, a moment teachers and sociologists are quite familiar with, but which parents generally don't know about, and the existence of which they apparently don't even suspect.

1:21:08 · jump to transcript →

And that was partly his infatuation with Lillian Gish, but he was inspired by D.W. Griffith in so many ways, and he wanted it to be a kind of post-Griffith film, but using a lot of that. Now, the underscore here is a waltz, and this becomes the theme for Shelley Winters.

27:56 · jump to transcript →

Alan K. Rode

Gang smoothed Hayden's testimony with the committee so the actor came out looking like a hero. This is actor Sol Gorss that Hayden slugs and escapes. Hayden was also influenced by a man named Phil Cohen who was a psychoanalyst for many Hollywood left-wingers and party members.

1:09:23 · jump to transcript →